A little over 10 years ago PAYDAY 2 was released by Overkill Software, Starbreeze Studios, and Sumo Digital, with a PC release only three years later. Over the course of its run the game’s story runs the gamut from knocking over small banks and shops to stealing nuclear warheads and thwarting an Illuminati plot.
With such a roster of heists and its story, culminating in Bain’s death and the PAYDAY Gang’s retirement, the question for the developers is “how do we make a sequel?”
The answer is simple, the gang get forced out because of a shadowy group who froze and seized their assets. A revenge story.
The first concession that should be made is that PAYDAY 3 is new and as a result will have a much tighter selection than its predecessor. However, after playing through all 8 heists and watching all 16 cutscenes, I’m left wondering where the rest of it is.
PAYDAY 3 has, to the developers credit, a fleshed out stealth system. The introduction of social stealth is a big improvement over PAYDAY 2 where object interaction was primarily relegated to being masked up, with the exception of a few things with skill point investment.
From first launch it is evident that Starbreeze and Overkill have retired the Diesel engine for the franchise. The graphical quality is higher too, though I would argue the graphics of PAYDAY 2 have held up over the decade giving it its own charm. However, a new engine and coat of polygons won’t hide the game’s issues.
Returning players like myself will note quickly the gutting of many core features. Perk Decks are entirely gone, Detection risk is not a mechanic any more. Weapon purchasing is so limited that instead of having menus differentiating primary and secondary weapons, let alone weapon types, the developers lumped them all onto one screen.
Skill Points, the very act of building your character’s stats, has been strung out, with skills requiring research before you can invest in them. This serves to slow down character progression through a story that is ultimately not very long.
With PAYDAY’s bread and butter being the heists and the customisation, and with customisation being the butter turning rancid, we should see how the heists hold up.
Starbreeze has entirely removed offline play. PAYDAY 3 requires matchmaking. Yes, you can set the game to invite only and play with bots, however this online dependency leaves the game unplayable if, say, the servers can’t handle the load and are prone to crashing. In my own experience I had two “matchmaking errors” during the games only current stealth only heist. Why I had matchmaking errors with bots is beyond me.
But when the heists work, when you matchmake in, the stripping down of old mechanics is back. Preplanning is gone in its entirety. You have no maps, no favors, nothing to indicate a team of professional criminals at work.
Stealth is rewarding, both the social stealth and the regular masked stealth. Social stealthing heists loses its charm of repeat plays, which in an 8 heist roster will sneak up fast, as it becomes evident the RNG from PAYDAY 2 is dialled back. Some key rooms may change but the general locations are always the same, the steps always the same, little variance.
Combat has been revamped, the heists now only come in four difficulties, ranging from Normal to Overkill. This compression has led to some questionable choices, like having Bulldozers and Cloakers appear on normal. Hostages are now less useful, and more expensive. Whereas in PAYDAY 2 it was viable, and ideal, to maintain hostages due to the health regeneration provided by Hostage Taker, PAYDAY 3 incentivises trading hostages. First for extra time before the first assault, and subsequently for “supplies” which predominantly consist of first aid kits.
The assault waves follow a sort of ebb and flow, similar to in its predecessor however unlike before, waves amp up each time. Starting off with the regular cops and armored officers, then bringing in Naders and Zappers, then Cloakers come into play, followed by Bulldozers, before culminating in an endless assault. This assault pattern hinders the future development for “endless” heists, like Cook Off and Counterfeit.
The combat itself is fine, like in any FPS game, there’s not a whole lot to be improved on here and any attempt to do so would be reinventing the wheel. Sliding is a mechanical addition from PAYDAY 2 and one that can be quite handy for moving from cover to cover.
Overall however, the game feels watered down, sedated, the slow grind of the 8 heists all, bar one, incentivising stealth for maximum payouts, to unlock well, everything. You have to grind to unlock weapons, grind to unlock skill points and the skills themselves, grind to unlock Ultrakill Weapons, neither of which is overly appealing.
Warframe, a game all about grinding, has at its very least the frenetic pacing and movement to make the act of grinding more enjoyable. PAYDAY 3 is all about familiarizing yourself with the stealth system, remembering the steps, and hoping you don’t get booted from the server on your way to escape because the devs thought, with all the ire it brought, to scrap offline mode.
PAYDAY 3 isn’t a bad game, it’s fun enough and you can play it alone or with friends and have a good time, the latter being more enjoyable. But as someone who played Destiny 1 from launch and followed the franchise until the introduction of seasons, I can’t help but be sceptical. I cannot help but see the short heist list, the lack of perk decks, the lack of weapons, characters, and masks, and see a game deliberately made short so there is more the developers can sell to you later.
Almir Listo, an Overkill Software developer who has been with the franchise for years, defends the $40 USD price tag as not wanting to rob players wallets, citing how it’s priced based on its content and how the PAYDAY Franchise has always priced below that of other AAA games. He’s right. With the MSRP of Triple A games reaching the ballpark of $70 USD, a $40 USD game with less content isn’t unreasonable.
But this still doesn’t quell my concerns. Today’s gaming industry trends towards games as services and season passes instead of DLC. It fills me with a sense of dread that, at any point, PAYDAY 3 could swell into a game riddled with season passes, preying on FOMO for your money.
As of right now, I don’t think I can recommend PAYDAY 3, not to PC players at least. But for console players, those who got left behind in PAYDAY 2, PAYDAY 3 isn’t a bad shout. It’s riddled with errors, it lacks the features that people loved in PAYDAY 2, but it has potential. Let’s hope that Almir and those at Starbreeze and Overkill learn from the teething errors they currently have and implement the features that made PAYDAY 2 last as long as it has.