GTFO devs announce cooperative sci-fi heist games Den Of Wolves

Following the fascinating and horrifying co-op shooter GTFO, developers 10 Chambers today announced their second game, a cooperative sci-fi heist 'em up named Den Of Wolves. Expect corporate espionage, sabotage, assassinations, and more in a futuristic island city. Oh, and meat computers? Lovely. Learn more in the announcement trailer, below.

"Coming from having worked on heist games in the past, much focusing on the classic bank robbery themes, the sci-fi aspect will let us elevate what a heist can be," said game director Ulf Andersson, who was designer of the first two Payday games before founding 10 Chambers. "You can only rob so many banks. Den of Wolves will have a wider range of heisting – corporate espionage, sabotage, assassinations – really, the sci-fi theme lets us try many things."

While we don't yet have much sense of how it'll play, I'm certainly curious. I'm a big fan of sticking it to The Man in co-op. When Andersson first mentioned a new heist game last year, he hinted that unlike Payday, which escalates action then largely stays escalated, "This one won't be constant shooting."

Den Of Wolves takes place after global economies collapsed thanks to a "deep learning AI that became an unstoppable hacking tool." This prompted a shift to biological computer systems the AI couldn't hack, based on the human brain. We'll see this play out in Midway City, an unregulated island city in the North Pacific Ocean.

"We want Midway City to feel like a believable city of the near future, where late-stage capitalism has gone rampant and corporations set the rules," explained narrative director Simon Viklund. "As a player, you reside in the city's underground domains without any real identity or papers, building your allegiances to become a criminal entrepreneur on Midway City's black market of gig jobs."

10 Chambers don't use the term "cyberpunk", calling the theme "sci-fi" or a "techno-thriller", but it all sounds pretty cyberpunk to me. I suppose the exact terms don't matter as long as I get to be a cyborg wielding a revolver the size of a Border Collie. I really hope I get to be a cyborg wielding a revolver the size of a Border Collie.

Den Of Wolves will debut on PC via Steam Early Access, with console versions also planned. No word yet on when it's coming to any platform.

We talked with Simon Viklund about GTFO in 2021 as one of several developers chatting about early access successes.

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