10 Chambers, the development company behind the popular co-op horror game GTFO, is ready to put that game to bed and move on to their next project, which is a return to roots, of sorts, for some of the team. The company has announced “Den of Wolves,” a co-op heist game that has been on 10 Chambers’ CEO, Ulf Andersson’s mind for more than a decade. Lucky for us, CGM got a sneak peek at the game ahead of The Game Awards.
Andersson, alongside Simon Viklund, founded 10 Chambers after a storied history together, including co-founding Overkill Software with Andersson’s brother, Bo. Overkill was behind the Payday series, three multiplayer heist games, which Ulf and Simon worked on the first two, both of whom also voiced characters in the game. Prior to that, the Andersson Brothers had founded Grin AB, the developer behind the games Ballistics, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 1 and 2 and Bionic Commando, all of which Viklund worked on in the capacity of Sound Designer/Composer.
The company has chosen to return to their heist format, but in a new and fresh way that Simon Viklund, Narrative Director and Composer for Den of Wolves, says is “the sum of all the games they have worked on.”
“It’s a lot of confidence in our ability to craft these experiences,” said Viklund. “There’s the fact that we released (GTFO) in early access. That’s something that’s very appealing to us, to put the game in the hands of players earlier in the development process rather than later and listen to their feedback.”
“Den of Wolves will offer you the chance to build your own narrative in the game.”
“Building a brand, building a community” ranked among Viklund’s other takeaways from the company’s previous project, as were “the systems and proprietary tools that allowed us to punch above our weight as a 10-man team. That approach is also being applied to a 110-man team.”
Den of Wolves will place you in the year 2097 inside Midway City, which was once the US Territory Midway Island in the North Pacific Ocean. It has been purchased from the country and is now a lawless city where corporations have set up their headquarters so they can operate and innovate without regulation. A lawless land such as this requires the strongest IT security, where data is encrypted in the human brain.
Den of Wolves is inspired by things such as Inception, The Matrix, Ghost In the Shell and the works of Philip K. Dick, among other Sci-Fi pop culture, but the Sci-Fi is not there just to be another Sci-Fi video game. They push for a future more like that in Inception or Strange Days, that isn’t all about shiny colours and spaceships, but a future that 10 Chambers feels is more attainable. If there is a good narrative reason for a futuristic gizmo, you’ll probably be able to find it. But their intention is that nothing is put in just for the sake of being a Sci-Fi prop.
You play one of many freelance criminals who take gigs with the corporations to do anything from stealing to sabotaging other corporations. Your loyalty, though, is to yourself, as the corporation you hit today may hire you tomorrow. Den of Wolves will offer you the chance to build your own narrative in the game. Maybe you want to specialize in demolitions, or maybe you want to be a top-notch recon-expert. Perhaps you want to be a gunman, always in the thick of it. Throughout your gameplay, you will gather resources and increase your abilities to be whoever you want to be.
“Den of Wolves will offer you the chance to build your own narrative in the game.”
Missions will carry a lot more depth than a simple smash-and-grab robbery. Planning and strategy will factor into the jobs you take. You may have to infiltrate a security company to understand the workings of a corporation’s security systems so you can bypass it. You may need to hunt down a disgruntled employee who can give you the inside scoop that can lead you where you want to go.
All of these choices change how the job gets done based on your team’s agreed-upon strategy. But beware, you may lose access to some of your options based on the choices you make. Talk to one disgruntled employee, and others may go underground to avoid any trouble.
While Den of Wolves will look as though it is open-world, it is not exactly the case. Viklund, in a presentation to the press ahead of the announcement, described what you will see as deep world-building that is not open-world. There will be areas that look like places you can get to, but they are there to fill out the scenes for you. The world that you navigate, however, will still be plenty big. The game will help funnel you in the directions you need to go to achieve your objectives.
The world will be absolutely filled with meticulous detail, though. You may come across an occupied building that is half-finished because the construction company went under. You will certainly find a massive number of unique corporations. To date, over 400 companies have been designed for the game, complete with logos, a complete brand style guide and executive hierarchy, so that every place you visit is unique and doesn’t look procedurally generated. 10 Chambers credits their lawyers, who have undergone the long process of vetting these companies, so there was no resemblance to existing ones.
“Whether you play Den of Wolves with friends or strangers, by the end, expect to be as thick as thieves.”
As for the experience, Viklund says to expect “an exciting first-person shooter co-op experience, and hopefully an experience where they have fun with their friends, but if their friends can’t join up until 8, and you are free at 7, you can just jump into the game with randoms and have fun still… maybe collect resources to use once your friends are joining.” In terms of the game’s immersive nature, he wants Den of Wolves to be “a game where you find new players and make connections. So when you grow your network, it’s like growing your network of accomplices in the criminal underground”.
There is no set release window for Den of Wolves at this point, and any potential target dates are being held pretty close to the chest. It will be available on Steam for early access, and there is potential for console release as well. 10 Chambers disclosed that additional expansions of the island with more heists would come as DLC this time around. They also said that microtransactions are a possibility for the game, but it has not been confirmed as of yet. Viklund said, “We’d rather be the company that says there is and doesn’t than says there isn’t and then releases them after the reviews come in.”
They did disclose, however, that if microtransactions become a part of the game, they will be cosmetic only, will in no way be pay-to-win and will include no gambling or, as they called it, “bad math,” where regular currency turns to an in-game currency and so forth.
Without much to go on other than a trailer and some concept art, I can’t say much about how the game will turn out, but if 10 Chambers’ experience with GTFO and their leadership’s legacy in gaming have anything to say about it, we should be in for a fun co-op experience. Whether you play Den of Wolves with friends or strangers, by the end, expect to be as thick as thieves.
