They say all the world's a stage, and the virtual worlds of gaming are no different. In fact, it abuses this to the utmost extent. In this series, I explored a few oddities within Payday 2's maps that never meet the eye for the average player.
Highlights/Other stuff that didn't get a video...
Day 1 of Firestarter
I struck a bit of gold with this one...
Hidden FBI agents on the roof of the small vantage point at the back entrance of the airfield.
Two Sniper spots at the control tower, as well as paths and navigation.
A helicopter that was supposed to drop off cops right at the starting area.
In addition, a few biker spawns.
The biker spawns are a big find. Bigger than you might think. With the FBI Agents placed just down the hill, one has to wonder if this was once intended to be an all-out war scenario. Bikers on one side, gangsters in the airfield, and cops assaulting everywhere else. Imagine that?
...that, or they could've simply been testing some things.
There's also some Sniper spots at the control tower. In fact, the whole tower is much more detailed than what meets the eye. Lots of path interconnectivity that the NPCs would do well in utilizing if... you know... they were a bit smarter with ranged engagement.
Also, I never really realized how much of an oddity the surrounding environment is. Its as if the whole area is supposed to be part of an absurdly colossal airport. There's lots of hangers and pathways that seem to be a mix of either roads or runways.
Not only that, we have another (more proper) airport way off in the distance, with low poly planes and all! Curious.
Bonus: A container(?) underneath the ground...
The landscape is utterly massive, and quite detailed for a heist where we spend most of the time inside a hanger, drilling open trucks. I've got a small feeling Overkill had a lot planned for this heist initially, or maybe the level designers got a bit too carried away? Regardless, this is a nice find.
Bank Heist
Another piece of gold, and for one of the most legendary maps in the game no less. Little did I think I'd find enough hidden content that could tell a whole story about how things might've been, but here we are.
A lot of unused spawns for gangsters are scattered around the map, as well as unused player spawns which are placed further back into the out-of-bounds area, implying the map was once even bigger than intended. As I theorized before, it's possible this was an alternate scenario for Day 3 of Firestarter. Gang members would've been assaulting the bank as soon as the players arrived; things would go loud immediately. Again, it's only a theory, but there's a lot going for it.
Day 1 of Hoxton Breakout
In the lobby of the first building you exit, there's a considerable amount of enemy spawns for security guards. These security guard models are only used on Big Bank, so spawning them here would crash the game. There's also some player spawns.
In one of the over-map scripting areas, there's some dev text in Swedish - roughly translating to "excuse roran - we are rebuilding". This is the only instance of dev text being in OVK's native language as far as I know.
No Mercy
In one of the endings, the heisters can escape via helicopter on the roof. The roof is (obviously) a loose reconstruction of Left 4 Dead's Mercy Hospital finale. The player doesn't exactly get to see much with the escape timer/ridiculous amount of air conditioners lying about, so here's a few other angles.
It's a pleasantly faithful recreation. Would've been cool if they did more with this.
The air conditioners themselves also have Valve's logo plastered on them.
Buluc's Mansion
Credits to "ChickenAndRice555" on (Allah forgive for uttering this word) reddit for finding this. A pyramid can be found way out of bounds.
