Payday 3: I Play For The Plot
Intro
Welcome to my coverage of what's likely to be the last dev diary I deep dive into as the final episode is going out at launch, at which point I'll already be knee deep in cops. This one is all about sound and music, as well as a topic near and dear to my heart: the narrative and story, unfortunately.
Tldr
Oh , and I'm not making a dedicated article on the Payday 2 update that just launched, despite it being huge, as I'll instead be streaming my final days with Payday 2 this week. I can give my thoughts and opinions there, but the TLDR for update 240s is that it contains an absolute deluge of fixes and improvements to the game as a sort of farewell.
Just honing in on a few special enemy spawn caps will now be properly adhered to, meaning no more seven does a spawn. There is now a search box function within the inventory, allowing me to quickly find the weapons and cosmetics you're after, and they've doubled the number of profile loadouts you can hold.
This update feels like many of the best quality of life mods are being added to Vanilla Payday 2 all at once, meaning in my eyes it's an absolute winner, although I've yet to have the chance to properly test it out. That said, Payday 3 is the focus of this article, so let's dive into the eighth development diary.
Dev diary
It's such a shame the audio is a little off on this one, as it is by far the juiciest diary we've received. In my opinion, it outlines loads of story beats, character motivations, new storytelling systems, and Gustavo's approach to making music in Payday 3.
Bloody amazing the first thing we learn is that there will be ties to some old villains in the story. This could mean literally anything; it could be murky water returning; it could be Commissioner Garrett or hell even reference to the dentist, but I'm still struggling to work out how the narrative team is playing the true Payday 2 ending at this point, so this is all pure speculation.
What we have learned from Marcus Spade, A3 senior writer, is that the White House Heist happened, B, the gang retired straight after, and C, they stole the pardons.
Island retirement
Now that sounds a lot like the bad ending, if you ask me, yet they show footage of the secret ending of Island Retirement here, so I'm honestly clueless.
I wonder if this is the case of cross wires, to be honest, and if we might actually find out that both endings really were Canon after all, although I was quite happy for getting the pardons that ever existed. You know, something's a stretch when I find inserting Bane's consciousness into the president a more believable ending than Nicki a bunch of old pardons.
What is worth noting, though, is that if they decide to set payday 3 in a world where the secret never happened, that would mean the dentist is still alive, meaning the one and only Giancarlo could make a return, although theoretically he should be in someone else's body. Please don't quote me on that, though.
As far as the story goes, we do know for certain that it's the people the gang has hurt in the past funding this new assault on their lives and livelihoods that has dragged the crew back hours of retirement conspiring. To have them killed from the Lost Tapes in Payday 2, a spec will be seeing some familiar faces returning alongside a new overarching Nemesis, and it seems that a lot of the plot of the early game in Payday 3 is going to consist of working out exactly who this Nemesis is—our hoxton revenge.
Nemesis
Of course, this shadowy organization that aims to destroy the payday gang is well connected enough to freeze the cruise retirement funds, meaning they have good reason to start heisting again right from the bottom to earn it all back. For context, no rest for the wicked is almost certainly the canonical first heist of the game.
Safehouse
Of course, this means that payday 3 has more serious net times: Sumber, tone old, friends are missing and presumed dead, the crew has no bane to fall back on, and money is genuinely tight within the narrative. Just look at the dingy-looking safe house; they seem to be working out of humor. It has by no means disappeared but is more focused on how the heists interact with their world than ever before.
Of these safehouse screenshots, they don't seem to be isolated images; in fact, they appear to be narrative panels actually telling the story from within the game, which might be putting me out of a job. I've never been happier to be sacked, as this strikes me as a much more effective way to draw people into the lore of the series via cutscenes.
As you can see from the Full House menu, we have these icons with play buttons on them that appear to act as narrative preludes and ties between each host, which is also such a huge improvement in my eyes. I kind of love the art they're using for it; it seems we'll be getting far more character interactions from these setups are anything to go by with five of the entire roster together in one room for maybe the first time ever, and if you missed it, this is Shade's appearance in Payday 3. She's not going to be a faceless handler like Bane.
Characters
Watts has pulled off the characters, though. Is it going to be pivotal, and already you can see them addressing the joy-sized elephant in the room, emphasizing that she might be moving away from that point, counting gamer Persona that did so many people's heads in now she's five years older?
I personally would love to know how these guys have spent the past five years. I feel like that would be worth a four-hour article on its own, and it's interesting to see that their backstories might be hinted at. Via future DLC content as an aside, I think the voice work is just top-notch across the board.
Looting
Also, there's a lot of emphasis on how Looting Payday 3 plays into the overarching narrative, although that's going to leave me really scratching my head as to why Iced Tea wants us to go spelunking for sperm on 99 boxes. In all seriousness, whether or not you wear those and finally get your sperm bank heist, as I'm predicting we have it, it's good to see the planned variety of loot in the game play into the wider story.
We already know that we can find additional objectives on some heists that relate to others, such as Wixia Info and SCB referring to the transport containers on 99 boxes. This works incredibly well, and most of the dialogue I listened to was absolutely hilarious. What I would say, though, is that if this system works so well for NPCs, why don't we have a contextual version for our very own hostesses?
So far, I've heard of no organic interactions between the crew on a heist, which would add so much to their characters and relationships. The interaction wheel is a great addition for augmenting that, and passive conversations would be such a boon in my opinion.
