While I usually cover developments inHelldivers 2’s story before jumping into other things, I feel like I should address the elephant in the room first. The game has beenreview bombed into oblivionbecauseSony announced that it would be mandatory for PC players to link their Steam accounts to PSNfrom June onwards.
That policy has since been retracted due to overwhelming backlash. I’ve already written a full articleanalysing why this happened and why Arrowhead shouldn’t be taking the brunt of the blame, but suffice it to say that a lot of people aren’t feeling very positive about the game right now.
That said, I’m here to do a job, so quiet up and listen down. Here’s what’s happened in Helldivers 2 over the past week.
Last week ended with Operation Legitimate Undertaking, in which we had to liberate both Penta and Choohe in order to finish the Major Order. While we did manage to liberate Penta, players weren’t able to free Choohe in time, and so it was abandoned to the Automatons. This probably means we won’t get Anti-Tank Mines for a while, but nobody really felt that strongly about those anyway.
After that, the operation was terminated because of an “emergency situation” – the Terminid Control System had failed, causing Terminid outbreaks on all Barrier Planets, which include Erata Prime, Fenrir III, Meridia, and Turing. Meridia was almost completely overrun by Terminids, so much so that the planet seems to have gone from blue to a murky green.
I’m very interested inArrowhead’s exploration of the ties between ecology and colonisationhere, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it pursues the theme.
We were directed to complete Operation: Umlaut Firebreak, so named for the Umlaut System where the Barrier Planets are. Players had to rush to every planet but Meridia to deactivate the Terminid Control System and prevent Meridia’s fate from taking root anywhere else. The things they found on those planets were, to say the least,concerning.
The operation was successful, and it was then revealed that, in a typical example of survival of the fittest, Terminids that had survived the Termicide mutated to become resistant to it. Of course, anybody who studied basic biology knows that this was to be expected, though Super Earth High Command will have you believe that hormesis is “completely unprecedented”.
On Meridia, the bugs didn’t just become resistant to the Termicide, it also made them reproduce faster. The planet is now a Supercolony, which is quite alarming.
There hasn’t been another Major Order since Umlaut Firebreak was completed, probably because Arrowhead was dealing with the firestorm brought on by the whole PSN thing. Thank Liberty that’s over!
I Will Follow You, Follow You Wherever You May Go
My mother singsthis songin parking lots when she’s looking for a space and spots someone hauling groceries to their car. She’ll croon these lyrics in the creepiest voice possible while she cruises behind them slowly, looking for all the world like an actual stalker.
Anyway, that’s what I imagine is playing in the heads of Terminid Stalkers when they pop up out of nowhere and start attacking me. Despite their names and ostensible invisibility, they used to be surprisingly visible before, with quite distinct outlines despite their cloaking. Unfortunately, they’re completely transparent now, and are really hard to spot, which is terrifying.
Apparently, they were always meant to be this hard to spot, but a bug stopped that from being the case in practice. That bug is now fixed, meaning that they’ll be a lot harder to see coming. On the bright side, you’re able to still see them as blips on your minimap, so make it a point to check that often. Some think that bots are now actuallyeasierthan bugs now, which is a very funny turn of events consideringsome players have been avoiding fighting bots for months now.
Don’t Go It Alone
It turns out that players running solo operations have been having it much easier than Arrowhead intended.That has now been fixed– the number of patrols players encounter will be directly proportional to the number of players in a squad, instead of what it was before, which had solo players encountering a mere sixth of the usual number of patrols when playing alone.I’m pretty saltythat as a player outside of peak time zones, my game is being made harder when I often don’t have a choice but to play with fewer players in my squad, but I’ll get over it.
Ricochet, You Take Your Aim…
It turns out that Helldivers 2 was meant to be more lethal than we ever expected, and everything was just bugged. In making changes to the ricochet mechanic with a recent patch, it suddenly became pretty common for shrapnel from certain weapons (the R-36 Eruptor, specifically) torebound off enemies and instantly kill the person who made the shot.
Of course, this in itself creates a problem that needs to be fixed, since the weapon is now too dangerous to use at all. Don’t worry, Arrowhead is on it. But while we’re speaking of self-inflicted damage,don’t use a Punisher Plasma if you’re using a Shield Generator Backpackunless you want to blow yourself up.
Oh, Also, New Warbond
Arrowhead really does seem to be working overtime, because there’sanothernew premium Warbond and it’s arriving on May 9. This one is named Polar Patriots and, as usual, offers alotof new weapons and cosmetics for unlocking. Perhaps most notably, one high-calibre assault rifle is called the AR-61 Tenderizer and is described as a “real tentacle-tearer”. A hint at the incoming Illuminate, perhaps?
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.
