Everything you need to know about Payday 2

Hey everybody, we are incredibly excited to say PAYDAY 2 is arriving on PS3 this month! We’ll be bringing the four-player co-op heisting you know and love from the original game, but bigger, bolder, and badder, with a slew of new features that really give you a chance to live out that robbery fantasy your way. Now before you go hitting that jewelry store without casing it at all, here’s a quick breakdown of everything you need to know about PAYDAY 2.

1. It’s a cooperative robbery fantasy starring you and your friends
PAYDAY 2 is a sequel to the successful PAYDAY: The Heist, a game first released on PSN and PC in 2011. Both games are first-person cooperative shooters, first and foremost. Both games share the same high-intensity “be a bank robber” concept but PAYDAY 2 really builds on the robbery experience we pioneered in the first game and takes it to a whole other level. Our goal was to make players feel as though they can pull off the perfect heist. To make them feel like DeNiro in Heat, or Vinnie Jones in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, or even Jesse Pinkman doing a cook in Breaking Bad – to live out the dream of a successful life in crime.

2. Cash is king
Any good robber knows it’s all about the money. PAYDAY 2 adds a robust economy that pays you for each completed job. Money is used for everything, whether it’s paying for skill training, crafting that new weapon mod or customizing your Cthulhu mask with an OVERKILL logo. And if you get sloppy with your bullets… that cleanup is going to cost you too…

3. It’s an RPG now
Well… not in the sense that you’re clicking through dialogue trees or watching cut scenes, and there’s nobody named Cloud… but PAYDAY 2 definitely lets you create your own criminal and make the type of robber you want so you can play the role you choose.

There are four different skillset archetypes, each with 36 different skills and specific gear, which can be mixed and matched as the player likes: Mastermind, Enforcer, Ghost, and Technician. Each archetype has a different set of strengths and abilities, and if a player wants to be a stealthy guy who likes to occasionally carry a saw and be lethal with a silenced shotgun he or she just needs to level up enough to spec the appropriate Ghost and Enforcer skills. Don’t forget that Portable Saw.

But the RPG comparisons don’t stop there. Completing a job means you get a Payday, when you get a random chance of cash, masks, mask parts, or weapon modifications, all of which can be used to customize your robber’s appearance and effectiveness. With 15 million variations to start – gun nuts and mask-lovers have a lot to look forward to.

4. More missions, more dynamics
In PAYDAY 2 there are five times as many scenarios as there were on Payday: The Heist, served up by the new Crime.Net, our dynamic mission delivery system. Crime.Net is the mission hub where players can choose a broad range of mission difficulties, each paying commensurately more XP and loot as the risk increases.

The missions themselves are insanely dynamic and randomised, so everything from the placement of cameras to civilian numbers to vault placement and contents and even where the getaway car arrives (or if it’s a car at all!) is random, adding a ton of replayability.

We even have multi-day jobs now so we can change maps while on a big heist, or even interrupt them dynamically with a completely new map (called an escape) if things go really, really wrong on a heist. Best be careful. You don’t want to end up bleeding out and upside down in your vehicle defending your loot when you are supposed to be sipping cocktails in the safehouse.

5. The Safehouse
Want to go somewhere safe and practice your lock picking without being shot in the face? Or admire your fat stacks in your very own bank vault? Or test-fire some of your newly crafted weapon mods? Head over to your safe house where all this (and more) is available for you.

6. The perfect heist is now possible
PAYDAY 2 adds stealth. The great majority of missions can be completed without setting off alarms and in many cases, without even firing a shot. You can jam the alarm, pick a lock, silently set up a drill, knock out a guard, turn off his pager with a “just a weapons malfunction” whisper, get that vault open, grab the loot, and go on your merry way. It ain’t easy but then a perfect crime shouldn’t be, right?

7. Simon Viklund: Redux
Our audio director, Simon Viklund of Bionic Commando/Payday: The Heist fame also did the PAYDAY 2 soundtrack – and voice-acted Bain. Check out his stellar work here.