Helldivers 2 Leak Shows First In-Game Look At The Illuminate

Highlights

Helldivers 2 players have been waiting a long time for the Illuminate to join the game, something that Arrowhead has been teasing for months.
The official release might still be a big question mark, but a new leak has given us our first look at their in-game design.
The leak comes from a reliable dataminer, who used a modified version of Helldivers 2 to get the Illuminate working.

A Helldivers 2 leaker has datamined the game and found incomplete versions of units from the Illuminate faction, giving us our first in-game look at the mysterious foes.

Although Helldivers 2 might not be 2024’s biggest game anymore like it was at the start of the year, it still has a very dedicated community that is anxiously waiting for one big thing – the Illuminate. Arrowhead has been teasing the return of the terrifying squids ever since Helldivers 2 launched, and it seems that we might not be waiting too long.

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While we still have no idea when the Illuminate will be added into Helldivers 2, leakers have managed to find a bunch of evidence over the past few months that indicates that the Squi’ith are actively being worked on by Arrowhead. We’ve seen several leaked models of the Illuminate since Helldivers 2 launched, but a new datamine has given us our best look yet at how they’ll function in-game.

Helldivers 2 Leaker Gives Us Our Best Look Yet At The Illuminate

Over on the Helldivers 2 leaks subreddit, reliable leaker IronS1ghts shared a few in-game screenshots of the Illuminate in action. IronS1ghts revealed that the screenshots were taken on a modified version of Helldivers 2 that uses older Illuminate assets, which means that several of their functions are incomplete and likely to change when they officially get added.

Even if that’s the case, IronS1ghts images do give us a very good idea of how the Illuminate will play. The first unit shown is known as the Observer, who fires lightning at the player and dodges attacks with ease. It also sounds an alarm that attracts other Squi’ith whenever it spots you, which makes it sound like a big pain.

The second unit is simply known as “Illuminate “Guy”, who can seemingly equip a Lightspear, an Axe, and the “SquidGun”. It seems more focused on melee attacks and has the same dodging ability as the Observer. IronS1ghts couldn’t get his weapons to work, though, so he might not be that far along in development.

IronS1ghts also notes that the Illuminate don’t currently seem to be weak to anything, but that they’re likely going to be affected by high fire rate weapons.

Finally, IronS1ghts shared two images of Dark Fluid Harvesters that seem to be related to in-game objectives, with the large one firing a laser beam into the ground to harvest. That’s all that we’ve seen so far, but it looks like there might be more that IronS1ghts hasn’t been able to access just yet.