What we have right now is really strong stuff. The challenge-based progression system is completely gone, now with a straightforward and well-balanced heist-based progression system. You can just play the game the way you want to and progress. Simple.
One of the biggest issues at launch was the extreme reliance on armour bags all the time, and I’m happy to say that that has been resolved too! Granted, the original armour system is still there, but playing that particular game of resource management is no longer the only option. We have the Adaptive Armour, which doesn’t offer as much protection but DOES fully regenerate if you take cover before one of your armour bars completely breaks – I personally play with this and have a build focused around playing aggressively and being able to repair my armour in the heat of combat, AND IT’S ACTUALLY VIABLE WHILE STILL BEING A FUN LEVEL OF CHALLENGING TO MAINTAIN. And we’ve also got the Adrenaline feature – a secondary bar of temporary health gained by ‘overhealing’, with its own skill line based around managing that resource instead of focusing on your armour. And in the case of both armour and health, the game is now much more generous with those resources and gives you other means of generating them than bringing your own bags.
And because there are now other viable options for survivability, it means that now you DO see more diversity in teams’ loadouts, equipment, and builds, rather than just everyone bringing armour bags. It feels like a much more open-ended experience now, closer to how Payday 2 did, and that is very much helped by the new skill lines and reworks.
At launch, I felt the skill lines all felt rather samey, like none of them really pushed me to play in a particular way or look for synergies to reap the benefits of what I’ve specced into, like how you’d build your loadout around high concealment in order to get the most out of a dodge build in Payday 2. But we have that now. The new Assassin skill line is a really interesting one that rewards you for killing marked enemies with silenced weapons and includes a skill that allows you to mark enemies by using throwables, so what I often see is people taking that and using smoke grenades to lay down a trap and mow through a group, and that in turn can synergize with an adrenaline build because one of the assassin skills allows you to heal off of doing that if you’ve got no armour. We’ve got variety, we’ve synergies, we’ve got a toolbox with some real spicy stuff to play with now.

I’d say the heist itself is tied with Road Rage for the best one in the game. It’s another short-ish one but it doesn’t feel bare bones. In loud, three of the main objectives are timers, sure, but they’re not super long timers and the map layout means that you don’t need to be sitting on top of the objective to protect it – when you’re trying to breach the vault with the tow truck, there are multiple defensive positions both inside the station and out that give you a clear line of sight to stop any cops from messing with it. The heist is built for you to be able to run almost all of the objectives in parallel, rather than series; while the tow truck is running you can also start hacking a computer, then let both of those do their thing while you search for loot and keys.
Starbreeze have said that they wanted Payday 3 to be about coordinating with your team to try and quickly and efficiently pull off a heist before you run out of resources – the focus is on the blitz play more than the wars of attrition that 2 was known for. How you feel about that focus is up for you to decide, but I will say this: With Boys in Blue, they did a smegging fantastic job following through on that vision. A good comparison is the Hostile Takeover heist from Payday 2. If Starbreeze can stay the course and keep on nailing that vision like this when Land of the Free and Fear and Greed then they could really bring it back.

Let’s be real, the game industry really sucks right now. Any time a game scores less than 8/10, some damn suit decides to just lay everyone off and scrap the studio. Especially Volition and Embracer. Just two weeks ago we had the closing down of Pieces Interactive by Embracer after the Alone in the Dark reboot failed to immediately make a morbillion dollars. Sure, EA have been pulling that crap for ages, but it’s gotten so much worse since 2023.
Starbreeze made a lot of bad calls and failed to heed warnings, absolutely. The initial failure of Payday 3 was their fault. But the difference is they’re owning their mistakes. They’re putting the effort in to earn people’s trust back. They’re listening now, and they’re working on making things right, even if there’s still a long road ahead. They’re trying to do better, and I want to see them succeed, because I’ve seen far too many games get abandoned like Mass Effect Andromeda did. If more studios and publishers were as willing to grow as Starbreeze are, then the industry would be a better place.
Their attitude is why I’ve stayed faithful to Overkill/Starbreeze for a decade now. And as long as they keep that attitude I’ll keep rooting for them no matter how bumpy the road gets.