Payday 3 is all about embracing the unexpected

polygon.com:

My first 20 minutes with a preview build of Payday 3 at Gamescom were a comforting microcosm of the series at large. As per usual, I spent way too long prepping my character build, and after designing a gaudy metal mask glazed like a purple donut, I dilly-dallied my way through Payday 3’s toy box of targeted skill trees, min-maxing the coolest heist abilities, and feeling deep satisfaction in the process.

Way back in the day (when Payday 2 had only four skill trees), I was the Mastermind of my group, the guy responsible for tagging threats and barking at all the customers-turned-hostages in the bank. As such, I tended to skew toward a stealthy approach, and here I was, 10 years later, intentionally diverging from the muscly setup the demo build had given me so that I could experience just how much Payday 3 has altered the formula.

After a startling introduction from noted Payday fan Ice-T, my teammates and I booted into the Port Jersey heist, and I was ready to make my team proud with some wily sneaking. The objective was to determine which shipping containers in the yard contained valuable quantum processors. The catch? The processors start degrading when we remove them from their cooling stations, adding pressure to our escape. My mind was racing with ideas, but before I could suggest a plan or even tag a single security camera, I heard the familiar sound of gunfire, and my custom criminal begrudgingly pulled his daft donut mask on. My teammates were going loud, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. (At launch, you can set lobbies to private or friends only.)

Thankfully, Payday 3 is a far more malleable game than its predecessors, in which this plot twist would have been extra annoying. Even though I was