Starbreeze Studios has quite the challenge on its plate, because topping the thrills of The White House heist in Payday 2 leaves plenty of lore to dive into in Payday 3. You might be surprised to find there is a whole tapestry of story details to uncover, but a new developer diary reveals everything you need to know ahead of the Payday 3 release date.
“About five years has passed since the events of Payday 2, where the gang robbed The White House. After that, they went into retirement,” explains senior writer Markus Sköld. However, stealing such incredible amounts of money means trouble will come knocking on their door sooner or later. Sköld elaborates further that “in Payday 3, some of the people they’ve wronged in the past figure out the gang is very much alive and that they stole [presidential] pardons. In this universe, that sort of heists works.”
With no law enforcement after the Payday gang, these enemies “conspire” to have Dallas, Chains, Hoxton, and Wolf eliminated. Following contact from an “old associate”, the gang travels to New York City to begin a new round of heists to recover their assets and ultimately find out who wants them dead. Now that the Payday 3 roadmap is out in the open, we wonder whether this mystery will be resolved in the group of heists.
Could be it too far a stretch to assume the potential John Wick x Payday 3 crossover is part of it? Maybe, but anything is possible in the Payday universe. For those of you hopping into the Payday games for the first time, the aforementioned White House heist was far more than just stealing from one of the most secures placed in America.
The gonzo mission takes players underneath the premises, revealing a bizarre secret vault that culminates in defeating The Dentist – a Crime.net contractor played by Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito. You can view the entire ‘true’ ending to Payday 2 below, courtesy of ‘The Hell Assassin’.
“In Payday 3, we are going for a little bit more serious tone in the game. It’s still based very much around the ‘Hollywood Heist’ fantasy, you being a master criminal,” Sköld adds. We got a feel of the game’s action in our Payday 3 preview, which you can check out before Payday 3 early access begins.