It’s crazy to think that Payday: The Heist released over ten years ago at this point. I remember having so much playing the game on launch on my PS3 back in 2011. Admittedly, it was very much an unrefined game back then, but I had a gut feeling that Payday had a lot of potential. My suspicions were confirmed when Payday 2 released in 2013, which was a vast improvement on its predecessor. Payday 2 experienced a plethora of success, releasing countless new playable characters, weapons, and heists, while even collaborating with big-name franchises such as John Wick and Scarface. Now over ten years since Payday 2 launched, Payday 3 has finally been released – but does it live up to the hype? Unfortunately, that’s a tough question to answer.
Let’s start at the top. Much like its predecessors, Payday 3 is a cooperative heist game, placing teams of up to four players in a series of missions that, while all varied in scope and location, have the same end goal in mind: stealing as many valuables as you can. There are eight playable heists in Payday 3 at launch, ranging from traditional bank robberies to plundering cryptocurrency from a nightclub. All but one of these heists has multiple routes of success, allowing players to either attempt to sneak around undetected or to simply go in guns blazing. These stealth and combat routes each have different objectives to chase, making repeat playthroughs all the more enjoyable.
As expected from a sequel long in the making, the core gameplay loops in Payday 3 have been vastly improved. Gunplay feels smoother than ever, and the addition of snappy movement options like sliding make combat more engaging as a whole. Stealth has been vastly overhauled, with players gaining new options like pickpocketing guards for key items or using environmental distractions to lure enemies away. NPC detection mechanics are now far more forgiving, and guards that catch players snooping around in private areas will now calmly escort them outside instead of instantly pulling out their guns. Coordinated parties can take advantage of these escorts, with three heisters able to sneak past a choke point while one player acts as a decoy to lure the guard away.Mission objectives are also far more clear than they were in previous games, meaning heisters won’t have to spend nearly as much time running buildings looking for key items. While Payday 3 still has a good amount of mission objectives that don’t have in-game markers to directly guide, the in-game handler will constantly offer hints to help new heisters make some progress.
Much like its predecessor, Payday 3 offers plenty of customization options to allow players to create their own unique heister. The game offers six playable characters at launch, and the developers at Starbreeze Software have already confirmed that more heisters will be added as post-launch content. Anyone who’s familiar with the Payday franchise knows how important the heisters’ masks are to the game’s identity, and Payday 3 is no exception. Players can purchase a variety of masks in the in-game store, all of which can be bought using cash stolen from the game’s many heists. After they finish shopping at the game’s store, players can further customize the color and pattern of both the masks they wear and the guns they wield. Combined with a variety of purchasable outfits and gloves, there’s a good variety of customization options already available in the game. That being said, more is always better, and I hope Starbreeze continues to offer more masks and outfits for in-game currency to encourage experimentation.
It’s hard to discuss the good features of Payday 3 without acknowledging the game’s now-infamous server issues. When Payday 3 first launched on September 21st, I was able to play a few heists with no connection problems, but as more players hopped on, a number of server issues emerged that made the game all but unplayable. This could be forgiven if this only occurred for a few hours on the game’s launch, but for the first few days, Payday 3 proved to be largely inaccessible for the millions of players who purchased the game. At best, the servers were spotty, allowing for the occasional match or two before the game crashed entirely. To make matters worse, Payday 3 is an online-only title, requiring players to matchmake into a lobby even for solo runs. These problems were so intense that it took roughly a week and a half of downtime and fixes until Starbreeze Studios finally felt confident enough to inform investors that the server issues had been addressed. As of this review’s publication, the servers seem far more secure, but questions over the stability of always-online games will no doubt weigh on Payday 3 players for quite some time.
