Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has recently spoken out about potentially adding elements from other sci-fi worlds to the shooter, with imaginative director Johan Pilestedt rubbing his hands with glee at the thought of working with Warhammer, Alien, The Fifth Element and more. Speaking at the G-STAR conference in Busan earlier this month, recently appointed CEO Shams Jorjani confirmed that Arrowhead is considering such a collaboration, citing the example of rebuilding a dropship to look like one of the pelicans from Halo or introducing the Zerg from Blizzard’s Starcraft as enemy faction.
Jorjani cautioned listeners, however, that these third-party DNA injections must look and feel appropriate to the setting. After all, if you start mindlessly throwing Zergs, Chaos Space Marines, or Fifth Element, er, flying taxis, into Helldivers 2, it can ruin the careful coherence of the game, where saluting saves you from fatal falls and some guy named Joel runs through the universe. The comical thing is that, according to Jorjani, Arrowhead once came up with a system that would solve the inconsistency problem by essentially making third-party cosmetics, including entire map skins, only apparent to players who enabled them. To put it another way, Arrowhead once came up with a system in which individual Helldivers would operate hallucinations other licenses.
I feel compact guilty that I wrote this because it is based on automatic Google translation of an article in Koreanand automatic translations are not always reliable. But it’s also fun. Find the relevant excerpt from Jorjani’s response below. I would focus on the spirit of the statement, not the specific wording.
In the past, we’ve discussed the cosmetic system, where only what the player sees changes. For example, in the case of “Dota 2”, when you apply a map skin, your map will appear changed, but others will see it as the default map. However, this was rejected because it could cause confusion during gameplay. An area or object that one person talks about may seem different to another person. Anyway, even if there is a crossover, it seems most of it will be applied to armor or weapons. As long as it doesn’t disrupt players’ gaming experience.
Games have done this sort of thing before, but I can’t think of one that would render the entire map differently for each player with the associated DLC installed. Personally, I think having some players actually occupy parallel realities would be both brilliant and completely in line with Helldivers 2’s parody of brainless kamikaze heroism.
It can be presented as a shot of experimental combat amphetamine. Imagine landing in Malevelon Creek and trying to coordinate an attack on the base when half of your squad thinks they’re at Disneyland. You ask the sniper to cover you, but unfortunately he has the 101 Dalmations DLC installed and sees the Tyranids as puppies. Call in a dropship and she will run away screaming about Glenn Close’s disembodied head. Basically what I’m saying is, let’s do this a little bit like this video of a Pyro in Team Fortress 2.
There’s a lot more from Jorjani and Pilestedt in the full G-STAR conference text, including reflections on the ever-pressing issue of weapon balance, recent additions like the Space Station of Democracy, and how they’ve adapted their production process since Helldivers issue 2. They also happily refused to talk about the Illuminati, those cunning devils.
