If you’re already over the ongoing problems with the new Democracy Space Station in Helldivers 2, I’ve got good news: there’s other stuff on the horizon, too. The developer Arrowhead Games recently spoke at G-Star, the ongoing Korean gaming conference, discussing crossovers with other IPs, vehicles, and lots more.
This information comes from Redditor Creepy_Ad3991, who was kind enough to provide translated dialogue that’s been adapted from the original source. The interview features the Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani and the CCO Johan Pilestedt as they go over some fairly spicy topics. For example, we now know that cross-overs are seemingly being considered (though the extent is very much unclear), with IPs such as Warhammer, Aliens, StarCraft, and Starship Troopers apparently being at the forefront of such discussions. Whether these were thrown out as a tongue-in-cheek reference or something more concrete, it’s not yet clear, but I do hope we won’t be looking at one-to-one transitions but full-fledged adaptations, as Destiny 2‘s been doing.
Vehicles are definitely coming to Helldivers 2, cross-overs with other IPs may happen
On to the more concrete answers provided by Pilestedt and Jorjani, the Democracy Space Station isn’t done just yet: “As of [November 14], the [DSS] has been activated, and gamers with overflowing resources can now [invest them]. More features will be enabled next week,” they said, which may give some hope to those that have been underwhelmed by the station’s current performance.
Though the pair did joke around with the concept of vehicles in Helldivers 2, with Pilestedt saying that he wasn’t even sure “if Helldivers are old enough to drive,” the feature is coming to the game. “On a more serious note,” he said, “vehicle updates are in the plans. [They] will be added soon, but I don’t think I can go into more detail than that.”
Pilestedt also said that he is “thinking about how to incorporate these ‘Chaos Divers’ into [Helldivers 2],” which may come as a surprise at first. Yet, it’s worth remembering that the Truth Enforcers warbond already kind-of-sort-of responded to the problem, suggesting that Super Earth already has all the tools it needs to deal with dissenters.
Now, the majority of topics that Arrowhead discussed here aren’t new in and of itself. Heck, I myself brought up the inevitable introduction of vehicles into Helldivers 2 back when the game came out, but this is the first time Arrowhead referenced the feature directly. The big question is definitely the crossovers/collaborations with other IPs, as this has the potential of watering down the game’s fairly strong design language.
Jorjani said that “[Arrowhead] don’t want to do too many crossovers, but we are fully considering appropriate collaboration to suit the game’s atmosphere.” It’s a good take, right? “For example,” Jorjani continued, “collaboration with ‘Power Rangers’ would be difficult in concept, but wouldn’t it be possible to do something like Black Ranger? That’s what I want.” It’s a somewhat worrisome context when he puts it that way.
Regardless, I’d like to highlight that as interesting as this information may be, it does come via an unofficial translation. Arrowhead is probably going to offer similar communications to global users soon enough, and we’ll just have to wait and see how things pan out in the interim.