The sequel to 2013's PAYDAY 2, PAYDAY 3 is a 2023 video game developed by Starbreeze Studios, and published by Deep Silver Studios. It continues the escapades of the PAYDAY Gang, after an extremely well-coordinated attack on both them and their bank accounts forces them to come out of retirement, moving from Washington, D.C. to New York City, where the crew, now upgraded with more modern technology, pull more heists in a changed world.
Gustavo Coutinho is set to provide the soundtrack to the game (following from Simon Viklund and Carl Noren respectively), and while Dallas, Hoxton, and Chains all retain their voice actors from PAYDAY 2 (Simon Kerr, Pete Gold, Damion Poitier), Wolf has been recast due to Ulf Andersson leaving Overkill Software, and is now voiced by Nicklas Berglund.
The engine has also been upgraded, going from the Diesel engine to Epic's Unreal Engine 4, and the developers want to upgrade that to Unreal Engine 5 later on down the line.
A gameplay trailer can be see here
, as well as other videos and dev diaries can be found on the PAYDAY YouTube channel. The game was released early on Windows via Steam and Epic Games Store on September 18th, 2023 for anybody who bought the Silver or Gold Editions, and released for everyone else on September 21st, 2023. It has full cross-platform play with Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.
An initial Technical Test ran via Xbox and Steam as a closed beta from 2nd - 7th August 2023, while a second test ran via Steam from 8th - 11th September 2023.
PAYDAY 3 provides examples of:
- Acceptable Breaks from Reality: As with the first two games, the police would absolutely not send wave after wave of cops to take down four crooks, especially if they were being cut down like blades of grass. They would definitely hesitate to take action if they had civilian hostages (not hesitate as in "delay the next assault by X minutes", more like "surround the building until they have a solid attack plan to save the hostages"). On the other hand, normal people can't take several hundred bullets to the chest and still keep going. Banks also do not have several hundred thousand dollars in cash, gold and other trinkets on hand, specifically because of the possibility of getting robbed.
- A.K.A.-47:
- The Taser units from 2 have been renamed to the "Zapper" units (as Tazer is trademarked).
- The weapon names keep their fake manufacturers from PAYDAY 2.
- And the Adventure Continues: After pulling off the final heist at launch, Touch The Sky, the PAYDAY gang successfully ruin Sharke's reputation, left Garnet to be sued for billions after the Wixia deal falls through, and re-secure their ill-gotten cash using quantum-level encryption. The plan now? Steal more valuables and money to put that encryption to the test. Meanwhile, Concord disposes of Sharke and Garnet and doesn't plan on stopping his conspiracy any time soon.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Despite the Rock the Cradle heist straight up telling you not to raise the alarm since the crypto wallet will be wiped, it won't actually end in failure if you screw up. While Shade will lament that they failed Vlad, the new objective will instead turn to robbing the place, allowing the player(s) to still benefit from this less-than-ideal outcome, albeit at a lower profit margin.
- Zapper units do not activate their electric stun immediately; their battery can be shot out and cause them to fall back.
- Bulldozers and Cloakers no longer show up in the first assault wave, giving the crew time to breathe before they start causing havoc.
- Taking a Human shield allows you to cut off and disable certain spawns, diverting the cops to other, more manageable places.
- Thanks to shield-piercing sniper rifles being only restricted to OVERKILL weapons as of launch, shields have a small slot that can be shot through by any weapon.
- The Random Event nature of the game, while still present, locks its random elements per lobby. This works for and against you however; it lets the player have a string of consistent, learnable events, even if you restart, so long as the lobby itself remains up, but the random events you get may also not be entirely beneficial (getting good escape van RNG, but bad fuse box placement RNG on "No Rest for the Wicked", for example). For comparison, in 2, map events were almost always random and was frequently criticized for it, especially in stealth, so this is a nice middle ground of Trial-and-Error Gameplay for players.
- It's like Stealth gameplay was designed with this trope in mind:
- In 2, most stealth elements relied on answering pagers, avoiding guards, and avoiding cameras. While the cameras and pagers are still present, the former can be hacked with a smartphone, while the latter can be answered while dragging the body out of sight.
- Very similar to the Hitman World of Assassination Trilogy, stealth has specific zones where players are allowed to be in; "Public areas" (civilians and players are not suspicious so long as you aren’t caught doing something illegal), "Private areas" (this will not out you by itself, but if spotted, you will be asked to follow a guard to go back to the nearest door to a public area), and "Secure areas" (which will incite a caught player in being cuffed and trigger a search), making it much more nuanced than before.
