Den of Wolves Hands-On Preview – Diving Into Insanity
GDC came and went in San Francisco towards the latter half of March, with plenty of gaming-related news and upcoming titles to check out. Developer 10 Chambers, of GTFO fame, was in the area and invited MP1st to some first hands-on time with their upcoming cooperative first-person shooter, Den of Wolves.
Time to check out what this futuristic shooter has in store for us and how things have been shaping up since the game’s initial reveal.
Back on That Heist Shit
At Unity’s office in San Francisco, 10 Chambers had set up shop, just around the corner from where Unity was also hosting a Career Day. GDC is heavily focused on the development side of making games, after all, so the timing for such a day made sense. But we weren’t here to talk industry (though plenty of that happens anyway); we were here to play this hotly anticipated shooter from a standout developer.
Den of Wolves is a sci-fi, futuristic, first-person, heist-centered cooperative shooter. In the year 2097, AI has run amok and wrecked entire economies. Out of desperation, the world’s nations agree to let a group of corporations set up Midway City, an area where no laws would apply, in order to accelerate research and development to combat AI. While unethical, it is ultimately successful, as these corporations are able to take advantage of biological neural networks to create a new form of security that AI cannot breach. This saves the world’s economy and sets up Midway City as a major hub where any company that wants to make a name for itself wants to be.
A City Ripe for the Taking
Naturally, such an area is full of opportunity, especially for mercenaries for hire. You play as one of them, who we are told are not the “good guys,” if such a thing could exist on a lawless island, but then again, they’re also not really the “bad guys,” either. Simply someone hired to do a job. That job usually involves a lot of violence, theft, and sabotage, but so long as it pays well, what’s a little collateral damage amongst colleagues?
After a brief presentation explaining this and a bit more, we played a short skirmish level, which served as a way to get used to the controls before the main event. Once we cleared this intro level, we were ushered into a nearby cubicle. Not in the game, but in real life. There, a printed scale blueprint of our upcoming level was laid out on a table, along with some surveillance photos, printed out as if the in-game locations were taken by a reconnaissance team. We came up with a plan to go counter-clockwise, trying each vault in turn until we got enough loot to finish the level. This was an immersive way to get us ready to fight our way out of a vault.\
Execute the Plan
With a plan in mind, we headed back to our computers – beefy Windows machines, likely using some newer RTX GPUs complemented with an equally beefy CPU, RAM, etc. Things ran smoothly the whole time, and the Unity Engine impressed with detailed environments, excellent audio, and an overall level of polish most have come to expect from 10 Chambers. The mission we were playing was also cinematic – the area we saw felt lived-in, if not a bit trashed because a gang was currently holed up in one of the many skyscrapers dotting the landscape. These towering megastructures, according to 10 Chambers, are entire cities within a building. In this world, it’s not uncommon for some people to grow up and live solely within the tower, as it has every kind of facility, from schools to hospitals, parks, offices, and more. This sci-fi setting lets 10 Chambers create whatever they want, really, and it shows as they gleefully boasted that they have created over 600 fake in-universe brands. It sounds like 10 Chambers wishes to live and breathe this world for the foreseeable future.
Den of Wolves is a first-person shooter first and foremost, so control-wise, there isn’t much to be surprised by. You’ve got a loadout with a primary and secondary weapon, as well as a melee weapon, and you can take two gadgets: energy shields, turrets, and more. Much like in GTFO, it’ll behoove you to communicate with your teammates as you plan your heist, because while having a bunch of turrets might seem like a good idea at first, if no one also grabs a shield then you’ll have a hard time defending yourselves against each mission’s multiple dozens of enemies that the game likes to throw your way. Most of these enemies aren’t too tough on their own, but their sheer numbers can quickly overwhelm anyone who finds themself alone.
Trippy Diving
Up until now, Den of Wolves felt like a typical heist shooter, which, admittedly, is a niche genre. But then came “Dives.” Much like in GTFO, at certain points in the mission, all (currently alive) players must make it to a spot where a hacking device is attempting to get into the mind of a targeted individual. When it’s go time, everyone is advised to find cover because all action in the current mission will freeze in time while you’re all teleported to a Dive. This represents someone’s mind, and in the world of Den of Wolves, that means taking a break from all the mayhem to participate in some platforming. Jumps have a floaty feeling to them, and many walls can be walked on Inception-style. On a single mission, we went diving a handful of times. At first, I likened these sections to something like Mirror’s Edge on speed, but as each Dive increased in difficulty and trippiness, it reminded me of some of the light platforming available in Warframe. They were also very tightly timed – I finished one dive right behind a developer, and we had maybe three seconds left to complete it.
Once the dive was over, whether we had finished it or not, we were immediately teleported right back to our main mission, and play resumed exactly where we had left off. This transition was one of the coolest moments I’ve ever had in a shooter, ever. It feels like, finally, something truly fresh and new is happening in the first-person shooter space, and the best part is that you get to experience this with friends and family since it’s all in co-op.
Den of Wolves still has a while until a yet-to-be-announced release date – 10 Chambers simply says it’ll release “when it’s done.” But even at this stage of development, a lot of what 10 Chambers has learned from GTFO is evident here. Cinematic missions lead to some challenging fights, and a communicative team will help immensely. But the Dives feel like such a cool concept; it might turn out to be this game’s killer feature because the potential for it feels limitless.
Fans of the heist genre will want to keep a close eye on this one, as 10 Chambers leaves an impressive early impression that leaves us craving more. Even in pre-alpha, I can tell that Den of Wolves is already shaping up to be the game we’d expect to see from the creator of Payday.
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