The latest Helldivers 2 patch has gone down about as smoothly as a glass full of napalm—chiefly due to some nerfs to the flamethrower, which has sparked a full-on wildfire of criticism so bad the CEO of the studio felt inclined to give a response.
One fascinating form of protest, however, appears to be happening in the game itself (thanks, GamesRadar). “Let the bots advance, let Super Earth burn,” writes one player on the game’s subreddit, showing a map of the galactic war with an Automaton front that’s… coming a little close to Super Earth there, chief.
Let the Bots advance. Let the Super Earth burn. from r/Helldivers
“Together we banished the bug tyranny of Meridia, but you betrayed me, you betrayed us all. You stole power from the Helldivers and lied to your citizens. Mankind has only one chance to prosper, if you will not seize it then I will. So let it be war, from the skies of Super Earth to the Galactic rim. Let the seas boil, let the stars fall.”
This dramatic speech is ripped straight from Warhammer 40K’s trailer for the Horus Heresy—referencing an event where Horus turned traitor and led a rebellion against the Emperor of Mankind.
The Automatons are still two (and a bit) systems away from Super Earth, but they’re currently storming Curia, which has a grand total of 1,300-1,500 players loyal to Super Earth on it at the time of writing and, as per Helldivers.io, is losing the battle at a rate of 1.2% an hour.
However, there’s a spanner in the works of this particular narrative—namely, the current Major Order tasks divers with defending Troost and Vandalon IV. The idea being, one would assume, to create a situation where players need to balance a war on two fronts. This means one of four things are happening.
- The player base is MMO-brained, and is simply following the big markers.
- Players are trying to zerg rush the two target planets before returning to the Super Earth front.
- Players are genuinely doing an act of malicious, heretical compliance by overcommitting to the western front.
- Some combination of all of the above.
I will say, however, that a pithy defence of 2,000 people is cause for concern, given the game has about 38,000 players presently scrapping bots. Helldivers 2 has already jokingly tempted players to lose on purpose, what happens when they actually do?
Well, that’s a damn fine question. Back in the Helldivers 1 days, it was actually very possible for players to lose the Galactic War wholesale. Democracy would simply find a new Super Earth, stake its claim, and move on. However, those wars were won or lost in the space of about a month—Helldivers 2 is still embroiled in its very first, meaning I’m not actually sure what happens if the enemy takes Super Earth at all.
It presents one hell of a fascinating problem for Arrowhead if the heretics win, though. While the studio’s been locked into slower updates, a Super Earth defence that simply sees divers shooting bots on the same auto-generated maps would feel anticlimactic. On the other hand, the game’s developers have been struggling to nail their new cadence somewhat, and a rush to cobble together, say, the oft-requested urban warfare maps would be a tall order.
Still, I know not to underestimate a player protest from the Helldivers 2 community—the review bomb war of ’24 taught me that.