Summary

Helldivers 2has been moving at a surprisingly slow pace for the last few weeks. Usually there are several Major Orders a week as players power through them, but we’ve only seen two this month. This is likely because of the PSN controversy and ensuing fallout, the consequences of which I’ll get into soon. But first, let’s talk about the story developments.

Enemies On All Sides

Though we managed to mitigate some damage by completing Operation: Umlaut Firebreak and deactivating the TCS on several planets, the Meridia Supercolony continues to be overrun by Terminid spores. These spores have spread to other planets, including Heeth, Angel’s Venture, Veld, and Acamar 4. All of these outbreaks needed to be contained, but we were only successful in liberating three of those planets – this, unfortunately, wasn’t enough, and the infestation persisted, with citizens on nearby planets needing to evacuate.

Soon after, we were assigned Operation Metallic Harvest. This is a followup to Operation Legitimate Undertaking, in which we liberated one of two planets in order to unlock one of two stratagems – we are now, perhaps too quickly, being given an opportunity to unlock the Anti-Tank Mines. All we have to do is kill two billion Automatons in order to scrape together the resources necessary to construct them. Two billion is a big number that might sound daunting, but we’ve done this before – we killed two billion bugs in under a day in Operation Organic Harvest.

Then again, that turned out to be because of a glitch that recorded more kills than were actually made, so it’s definitely going to be harder than it was that time. Buckle up!

The Delisting Persists

While it’s already been a week sinceSonyretracted its ill-conceived policy requiring Helldivers 2 players to connect theirSteamaccounts to PSN, we’re still dealing with the fallout from the immense backlash. The player-instigated push to reverse the effects of the game’s review bombing on Steam after the policy was removed, while well-intentioned, hasn’t been entirely successful in bringing the rating back to what it was before.

Arrowhead will soon be addinga cape alluding to the review bombingto the game.

Part of this can be explained by the fact that people are much more willing to jump on a hate bandwagon than they are to reverse their actions, which should have been expected. But some of those who have left negative reviews have made it very clear that they intend to keep their reviews negative until Helldivers 2 is made available inallcountries again, which it has not yet been.

In fact,while Sony was pulling Ghost of Tsushima from Steam in countries where PSN is not supported, it apparently noticed that there were an additional three countries where Helldivers 2 isn’t supposed to be available: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. It delisted the game in those countries too.

While there’s no longer any reason for Helldivers 2 to be delisted where PSN isn’t available, Sony hasn’t yet returned the game to the affected countries. Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt has assured players on the official Discord server that he is still working with both Sony and Valve to get Helldivers 2 back to all players.

Polar Patriot Was A Bit Of A Flop

Arrowhead was considering not releasing the new Polar Patriot Warbond because it felt that it might be tone deaf to release a new edition during the PSN controversy, but after holding a poll so players could decide for themselves, the Warbond launched as planned. Generally, Helldivers 2’s Warbonds have been received positively, butthe player base has had quite a lot of criticism for this one– many fans are calling it uninspired and bemoaning the lack of thematic coherence. Why call it Polar Patriot if it’s not ice-themed?

Others have said they’d prefer to have Warbonds come out at a much slower pace if it means that the weapons will be more unique and interesting, and I have to say, I agree. I haven’t unlocked anything past the first Warbond, and I don’t really feel a need to keep up. It’s not like any of the weapons getting released arethatcool. However, I also understand that Arrowhead has to keep up a steady pace of Warbonds if it wants to maintain the flow of money coming in from players. After all, that’s how it’s going to continue paying its staff.

Just Give Us The Illuminate Already

We’ve been seeing hints of the Illuminate for months, and leakers have all but confirmed we’ll be seeing them soon.Even CEO Johan Pilestedtis in on the joke. We’re now seeing even more leaks, this time of what the Illuminate will look like up close, andit’s, well… gross. I don’t know about everybody else, but I think the story developments have been getting a bit rote, and some scary, tentacled aliens could really jazz things up.

Helldivers 2

Helldivers 2 is the sequel to the third-person shooter from Arrowhead Game Studios. This time out, the Helldivers are deep in the Galactic War, and it’s up to you to bring Managed Democracy to the masses.