Payday 3 offers more stealthy and nuanced heists so naturally I left piles of bodies in my wake

It seems fitting that my hour-long hands-on with Payday 3 matched my memories of playing Payday 2: chaos, screaming, and an endless hail of bullets from hordes of cops apparently coming out of the walls. The road to this self-made hell was paved with all the best intentions of stealth but, with a random team of press all taking their first baby steps on new maps, a massively armed response was rarely further away than harmlessly wondering, 'can I do this without setting off the ala… No. Sorry, that was me'. Chaos, screaming, bullets.

All the shooting was fun though, don't get me wrong. Those 'trapped in the bank by gunfire, trying to work out how to escape' moments feel instantly familiar if you played the previous games. It's just that with all the talk of expanded 'mask off' and stealth gameplay letting you case the joint, prepare, and perform more of the heist before the shooting, was something I really wanted to see more of.

One last job. Again.  

The set up for Payday's threequel return is simple – the bank robbing gang had retired but, having upset too many people with their career, someone is out to get them. Now, with all their bank accounts emptied and their lives in danger it's back to a life of crime to find out who's after them and build their cash reserves back up. 

That largely sets things up for a return for the series, but 10 years on from the last game and the art of the heist has evolved, leading to a few changes to what you can do. Things like the 'mask off' gameplay I mentioned. If you're new to the series then you always start outside your target location without your mask on, essentially undercover to get in position and prepare. When anyone then masks up it instantly starts the heist – the promise here is that you can now do much more before that happens. You can survey the map to locate guards, crucial intel and items, pick locks and get into secure areas and so on.

That is assuming you can coordinate it long enough to get anywhere without raising an alarm. The best my team of randoms managed mask-less was  getting inside an art gallery courtyard without a bell ringing. While we didn't get much further than that, I did at least get a feel for the more nuanced heisting with guards diligently escorting you out the first time they find you anywhere you shouldn't be. Push your luck and they eventually arrest you and enter into a heightened search state, looking for other troublemakers. This is all without triggering the heist fully and at this point you can still rescue people and get out without an alarm. 

So the potential is there to oversee a largely bloodless heist. Or at least a less bloody one than my experience of climbing over SWAT team bodies piled high in doorways. Even when all hell has very firmly broken loose, there's still other ways to do things other than just  shooting, like taking hostages and negotiating with the police.

Stick to the plan

I tried two heists in total, one was classic Payday fodder – storming a small bank in the new New York location and stripping the place clean. That involved a few stages including retrieving thermite to burn through the vault roof, coordinating grabbing the money to deactivate dye packs rigged for synchronised detonation, and disabling traffic bollards to bring the escape van in.

It's a fairly small map and well suited for the absolute chaos that so easily breaks out. Most of my time was spent holding back repeated police assault waves while waiting for the thermite to do its job. Then, once the dye packs were dealt with and the money liberated, there was a small street-to-street fight to break through roadblocks and get to the van. It's a tightly-focused battle overall, with confined shootouts and little space to manage as you wait for various stages to complete before shooting your way out. 

The other mission involved attempting to liberate some paintings from a large art gallery. Full of wider, more open spaces and numerous entry points, there was so much more potential here for more stealthy approaches that we tried a few times but always failed. There were several gates to lockpick open that got you into a courtyard loosely watched over by guards and easy to dodge cameras, for example. There were also some basic  locked doors that alluded to another new trick – the ability to identify guards with keys and cards that could get you access. There was even a climbing route to the roof. Although some of the new traversal moves this uses can only be accessed with your mask on, meaning you'd be unlikely to pull it off cleanly unless you could guarantee no one was around. 

While we never managed to stealthily raid the gallery, we did complete the robbery a few times getting the feel of a lengthier heist flow. Step one always involved breaking into the manager's office to find the painting locations on his computer, but after that there were a few variations to keep us on our toes. Some paintings needed to be identified with blacklights, others needed a USB stick to remove them from their casings, while another involved standing in specific places to lower security bars. 

Ahead of the game

The final release will see even more ways to keep heists interesting, with developer Starbreeze promising weekly 'private security firm modifiers '. These are basically variations that will force you to change up your approach, with things like indestructible cameras being mentioned as an example. And, while the game can change things up as you play, so can you with 100-odd skills to unlock and use to build your characters.

During my presentation, Starbreeze showed off a lot of stats about how much money Payday 2 has made and how well it's done in the last decade. It's not a design you want to throw out and do over, and Payday 3 is ticking all the right boxes in terms of recreating the same basic experience with modern enhancements. From gameplay modifiers to deeper heist options, broader character development and more. And, just as important given the previous game's long running success, this new instalment has already locked in 18 months-worth of post launch content including new heists, characters and weapons. The change to the Unreal engine will also apparently make it easier to change and update things like skills or challenges more dynamically according to player behaviour and feedback. 

Payday 3 seems to be evolving its formula rather than reinventing it, which is ideal considering how tight the core loop has always been for the series. While I pulled off some terrible heists in the brief hour I had (so much blood and screaming), I can see how it's all supposed to work when you have time to plan it all out and a team you can trust. Considering all that, then, it looks promising enough to pull me back in for one last job when it releases September 21.