The day is finally upon liberty’s finest soldiers—Xbox recruits have enlisted, undergone tutorial training, and are diving into sectors filled with bugs, bots, and squids to carry out the plight of managed democracy in Helldivers 2. Indeed, with more than 280,000 Helldivers active at the time of this writing, around midday, it’s certainly a momentous occasion. This immense surge of new players has already made a dent in Helldivers 2’s Major Orders, too, as the Automaton and Illuminate objectives are soon to reach 50% with five days left to succeed.
Likewise, Helldivers 2 players on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S alike knew they’d be treated to a Halo 3: ODST collaboration today as a celebratory element of the Xbox launch, immersively blending classic Halo iconography and nostalgia into Helldivers 2’s lore. But that’s not all to be excited about in Helldivers 2. This morning, Arrowhead surprised its blossoming playerbase with the announcement of not only another new Warbond arriving on September 4, but also a brand-new update that is sure to shift the game’s landscape as bugs receive a massive buff. Interestingly, the Dust Devils Warbond and Into the Unjust update both echo the same aesthetic motif as Dune’s titular Arakkis.
Helldivers 2’s Dust Devils Warbond and Into the Unjust Update aren’t Dune Crossovers, But They’re the Next Best Thing
Dust Devils is Preparing Helldivers for a Windswept Trip to the Bugs’ Gloom
Funcom’s survival game Dune: Awakening is obviously the correct game to check out if anyone is a huge fan of its source material, but Helldivers 2, hilariously enough, has some seemingly inspired cosmetics and motifs in the works that make it appear as if Dune was a major influence on what direction the visual language of its Dust Devils Warbond and Into the Unjust update would take. Indeed, the following lists all the content included in Helldivers 2’s Dust Devils Warbond, with many items’ names forwardly expressing the Warbond’s theme and imagery of sandy desolation:
- DS-42 Federation’s Blade heavy armor set and DS-191 Scorpion medium armor set.
- AR-2 Coyote primary weapon.
- G-7 Pineapple throwable.
- S-11 Speargun, EAT-700 Expendable Napalm, and M5-11 Solo Silo stratagems.
- Rattlesnake pattern skins for the FRV, EXO Suit, Shuttle, and Hellpods.
- Desert Stormer armor passive.
- Rightful Occupier and Windswept Wayfinder player banners.
- Rightful Occupier and Windswept Wayfinder capes.
- Raider’s Cheer emote.
- Burier of Heads player title.
Of course, Dune may not have a monopoly on a desert landscape’s imagery in sci-fi. But, especially with Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies being so visually striking as cinematic spectacles, it wouldn’t be alarming at all if many fans find sand dunes synonymous with Dune for the foreseeable future.
Moreover, it would be quite disarming if there wasn’t even a hint of inspiration from Dune’s white-armored Sardaukar in the two Helldivers 2 armor sets that this Warbond introduces.
That’s not all, though. In keeping with its wasteland/desert sci-fi motif, Helldivers 2 has snuck an explicit Star Wars Easter egg into the Dust Devils Warbond in the form of the Raider’s Cheer emote, which has players’ Helldiver avatars hoisting invisible gaderffi sticks, similar to Tatooine’s nomadic, indigenous species, Tusken Raiders.
Into the Unjust is Finally Debuting Helldivers 2’s Horrific Take on Dune’s Sandworms
Teased in at the tail-end of the trailer for Helldivers 2’s Into the Unjust update, it’s highly thrilling to see that Helldivers’ Hive Lords are finally making the transition from the first game’s bug faction units to the sequel’s. So, while there are surely parallels to be made between Hive Lords and Dune’s sandworms, it’s not as if Helldivers 2 is spawning Hive Lords out of thin air.
Regardless, the gargantuan size of Helldivers 2’s Hive Lords would be fortunate to emulate the same horror and suspense of a sandworm being alerted by movement on the sand’s surface and emerging to swallow whole whatever’s disturbed it. To have this motif so succinctly reflecting Dune’s own hardly seems like a coincidence—a happy one, if so—and it’ll be fascinating to experience the full might of the Dust Devils Warbond and Into the Unjust update when both launch within a couple of days of one another next week.
Helldivers 2
-
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