- With the Random Event changes to only randomize a level setup upon a total lobby restart, this now makes stealth gameplay significantly more consistent, avoiding the issue 2 had with stealth where restarting in any way reset the level setup, making for a frustrating chore of Trial-and-Error Gameplay. Stealth gameplay is now something that actually feels learnable and beatable in one session, rather than trying to piece together every possible random spot for a keycard to spawn, and adding what amounts to out-of-game homework.
- Artificial Stupidity:
- While the NPCs are usually competent at noticing suspicious activity, human shields are something they struggle with on stealth. To put it simply, you can run up to someone to use them as a shield and nobody will notice unless you do it right in their line of sight, even while the person exclaims in fear right next to them.
- As per the last game (with some exceptions), guards don't notice certain things when they would alert anybody in real life. The vault and panic room in Touch The Sky can suddenly be open and the Head Guard won't care. Similarly, they don't become suspicious of unmasked heisters carrying bags of stolen goods. Meaning that you're free to, say, walk in and out of the vault from the lobby in No Rest for the Wicked with money and nobody will bat an eyelid.
- While your bot teammates are mostly competent up to Very Hard, they suffer big time on Overkill, especially when you're playing solo. They're nowhere close to the bullet sponges they were in the previous game and they don't have any concept of cover or tactics, so expect them to get torn to shreds in mere seconds.
- The police are normally careful around hostages or human shields, resorting to either using their weaker weapons and grenades or trying to melee you in the case of the latter...unless the civilian happens to be in the way of the first responder patrol car or SWAT trucks driving in, then they'll run the civilians over and kill them without even blinking.
- Attack Its Weak Point:
- Shields can be shot through their visor, enabling a heister to headshot them from the front.
- Grenadiers grenade belts will detonated if shot at, killing them instantly and injuring anyone nearby.
- Zappers have a bright yellow pack on their hip - shooting it will cause an electric blast which stuns them and anyone nearby.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Any successful Heist done by you and the PAYDAY Gang counts as this, especially if done loud and/or if any civilians was shot.
- Badass Longcoat: Rather than suits, the default outfit for the heisters are overcoats.
- Bag of Spilling: Nothing from PAYDAY 2 is carried over to PAYDAY 3. Justified, as the Payday gang’s bank accounts were frozen, and they were forced to leave D.C in a hurry due to the threat of getting snuffed out by the conspiracy.
- Bottomless Magazines: Possible with a combo of Ammo Funnel (which adds picked-up ammo directly to the gun's magazine) and Replenish (which automatically picks up ammo dropped by killed cops). Both require gaining Edge to activate, but they can let you keep firing practically indefinitely as long as you keep scoring kills.
- Camera Spoofing: Players can once again cause security cameras to loop their footage and sneak by undetected. This time around, the camera loop is indefinite, but only a couple cameras can be looped at once per player. If the player loops a camera after their maximum, the oldest camera looping will end.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: If you try to use a human shield in a pinch to prevent a guard from setting off the alarm, it will work for a minute or two...until another guard somehow sees what you're doing through walls and set off the alarm anyways.
- Conspicuous Gloves: By default, the heisters are wearing blue surgical gloves alongside their attire regardless of the mission and situation. Obviously they’re to prevent leaving fingerprints, but when the heist go loud, the gloves stay on.
- Cool Mask: As ever, each heister brings a custom mask for heists.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
- Standard cops are clad in dark blue, whilst Hostage Rescue units are clad in white and sabotage teams wear black and gold.
- Hitmarkers are coloured white for bodyshots, yellow for headshots, and red for kills.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Whereas throwing a bag was mapped to G in the previous game, here, throwing bags is mapped to Q. In this game, G instead throws grenades (in the previous game, this was mapped to the 3 key). Cue players of PAYDAY 2 accidentally blowing themselves or civilians up when trying to throw down a bag, likely triggering the alarm or wasting cash that now gets deducted from the overall loot pool, not just yours.
- Delaying Action: When a heist goes loud and first responders arrive, there's a negotiation period where the player can release a specified amount of hostages to delay the Assault Phase by a few seconds. As soon as the timer runs out, the heist progresses to a certain point, or if the player does an aggressive action like shooting their unsilenced weapon, it's on. The only exception to this is the Road Rage heist, where the police skip the negotiation phase and go straight to Assault Phase after the truck stops.
- Developer's Foresight: In certain missions, Shade has alternate comments if you correctly enter a number code without completing the objective that would give in-universe knowledge of it, either by memorizing it after restarting or guessing based on the highlighted keys."Nothing like a little trial and error..."
