Payday 3 reveals two new characters and a year of post-launch DLC

Criminals Pearl and Joy put on their masks in Payday 3

Payday 3 is rapidly approaching its September 21 launch date and Starbreeze has revealed two new characters joining the team for the delightful heists to come. They've also announced their roadmap for the first entire year of DLC, focusing on the four expansions that will comprise the Year 1 - The Bad Apple releases. These being the ones you get some of or all of for the more expensive Silver and Gold versions of the game.

Besides the DLCs Payday 3 will have releases of seasonal events, playable characters, new enemy weapons, an upgrade to Unreal Engine 5, cosmetics to wear, and the general updates to quality of life you'd expect from an always-online game. It'll also gain nebulous "new features."

For now all we really know are some themes for releases, as names are "yet to be fully determined." Winter 2023 will see Syntax Error, Spring 2024 Boys in Blue, Summer 2024 Land of the Free, and Fall 2024 Fear and Greed.

Pearl and Joy are also coming to Payday 3 as new characters to play, with a new trailer introducing them to the world. "Joy makes a return to PAYDAY as the groups' hacker, while Pearl brings a new flair of magnificence to the team," says Starbreeze. The trailer shows them doing the normal Payday stuff, including a sequence of Joy doing some nebulous hacker stuff and Pearl escaping a heist via zipline.

We had hands-on time with Payday 3's newer, longer pre-shooting sections earlier this summer and found that everything has a tendency to go really, really wrong. Payday 3 has also been hosting a series of technical tests recently.

Payday 3 Year 1 Roadmap

You can read the full year 1 roadmap for Payday 3 on Steam, where you can peruse its various editions. You can also pre-order it on the Microsoft and Epic stores.