The future of Helldivers 2 is long and bright. Not only is there a live-action movie adaptation already on the way, but Helldivers 2 is only a year-and-a-half out from launch and Arrowhead reportedly has myriad plans to support it with content for years to come. Unlike the original Helldivers game, Helldivers 2 could even be a permanent fixture without any arbitrary ambitions of moving onto a third game if Arrowhead believes it can sustain a playerbase with the sequel and simply continue adding to it with large-scale events and updates as it has been.
For example, Helldivers 2’s Xbox launch is at the end of the month and will bolster the live-service shooter further with a whole new batch of recruits. But, while a rotation of events between its three enemy factions—Terminids (bugs), Automatons (bots), and Illuminate (squids)—may be fulfilling in and of itself, there’s an argument to be made that the Helldivers franchise hasn’t yet cracked a mold that it’s adhered to thus far. Indeed, because the first Helldivers features a total of three enemy factions, and that’s what Helldivers 2 is currently sitting at, it may be in the sequel’s best interest not to wait until a hypothetical threequel before a brand-new, unprecedented enemy faction is introduced.
Helldivers 2’s New Major Order May Be Buttering Bugdivers Up for the Next ‘Battle of Super Earth’
Helldivers 2's last Minor Order and present Major Order suggest that the Terminids may play a big role soon regarding future content.
Helldivers 2 Has Yet to Completely Subsume Helldivers 1’s Factions
Comparing Helldivers to Helldivers 2, the latter went a bit south with its treatment of enemy factions, despite them being largely indistinguishable or transferable with miscellaneous units. For instance, while bugs and squids made the jump from the first game to the sequel with little variance in their units, Helldivers 2 replaces Cyborgs with Automatons, shedding what little human remnants there were in that faction to deliver a fully robotic horde created by the Cyborgs that is incessantly printed out of fabricators. This suggests that Cyborgs could eventually be revisited by Arrowhead if it wanted to beef up the bot faction by introducing Cyberstan to Helldivers 2, which players familiar with the original game eagerly anticipate and pray for.
Either way, it’d be expected that Cyborgs would become a sub-faction of the Automatons in the sequel, and not their own faction, but only time will tell if they’ll be revisited and how significant they may be. In the meantime, there are enemy units from the bug and squid factions that Helldivers 2 hasn’t adapted, and that could instead be Arrowhead’s focus for the foreseeable future.
Notably, while they’ve been teased in certain environments via their fossilized carcasses on Terminid planets, Helldivers 1’s Hive Lords have not yet made their way to Helldivers 2 as an actual enemy type.
The Onus is on Helldivers 2 to Debut a New Faction Before Helldivers 3
For Helldivers 2 not to debut a whole enemy faction won’t be the end-all be-all of its lifespan and trajectory. If nothing else, Arrowhead has perhaps been more concerned with dissecting the IP and repurposing it as a third-person shooter, rather than a top-down shooter, as well as ensuring that it has concrete foundations established for as wide a playerbase and community as it can nurture.
That said, by only iterating so much as to still feature three enemy factions in Helldivers 2, especially when they’re so similar to the ones players battled in the previous game, is arguably reductive when the franchise has been around for 15 years with a mere two entries. Of course, Helldivers 2 can be considered in its infancy, and grand goals may be in the works that haven’t been rumored, leaked, or teased thus far, but Arrowhead hopefully isn’t planning to wait until Helldivers 3 to make new factions in its galaxy a reality.
Helldivers 2
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 83 /100 Critics Rec: 91%
- Released
- February 8, 2024
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact
- Developer(s)
- Arrowhead Game Studios, Nixxes
- Publisher(s)
- Sony Interactive Entertainment, PlayStation Publishing
WHERE TO PLAY
- Engine
- bitsquid
- Multiplayer
- Online Co-Op
- Cross-Platform Play
- All platforms
- Franchise
- Helldivers
- Number of Players
- 1-4 players (online)
- Genre(s)
- Third-Person Shooter, Extraction Shooter, Action, Science Fiction
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC
- OpenCritic Rating
- Strong