- Elite Mook:
- Stealth has Lead Guards, which trigger an endlessly activating pager upon being killed, and who patrol much more frequently, and over a wide area. For instance, while the VIP showcase room on Dirty Ice doesn't normally have guards present so long as Search Mode isn't active, the Lead Guard will frequently patrol there. They will appear on the map if the "Lead Guard" Security Modifier is active, limiting their appearance to Very Hard and Overkill.
- Loud has Heavy SWAT, who boast much more armor than their standard SWAT members and start spawning near a heist's end, frequently alongside Bulldozers.
- Evil vs. Evil: What the game’s plot boils down to. Sure, you’re a gun toting maniac who robs banks and other such establishments, but the owners of said banks and establishments are massive scheming assholes who’ve decided to kick the hornets nest by screwing over the Payday Gang.
- Exploding Barrels: Most heists feature fire extinguishers which explode upon being shot. Heists in less urban areas (such as 99 Boxes, which take place in a shipment yard) will use standard exploding barrels instead.
- Faceless Mooks: All the SWAT units and Specialist enemies have their faces covered by helmets, and when those go flying off they still have balaclavas underneath.
- Figure It Out Yourself: A large part of Under The Surphaze involves finding the paintings Beckett's client is after in the Surphaze Art Gallery. The first, "Shooting Gallery Redux", is known to be in Room E1 - the rest must be found through either hacking the computer in the manager's office or searching the exhibition rooms.
- Foreshadowing: A secret in No Rest For The Wicked reveals Wixia to be developing components for quantum computing. Stealing said components is the primary objective of 99 Boxes.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: The story cutscenes show Pearl joining the PAYDAY gang after the No Rest For The Wicked heist. Nothing is stopping you from playing as her during said heist.
- The Ground Is Lava: In Under the Surphaze, some of the exhibition rooms will have alarm sensors installed, which will trigger the alarm if a heister touches the ground. They can be turned off by reaching and pulling a switch inside.
- Gun Accessories: Weapon modifications make a return with guns being able to be customized with sights, grips, suppressors, and even colors.
- Happy Ending Override: The game starts with the gang on the run, having had their bank accounts blocked, taking with them all the hard-earned money gained from previous games, forcing them to come back from retirement.
- Human Shield: The player can pickup civilians and guards to use as shields after intimidating them. This has the added benefit of giving the player control over where the unwilling hostage goes, albeit at a slower movement speed while doing so. You can even use them to stop the guards from activating the alarm, although there's a chance that another guard will inexplicably know what's going on through walls and set off the alarm anyways. Enemies also won't fire on you so long as you're looking at them and not aiming to shoot, but a couple will try to run up and melee you to get you to drop the hostage.
- Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: QR Codes will open any QR reader on the map, but will only work once.
- Laser Sight: Present and accounted for here, the snipers all have laser sights so the player can identify them from long range. The beams are also noticeably thicker too.
- Limit Break: Overkill Weapons are earned by finishing objectives and killing cops, and provide a highly advanced weapon of your choice when called in. Whilst ammo is limited, it can deal with cops with impunity.
- Lured into a Trap: Some maps have various lures you can interact with to bait the guards into investigating it, allowing you to deal with them in a more secluded location. Throwing a knife or ramming open a door also attracts their attention, allowing you to bait them to go anywhere, like the bathrooms in No Rest for the Wicked.
- Nerf:
- There are no armor-piercing or explosive normal weapons, and the guns that are are limited to being a bulky Overkill Weapon that can only be delivered once you've killed enough cops. To compensate, Shields are less durable, have a weak point that can be shot through, and generally aren't as bulky.
- Submachine guns can no longer be taken as secondary weapons, which matches with cops in general being harder to take down.
- Snipers don't instantly fire like they sometimes did in PAYDAY 2 and take a few seconds to aim their shot, allowing players to either hide behind cover or shoot them.
- No Fair Cheating:
- The game has a basic server-side anti-cheat to deter hackers from easily beating games, and will kick players who attempt to trying to glitch or cheat into the vaults or otherwise do things wildly out of order.
- Vents get locked down when a mission goes loud, and any players inside will be unceremoniously teleported back to the level proper .
- Non-Standard Game Over: Usually, the only way to lose a heist is if your entire crew goes down. In Road Rage, however, failing to complete the beginning objective within the time limit will result in the heist ending in failure, either due to the driver changing his route due to civilians sounding the alarm, or simply reversing out of the ambush since the EMP hasn't been activated.
- Not on the List: The VIP area in Rock The Cradle holding the crypto wallet is blocked off by two guards since you don't have passes, necessitating either a distraction or forging the passes. On Overkill, another set of guards will block you from entering the club in general since you're not on the list, requiring you to sneak around the place unlike lower difficulties.
