Den of Wolves is going to make co-op easier than it was in some of 10 Chambers' previous games, like GTFO, which has friendly fire or Payday 2, which simply gives players too many ways to complete an objective. It'll be so easy, in fact, that you won't even have to talk to your teammates.
"We really looked at how we can make a game where it's easy to play with other people, regardless of language barriers, skill differences, or whatever it may be," 10 Chambers co-founder Simon Viklund tells PC Gamer. "Even if you don't want to talk, or you're socially awkward, or you don't have a mic, or you have a kid sleeping in the same room and you don't want to wake them up, whatever the reason is, you should be able to do that in a way that you would never be able to do in GTFO."
Instead of having to rely on voice chat to convey important information, players will be able to ping enemies, which they think the rest of the team should be aware of, use voicelines to ask for help, or just keep an eye out for the objectives that run in the top left corner if you get confused as to what you should do.
All of this makes it easier to play with friends but also to play with randoms. "You can just use the voice commands that are available, you know, 'Help me out', or 'Focus on this heavy' or whatever it might be," Viklund says. "The tagging enemies and stuff like that. It makes it super easy just to get along."
I personally quite like the idea of not having to chat with randoms online while completing objectives. I get that discussing plans and dealing with issues together can be fun, but it also tends to be pretty draining. Instead, Den of Wolves was a lot more relaxed when it came to organising players into roles, and the tagging system and objective markers meant that everyone in my team just kind of fell into our different roles. While I dealt with the spider drills and breaking into vaults, there was someone to keep track of the loot, and a couple of players to keep watch and defend us from incoming enemies. All in all, co-op in Den of Wolves seems like a relaxing and straightforward task, meaning that you really get to focus on what actually matters, getting as many loot bags as possible.
