Cops and robbers stories have entertained audiences across generations, and video games are certainly no different. Much in the same way that lovable criminals like the Toretto gang of The Fast and the Furious will always capture the hearts of moviegoers, gamers also love the wish-fulfillment of playing a “bad guy” — look no further than the success of the Grand Theft Auto series. Who amongst us hasn’t wondered what it would look like to pull off a flawless bank heist and get away scot-free?
The latter is also the premise of the Payday franchise, a series of some of the most underrated and inventive first-person shooters of the 2010s. The games revolve around a highly-skilled group of criminals known as the Payday gang as they complete missions such as bank robberies, armored car robberies, and drug trafficking runs. The mechanics, introduced in 2011’s Payday: The Heist before they were refined in 2013’s Payday 2, give the player the freedom to choose between a stealthy approach or an incredibly loud one involving taking hostages and engaging in firefights with authorities. It’s Michael Mann’s Heat in video game form, and now the franchise is about to go from being inspired by cinema to becoming a television property of its own — with some help from a musician turned TV mogul.
