PAYDAY 3

Robbing a bank without a plan is as hard as it sounds

- Tyler Wilde

In Payday’s world, SWAT teams respond instantaneously to blown heist attempts. They pile into banks and museums with licence to shoot on sight, and then they pile up in hallways as you and your team of super-thieves gun them down while shuttling riches into a getaway vehicle. You can play Payday 3 like that, but I prefer the harder stealth approach, and my team and I came so close to pulling it off before I blew it.

Payday 3 doesn’t stray far from the decade-old Payday 2. The co-op levels I previewed saw me and three heist-mates case a building, find a way in (front door, guns out is an option), and then complete a series of semirandomised tasks to locate and remove its valuables. In Secure Capital Bank, the loud way into the vault involves collecting bags of thermite from the roof and burning a hole through the second floor. The quiet method is much more complicated, and includes the classic heist movie move of sticking a bank executive’s face into a retinal scanner. That was the last thing I did before everything went sideways.

My team of thieves was made up of Payday novices, including me, and one Starbreeze developer who patiently tried to show us Payday 3’s deeper stealth system. Two stealth attempts ended because another player accidentally threw a grenade, one of the loudest things a person can accidentally do. One ended because a civilian spotted us climbing a fire escape and called the cops. Twice in a museum level I crossed a laser beam while trying to turn off the security system. And one time a guard caught me trying to pick a lock in the lobby of the bank and cuffed me.