Ulf Andersson was a designer on both Payday games before becoming CEO and creative director of 10 Chambers, so he knows a few things about co-operative heists. Though 10 Chambers continued the co-op theme with hardcore horror shooter GTFO, which hit version 1.0 in December, GTFO didn't have the same "Robert De Niro tries to orchestrate the perfect crime and it all goes wrong" vibe as the Payday games. 10 Chambers' next release sounds like it will.
In an interview with NME, Andersson described the studio's upcoming game by saying, "I'm back on the heist shit, basically—so it's a heist cooperative FPS, and it has a sort of a techno-thriller theme. I read a lot of sci-fi books, and so imagine everything that cyberpunk is inspired by, and a ton of other shit."
Unlike the Payday games, which were defined by the moments where an alarm goes off and you end up gunning out of the bank and rampaging through the streets with a sports bag full of loot, 10 Chambers wants its next game to be less damaging on the eardrums. "This one won't be constant shooting," Andersson said. "Payday had a massive problem where the action would ramp up and then it would just stay ramped up."
It also won't be as extreme in terms of difficulty as GTFO, which demanded stealth and team play, and was ungenerous with checkpoints. Or as Andersson summed GTFO up, "You can sneak for an hour, at least and then just fucking die, right?" His next project will be a touch more forgiving, he said. "So it's not gonna have that hardcore thing to it. It is more mechanically smooth, or you could say, easier to play."
10 Chambers' heist FPS doesn't have a name yet, or a release date either. "We haven't put a date on it," Andersson said, "because we don't want to miss a deadline or overpromise. We're in pre-production at the moment, but things are ramping up quite fast."
Last we heard, Payday 3 was still in development at Overkill Software, will use the Unreal Engine, and will bring the original game's cast to New York where their heists get complicated by modern surveillance technology and gadgets. The odds of at least one level being themed around cryptocurrency are pretty good. It's scheduled for a 2023 release.
