Den of Wolves' cyberpunk vibes are more than a gimmick, adding greater stakes and complications to the co-op heist genre

During The Game Awards 2024, we finally learned what to expect from Den of Wolves, the upcoming co-op sci-fi heist shooter from GTFO developer 10 Chambers (who are also veterans of the Payday series). Although we still don't have a launch date, what we saw – and what we were told about the game's world during a pre-TGAs briefing – makes us excited for whenever we can finally go hands-on with the game, hopefully in the near future.

Front and center is the game's aesthetic – which is not too dissimilar from CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 – and a focus on the game's setting having its own rich history. 10 Chambers doesn't want Den of Wolves to just be a game about its heists; but how they also tie into the world as a whole. Every mission is meant to take place in an environment with its own story behind it, so that the futuristic Midway City and its districts are more than just random stages in a game.

Droning on

Of course, whether that's successful or not won't be something we'll be able to answer until we've had the chance to put it to the test ourselves – but the idea feels promising. Speaking personally as a Monster Hunter fan, one of the things I love most about the series is how much environments are as much a character as the monsters we're there to hunt. The same can be said for Destiny and its myriad of instanced content – part of what makes going through Destiny 2 raids and dungeons so fascinating is how they tie into the world itself – and I hope the same can be said for Den of Wolves and its heists.

On a more mechanical note, from the trailer alone it's already clear just how much 10 Chambers is taking advantage of the game's sci-fi framing to have fun with the tools at your disposal, and what sorts of environments players will be executing their plans through.

Cloaking drones that can cut their way into a vault; energy shields that project from probes stuck to walls, and stages appear to mess around with gravity itself. If these things come together properly, Den of Wolves could offer something truly unique to the Payday-dominated heist genre: player expression on both an individual and group level.

When players will be able to put their theories to practice, however, is still unknown. The latest trailer played coy with when the Den of Wolves will be available in early access on Steam; and the wait for a console version will take even longer, going by the team's stated intentions to possibly release on other platforms only after they've finished making the game for PC. Clearing things up a little, 10 Chamber's communications director Robin Björkell clarified that the trailer's deliberately obfuscated release window was a statement on how the company plans to release the game only when it feels truly ready to do so.

That means that if 10 Chambers ends up feeling reasonably confident in launching on Steam Early Access next year, then players might finally have the chance to go hands-on in 2025. Right now, though, the team is making absolutely no commitments on when the game will be available outside of some time this decade. Of course, the latest trailer did include a fair amount of in-game footage, and we can certainly hope this means that early access might arrive this year. Den of Wolves certainly looks promising, and here's hoping we'll have the chance to sneak our way

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