Adding to some of the woes Payday 3 faces is the game’s baffling progression system. Instead of leveling up through completing heists, experience in Payday 3 is completely locked behind a challenge system. The challenges, ranging from killing specific enemies to completing heists without alerting the police, do reward a good amount of experience upon completion, but the clumsy execution leaves a lot to be desired. Unless players search through the clunky challenge menu and aim to accomplish specific goals, completing heists becomes a total toss up – sometimes you’ll level up three times from one successful heist, and other times you will get no experience at all. Due to the negative player feedback, Starbreeze has already said that they will be making changes to the challenge system, but concerns remain over why the developers decided to release Payday 3 with such a weak progression path to begin with.
Despite the rocky progression system, players do at least unlock a number of rewards from leveling up. Players will unlock new weapons to experiment with, alongside a variety of customization options, including masks, outfits, gloves, and new paint jobs. Rounding out the progression system is Payday’s skill tree, which allows players to choose a variety of perks to fill different niches on heists. Some perks will simply make your character more resilient in gunfights, while other perks aid in hostage management, healing your teammates, or even hacking into security cameras.Players start with only a few skill points and will gradually unlock more until reaching a total of 21 points, which can be invested in 17 different skill trees, offering a great amount of variety of options for character builds. That being said, I found that Payday 3 wasn’t necessarily clear when I’d unlock another skill point – I mostly had to keep checking my skill tree to see if I had finally earned another point.
I’m not entirely sure if anyone plays a Payday game for the story, but I sincerely doubt the story of Payday 3 will change anyone’s mind. Story cutscenes for Payday 3 are contained in paper-thin slide show presentations that players can opt to view between heists. None of these slide shows are particularly interesting, but at least Starbreeze allows players to skip these scenes entirely and simply enjoy Payday 3 for the heists. While the story is borderline nonexistent, the voice acting for the game’s six heisters and their handler are all very well done. The cast is charming and witty, and among them, Damion Poiter’s return as Chains and Rebecca LeChance’s portrayal of newcomer Pearl stand out as some of the game’s best performances. Rounding out the audio for Payday 3 is an exceptional soundtrack composed by Gustavo Coutinho, who skillfully manages to elevate the game’s tension through some truly terrific beats.
For live-service multiplayer games, a robust content cycle is necessary in order to retain player engagement. Broadly speaking, Payday 3 has a good amount of content available at launch. As of publication, Payday 3 offers eight heists, all of which are quite fun and offer a good deal of replay value. The game also has a strong base of customization options available, with six playable heisters to choose from along with a variety of masks, outfits, colors, and patterns for further personalization. While the vault of customization options should be enough to satiate players for now, the same can’t really be said for the weapon variety. Payday 3’s armory currently includes eleven primary weapons and six secondary weapons, a modest assortment at best. Even more disappointing are the lack of options for the game’s new Overkill weapons, which are extra weapons dropped to players mid-mission after completing objectives and/or killing enough enemies. These are a very cool option to escape sticky situations, Payday 3 unfortunately only launched with two Overkill weapons to choose from, limiting build creativity. While the weapon options are not exactly inspiring, Starbreeze has already confirmed that more content will be released this year, with a paid expansion coming in Winter 2023, though I am curious how much upcoming content will be locked behind paywalls.
All in all, Payday 3 is best described as a decent start with plenty of potential. Starbreeze did an excellent job improving many of the core gameplay mechanics, with stealth and gunplay both feeling more refined than ever. The laudable gameplay improvements are unfortunately muddled due to the poor first impression made by the matchmaking servers, along with a lack of offline options. While the matchmaking issues have seemingly been resolved, it will likely take much more time to alleviate the game’s controversial progression system.Time spent fixing servers and account progression is crucial and should certainly be prioritized, but I cannot help but wonder if all of the backtracking Starbreeze will have to do will result in additional content being delayed. Payday 3 launched with a great variety of character customization and a decent assortment of weapons, but more content will be essential for retaining player engagement. Given that Payday 3 already costs $40, I certainly hope that additional content will be added either for free or for a reasonable price. While we can only speculate on how Payday 3 will remedy some of its’ core flaws, the well-executed gameplay updates should be enough to keep money in the bank.