Den of Wolves — The Co-op Sci-Fi Heist FPS With Brains and Brawn

Co-op sci-fi heist FPS with a techno-thriller twist from 10 Chambers

Truth be told, there just aren’t enough decent heist games, or at least not enough decent ones where ‘tooling up’ with your friends in co-op to pull off a daring raid on someone’s hard-earned wealth is concerned. It wasn’t until the Payday trilogy of games came along that the heist genre was well and firmly established. Enter Den of Wolves, which adds a thrilling new dimension to cooperative heist gaming.

2007’s Kane and Lynch had its moments, and GTAV’s “The Jewel Store Job” was probably one of the best missions in the entire game. Crime Boss: Rockay City, a 1–4-player co-op heist game, didn’t really make a lot of noise when it launched last summer.

Despite over 3,300 ‘Mostly Positive’ reviews on Steam when it eventually got free of its Epic Store launch exclusivity, and a who’s who of Hollywood actors tied to the project (Michael Madsen, Danny Trejo and Kim Basinger), the only real noise it did make was when streamer Kirsche was removed from the game’s partner programme. Since then, Payday and Payday 2 have carried the torch, so we’re long overdue for a decent co-op heist game to lead the charge.

Career Criminal — the heist game genre remains popular

Back in 2008, Midway Games (Austin Studio) were working on Career Criminal, a third-person, open-world, GTA-styled game based around heists. Hollywood director Tony Scott was on board for video production work, narrative consultation, and mapping out the various CGI cut-scenes that would propel the story. Players could case out their heist, and they could pull it off in one of three ways: either by distraction, stealth, or sheer brute force.

Before any of that happened, players would have to identify the level of security, CCTV cameras, security guards, exits, and overall risk they’d encounter to pull off the heist. If you decided that ‘tooling up’ was the way to go—with brute force and guns drawn—an intimidation meter would appear above witnesses’ and security guards’ heads, which then meant the player had to work the room, antagonising each equally to keep them compliant through intimidation. Take your focus and your aim off the security guard, for example, and his intimidation meter would drop to the point he may be brave enough to thwart the robbery.

At the time, it was a game design well ahead of its peers and unlike anything on the market. Interestingly, Crime Boss: Rockay City uses a degree of casing and intimidation in its own game, but lacklustre reviews reveal that the game fell short of what it promised.

By late 2009, Midway Games was already dying a slow, painful death through inflated budgets, late products, and big spending. It had dropped over $10 million on the Career Criminal prototype, which was still largely unplayable. But alas, the game never saw light of day; years of coding and art/creative work that I personally saw fill a 5-foot by 25-foot corridor wall all went in the dumpster—and Midway was eventually swallowed up by Warner Bros.

Bringing new ideas into familiar game themes is pretty challenging in this day and age. Taking risks in games is, well, quite risky in itself, especially when you don’t really know if players are going to be fully receptive to something wholly unique and quite different.

Co-op heist games with a big-brain edge

Den of Wolves follows the familiar co-op heist formula of Payday and Payday 2, but primarily because it’s developed by the same creator, Ulf Andersson. Where Den of Wolves adds a cool spin to its dystopian-inspired futuristic setting—an environment where corporate power and invasive technology reign—is that this is a heist game with a big-brained sci-fi slant. Not only are you looting wealth in the true sense of a traditional smash-and-grab heist, but you’ll also loot the consciousness and knowledge to gain an informative edge. ‘The Dive’, as it’s known, is where you’ll literally explore inside your target’s mind to seek out the essential information you need.

It’s kind of trippy in an abstract way, but this is brain hacking of the future—think of it as Inception meets Heat with a splash of cyberpunk. It ties into the game’s ‘techno-thriller’ narrative of data transmission and storage, a concept based around utilising the human brain in order to combat AI deep learning.

In Den of Wolves, you’re criminals for hire. Set 75 years into the future in Midway City—an unregulated innovation zone—‘unauthorised errands’ are commonplace, created by rival businesses. This is a dog-eat-dog world; if the payout is big enough, no-one is getting in the way. It’s not just heists either—you’ll need to undertake industrial espionage, sabotage, and assassinations as part of these ‘unauthorised errands’, and all come with high-risk stakes.

Players can adjust their chosen look and loadout through character, weapons and abilities tweaks, and inventory management also provides information on aspects such as armour, health, concealment, speed and stamina, etc., which all provide a ‘detection risk’ score. For players itching to get into a gunfight, it’ll be interesting to see if this detection rating really matters.

Futuristic tech-noir heist thriller with brutal gunplay

Visually, Den of Wolves ticks all the right boxes; it looks tech-noir slick and as ‘bad-ass’ as heisting should be in a dystopian future. Gunplay also looks equally on point: it’s fast, dynamic, and brutal when trigger-pullers need to go to work. The game offers up a deadly selection of futuristic submachine guns, assault rifles, pistols, and shotguns, as well as tactical explosives like mines and remote-detonation throwables. Den of Wolves also includes hi-tech, one-way shields that can be deployed for strategic rear-defensive plays, allowing defenders to shoot through as enemies attempt a counter-attack.

No heist game would be complete without masks, which play an integral part of playing the ultimate criminal, and Den of Wolves provides plenty of options for players to customise their characters with a plethora of intimidating designs that firmly establish its underworld-themed universe. These aren’t just ‘visual fluff’ for the sake of it either: the art team went through 200 prototype designs before dialling into a design ‘niche’—one that combines different materials and textural appearances, with some concepts that are twistedly erotic but also darkly sinister. It’s a well-crafted aesthetic that’s thoroughly considered, and it understands the role that masks play and how they contribute to player identity.

Early Access with huge potential for console

Den of Wolves will be an early access game, which means that there’s still a long way to go. In May of this year, a selection of content creators were given the opportunity to play a pre-alpha build of the game. Creators like The KKnowley shared his first look on his YouTube channel, and he remains optimistic that Den of Wolves can go the distance and bring something special to the co-op heist genre we’ve not seen before.

10 Chambers are wise to iron out the dynamics on PC before even considering console. If the success of Ready or Not is anything to go by, it’s that focusing on the PC version—getting it fully optimised, balanced, and fixed—and addressing community wants and needs preps it for huge potential on console.

For the most part, its pre-awareness campaign across social media, slick visual branding, and smash-mouth trailers deliver a brutal futuristic potency that will hopefully give it more than a decent chance of being a worthy addition to the co-op shooters already on the market. A front cover on the ageing EDGE magazine might not quite hold the same industry esteem it did a decade ago, but for Den of Wolves it at least proves that there is substance worthy of attention—especially if developer 10 Chambers works to its motto of ‘under-promise, over-deliver’.

Related reading by Aidan Minter

• Battlefield 6 — Trust, Crisis & Momentum
• Battlefield 6 — The Turnaround (Part 2)

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