- Old Save Bonus: Owning PAYDAY 2 and having certain achievements in that game gets you cosmetic items for PAYDAY 3.
- Revisiting the Roots: The base game brings things more in-line with the original Payday: The Heist and the early stages of Payday 2, with mostly realistic, non-gimmicky guns, masks, and the lack of a heavily-implied-to-be-supernatural conspiracy.
- Sentry Gun: These return from the previous game as deployable guns on tripods used by the player.
- Sequence Breaking: Since the heist RNG is on a per-lobby basis rather than being changed every restart, players have the ability to do this. You normally have to force an executive to grant access to the vault in No Rest For The Wicked and subsequently get the code from the manager's computer. If you mess up after you open the vault and restart, you can skip the executive and computer completely and just input the code. This can also be done in Touch The Sky, but there's a downside in that you won't be able to open up the panic room at all if you open the vault, forcing you to leave the loot there behind.
- Shout-Out: Has its own page.
- Simple Rescue Mechanic: Unlike previous games, hostages marked "rescued" by the HRT cannot be recaptured and are good as gone. You can't even kill them out of spite as they magically become impervious to all damage.
- Status Buff: Three in total, all of which last 20 seconds: Edge, which boosts damage by 10%, Grit, which cuts damage taken by 10%, and Rush, which boosts a heister's movement speed. You can take skills that take advantage of these buffs, some of which are practically mandatory on higher difficulties.
- Uncertain Doom: It's implied that the non-returning heisters have been killed by whoever's hunting the Payday gang - Joy notes she can't contact anyone else, and heavily implies the current crew had been ambushed right before the beginning of the game.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: You can invoke this with a couple skills in the Grifter tree. In Dirty Ice, you can lockpick a glass case in the lobby of the jewelry store right in front of everybody and nobody except for the guards and unlooped cameras will bat an eye at you stealing the goods so long as you have Rush active.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: It's a game about serial killing robbers, what did you expect?
- While shooting civilians is a no-go for anybody who cares about profits, you're free to melee them all you want since it won't kill them. In fact, meleeing them (if moving them via human shield isn't an option) can be preferable to shouting at them to get down, since shouting has a good chance of alerting anybody else in close proximity.
- Similarly, throwing civilians into oncoming traffic or from high heights is one of the very few ways to kill them without having to pay the cleaner. There's no benefit in doing so, but the option is there for a blood-hungry player.
- Video Game Cruelty Punishment:
- The cleaner costs have been ramped up from the previous game - instead of a flat fee being taken only from the heister that kills civilians, killing them here will cost everyone a percentage of the entire heist’s total profits, meaning even one civilian death is a substantial ding to your team's Payday, and killing too many will gut your profits extremely quickly. The costs persist even if you restart the heist.
- At one point during stealth in No Rest for the Wicked, you have to force one of the three executives hanging around the bank to authorize entry into the vault, assuming you don't know the code already. If you don't care about the money deduction, you're free to kill the first two, and Shade will scold you for making it harder get into the vault. Getting too trigger-happy and killing the third executive will force the gang to use thermite to break into the vault, which will automatically trigger the alarm, breaking stealth. Once entry is authorized, however, the third executive's fair game.
- Killing the manager in Dirty Ice will make it impossible to access the Multi-Tag Scanner in the jeweler's workshop, making you unable to turn regular jewelry bags into much more valuable clean jewelry. Like the executives in No Rest For The Wicked, Shade will scold you for killing her. As per usual, once the scanner is accessible, she's fair game.
- Like No Rest For The Wicked, killing Mason in Touch The Sky will make it impossible to access the panic room in stealth, forcing you to either go loud (since the drill is only available when the alarm goes off) or skip the panic room and brute-force the vault code via guesswork (which means you'll miss out on several loot items). Otherwise, he's fair game.
- Villain Protagonist: Once again, the PAYDAY Gang; A well armed group of thieves who steal and murder several times over for their own gain.
- You Don't Look Like You: Unlike PAYDAY 2, the face models do not appear to be based on their voice actors (where this was true for Dallas, Houston, Chains, and Wolf). While the new design for Chains bears some resemblance to Damion Poitier, it's a far cry from his likeness in the second game.
- You Have Researched Breathing: You have to max out the Grifter tree in order to be get the skill to break out of handcuffs on your own, something that you were able to do from the start without needing a perk in PAYDAY 2.
- Zerg Rush: Close to the end of a loud heist, the police will initiate a final assault, where they send an endless wave of cops at you until the heist is finished or they take you down. This also happens if the FBI van shows up, causing the assault wave to go on indefinitely unless you take out the antenna.
