My first Den of Wolves heist, from Payday's creators, has me dropping plasma shields and brain-diving with teammates to steal minds: "We've been refining this formula for over 20 years now"

10 Chambers was founded in 2015 by Payday creator Ulf Anderson. Recruiting a boss battle-worthy collective of nine of his most formidable friends and collaborators, each chamber represents a different co-founder. A decade later. The unexpected success of 2019's co-op horror shooter GTFO has seen the smoking gun of an FPS studio balloon into a team of over 100. Yet while many expected 10 Chambers to double down on the success of the 2.5million selling GTFO, the Swedish studio is instead returning to the heist genre its founders pioneered. Enter Payday's sci-fi spiritual successor – Den Of Wolves.

"This game has been in Ulf's mind, since a few months into the production of the first Payday," explains 10 Chambers co-founder and audio director Simon Viklund. "Quite early in production of the first Payday game, we realised that [we] can't do this and that, because of the contemporary setting. So Ulf put Payday in the future, as a concept [...] for 10 Chambers to do."

Future plans

While the aesthetic of this neon-drenched dystopia invokes CD Projekt Red's fictional Night City, 10 Chambers' latest is actually set on a very real island just Northwest of Hawaii – Midway Atoll. In Den Of Wolves' fiction, 2030 saw the world as we know it plunged into chaos. Hackers led an unprecedented suite of AI-driven attacks, with no asset or data left safe from the civilization-destroying cyber warfare. With the world in ruins, and global governments brought to their knees, the richest corporations banded together to offer survivors an AI and regulatory-free safe haven – Midway City.

Fast forward to 2067 and players find themselves embroiled in a desperate fight for survival. With AI completely banned from the isolated and strategic Pacific Ocean archipelago, the newly-founded Midway City runs entirely on neural technology. Each heavily-armed district of Midway City is owned and operated by private corporations, and ruled through violence. With no governing bodies left to regulate them, fear and cash are king, with Viklund describing Midway City as "the capital of capitalism". Yet with biological hackers now able to 'dive' inside neural networks, a new type of crime has festered on this once peaceful island.

"We wanted to build a backstory in a way where there are things pointing towards Den Of Wolves' setting actually being a plausible future," says Viklund. "It's why we chose to set Midway City on a piece of land that actually exists, and one that is unincorporated from the US… There are reasons why this would be a feasible location for a stock exchange between Asia and the Americas. So, we're trying to anchor our sci-fi in reality."

It's in this nightmarish hellscape that players find themselves hustling to survive. Put in the blood-soaked boots of a hungry citizen, Viklund's quick to point out that you are no heroic do-gooder – you're just here to get paid. Another four player co-op heist sim, Midway City will be divided into a yet to be determined number of dangerous districts for players to steal and shoot their way through. But in order to make it to the big heists, you'll have to do your homework.

Den of Wolves' prep missions see you and your crew tackling a series of small-scale infiltrations, allowing you to gather everything you need before tackling each district's main heist. Whether it's breaking into an apartment building to gather essential intel or sneaking your way across a tech warehouse to gather weapons, your choices will determine the shape of heist that awaits.

Brain drain

I get to play one prep and one heist proper. The prep mission sees myself and my teammates sneaking through a heavily-guarded museum-esque office block. Swarming with helmet-clad stormtroopers patrolling each corridor, stealth is the name of the game as we attempt to escape with a high tech spider drone. It turns out, life had other plans. Edging our way out of the elevator, one of my crewmates tiptoes towards a patrolling guard, knife in hand. Yet just as he goes in for the kill, a second guard enters the room and pulls out his auto rifle. So much for stealth.

As the blade pierces the first guard's throat, bullets ricochet across the walls, and our once-crouching crew sprints our way through the open door. We make our way across increasingly heavily-guarded rooms until we eventually find a vault. It's your standard sneaking and shooting affair, the sterile white environments of the glitzy building failing to live up to the intriguing narrative setup.

