Helldivers 2

Arrowhead

God I love Helldivers 2.

In the game’s latest “story” development, players have begun reporting seeing flying Terminids on some battlefields, something that Terminids are…not supposed to be able to do. They appear to be associated with a rare objective called “Shrieker Lair”

Here’s some footage of what those actually look like as they appear and dive bomb you:

Naturally, this is all part of the “narrative,” and Helldivers 2 CEO Johan Pilestedt continues to play along with the meta nature of all this, denying the existence of the flying Terminids:

This is, of course, something that was broadcast ahead of time by official Helldivers art which previously showed the flying creatures in the background. Something that Pilestedt says is “image manipulation by traitors.” I love him.

Helldivers 2 does not have a traditional story campaign in really any sense outside of “spread democracy and protect Super Earth,” but the narrative is all taking place through the concept of the game itself. As Arrowhead builds out new additions to the game, they are usually added with a story component. Mechs were just unlocked for everyone after players liberated a mech-building planet. Now, these flying Terminids emerge after a new bug pesticide campaign begins, and they will almost certainly appear in larger numbers soon. In real life, the developers play along, the CEO plays along, the players play along. It’s very fun.

This is only going to get even more and more interesting, I’d wager. At some point Helldivers 2 is going to be adding a third enemy faction which will no doubt be a massive, world-expanding event played out in the narrative of the game. Reportedly a lot of these developments are controlled by a literal Game Master named Joel who guides the larger galactic war. And now Joel has unleashed the flying Terminids, it seems.

The fun part about all this is that you really do not know what happens next in any given week. Sure, there’s some amount of datamining and such, but even then, you won’t know how the addition of something new will be woven into the story, and the game is able to continually surprise everyone by being unpredictable, lacking something like a traditional roadmap for new content, and it’s part of why the game has kept everyone so engaged for weeks now. How long can they keep this up? Who knows, but for now, it continues to be fantastic.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.