Thankfully, the main heist more than delivers. Once my squad and I have selected our loadouts we look at a building schematic to go through our game plan. There are three heavily armed floors containing eight vaults, four of us, and one neural linked target that we need to hack. We've already convinced the gang that runs this building that we're delivering vital tech for them, so we sneak in, and cover each floor.

We enter a sprawling Judge Dredd-esque mega structure – part gargantuan housing estate, part heavily armed fortress. "These mega structures give us freedom in terms of level design where you can essentially take an elevator in the same map, from the slums to the penthouses," says Viklund.

As we're led in by the gun-toting gang, we're accompanied through the vast perimeter, walking-sim style. Our chaperones take us floor by floor through increasingly grim surroundings. I spy a tortured prisoner strung up from his arms. We roll past barricaded apartments and blood stained rooms – across corridors littered with destroyed furniture and piles upon piles of decimated droids. As gang members talk us through what's happening, rooms contain TV bulletins that 10 Chambers tell me are affected by the players' prep mission choices. It's an intriguing first glimpse at how your decisions in-game might play out, affecting both the environmental storytelling and even whether you are willingly let in the building as I am, or instead have to fight your way through.

"The story is mostly told in the heist, because that's this narrative payoff to – and the consequences of – your choices throughout the prep missions," explains Viklund. "There's a character being tortured in one scene as you walk by, and that's actually someone who sold information to you. They don't know that you're the one that sold them out – but you can see the consequences of you interacting with this gang."

Once we've been led into the main foyer – and can spy our neural-linked target – the ruse is up. Armed with a trusty DMR and an auto rifle, myself and one team mate plant explosives on a nearby window before heading to our vaults. Throwing down a plasma shield, I cover my teammate as he uses a drone to begin drilling through the first vault door. With crudely armed bandana-laden bandits raining down fire on us, my two other teammates are ransacking the vaults on the opposite side of the sprawling lobby. It's a fun mix of tactical play, with each team eventually finding the required keys, and fending off attackers before we make it to the main vault and our target: the gang leader's brain.

In Den Of Wolves' fiction, this biological hacking is known as diving. Neural dive sections see players suddenly dragged out of the physical location and thrust suddenly into the mind palace of the target they're hacking, sucking me out of an intense firefight and hurling me into a pulsating, crimson nightmare. Leaping through a gravity-defying set of floating islands, my teammates and I have to reach the other side of the mind palace in order to complete the first stage of hacking, and return into the physical realm. Part Fear 3, part Control, this trippy platforming section is an unexpected palette cleanser.

"The dives are really a tool to create variety for the player – a change of pace, change of gameplay, change of setting," explains Viklund. "We're working on one now, which is in a forest and you're being chased by a monster. So a dive could be more horror, or we can give the players weapons in the dive as well – but we can make it so that it's one shot, one kill, and that makes it more dangerous. The rules can be a bit different there, and it's one of the things that makes ending up in a dive feel exciting."

It's clearly still early days for Den Of Wolves, and in this current state, it's difficult to get a full grasp of the storyline, so Viklund explains the vision for robbing your way across Midway City.

"We're not the type of company who would do cutscenes and take the control away from the player – it will be all in game, and defined by your choices," says Viklund. "A storyline can be four prep missions in the one heist, a snack size storyline - or storylines could be eight prep missions and then the heist followed by six prep missions and another heist. Some will be free, some paid DLC. It's still early – there's no recipe, no rules."

All in all, it's an impressive first showing for Den of Wolves, a sci-fi shooter with a lofty sense of ambition. Yet just as my in-game avatar walked past a room filled with forgotten and discarded droids, I can't help but feel that the last few years have seen many online shooters share the same fate.

"We've been refining this formula for over 20 years now," answers Viklund, on why players should believe in Den of Wolves. "From working on Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 20 years ago, which was the first FPS co-op game, to Payday, Payday 2, and GTFO. So, I'd like to think that we have a good grasp on the concept. I think that people can trust us to put something together that is worth keeping their eyes on."

Want to learn more about Den of Wolves? We talk to 10 Chambers about getting "back on that heist s**t" where "the darkness comes from the late-stage capitalism"