Summary
- Helldivers 2's political satire targets militarisation, imperialism, and colonisation in a unique and funny way.
- Arrowhead's ability to maintain fanbase despite controversial themes proves the success of Helldivers 2's approach to politics.
- Players can expect to face new enemies and unpredictable events, such as the potential destruction of a planet, in the game's ongoing story.
It’s no big secret that is a very political game. I would go so far as to say it’s one of the most overtly politᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚical games on the modern game market. Despite its unwillingness to 🍨talk real-life politics, perhaps for fear of alienating the many players that run screaming at the mention of ‘woke values’ in their games, Arrowhead has made one of the most distinct, funny, and blatant satires of militarisation, imperialism, and colonisation that the games industry has seen in a long time.
Doing this while maintaining sal🐻es and the loyal fanbase it has built is no mean feat, and it has somehow also managed to do so without alienating vast swathes of its player base. This, perhaps, is less due to its community management and mꦏoderation efforts, and more because lots of people just don’t get satire or don’t care about politics. Regardless, Helldivers 2 has surpassed everybody’s expectations, especially as a live-service game releasing into an already oversaturated market. Nobody was expecting it to be one of the biggest successes of the year, but then again, nobody was really expecting last year’s GOT🎀Y to be Baldur’s Gate 3 either.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if this was as far as Arrowhead w💫ent, satire-wise. Considering its target audience and h🦹ow much it’s already gotten away with, I wouldn’t have guessed that the devs would want to push much harder. I’m very pleased to see that I was wrong.
If you’re interested in learning how Helldivers 2&rsqꩲuo;s plot has led us to this point, I have a that collates every weekly Helldivers 2 column I’ve written so far that chronicles the story’s evolution in detail.
The argument I’m about to make is based largely on speculation about leaks and player observations, but that doesn’t mean it’s baseless – Helldivers 2 is known for telling its story through subtle changes, and Arrowhead intentionally 168澳ꦑ洲幸运5开꧑奖网:promotes conspiracy brainworms in its players because it very effectively and organically builds and maintain𒀰s hype.
The Terminid Control System
In March, one of our Major Orders (a community goal that all players get rewarded for) was to essentially 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:perpetuate a bug genocide by implementing a Terminid Control System. At the time, I wrote that it was obvious this wasn’t going to go to plan, but we didn’t know q꧂uite how things would go wrong. Now, we know.
The Terminid Control System was deemed a failure, the💃 population of these intelligent bugs has exploded, and Me🌊ridia is now a Terminid supercolony. The Termicide that was supposed to kill all the bugs made them reproduce faster, and now players have to undo their work and deactivate the TCS.
Players doing these missions have found giant tunnels around the TCS towers, as well a✨s the moulted remnants of what appear to be Hive Lords, which are a gigantic bug type from the first game that are so strong they can break through planet crusts. Nobody has seen a Hive Lord yet, as far as I know, but it seems likely that we’re about to.
Meridia’s Fall
Earlier this week, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:dataminers found footage of an ex🍬ploding planet that many 𝄹suspect to be the aforementioned Meridia. Right now, we know that Meridia has turned into a supercolo🐻ny, and players have also recently noticed that the planet, formerly blue and cloudy, is now a dark green. The planets we are shutting the TCS off on show us that the towers are now covered in green bug matter – it’s likely that the same has happened to Meridia, but on a grand scale.
There’s no way to check what’s going on for ourselves for the time being, as all supply lines to Meridia have been removed from the game. Meridia is entirely isolated from the Galactic War, which indicates something big is definitely in the works. My theory is that Meridia will be the next stop if we successfully finish the next Major Order, and we might finally have to face down these Hive Lords Arrow🦩head has been hinting at.
Getting Sick Of Fighting Bot🎐s In Helldivers 2? Just Stop Playing
New enemies might be coming in hot, but until then, you 🥂can just log off.
Now we spiral off into full speculation. If Meridia is indeed the planet that gets blown up, I have a feeling that it’ll be Super Earth respons♑ible for its destruction. We tried to manipulate ecology for our own gain, and as often happens, it blew up in our faces. My colleague James Troughton and I put our tinfoil hats on a few days ago when we learned about the leaks, and they suggested to me that it’s possible that our large-scale destruction of an entire planet will be the thing that leads the Illuminate to finally join the fray.
Players have long suspected they went into hiding when humans allegedly exterminated them, and they’ve been observing us silently ever since. Perhaps us destroying a planet will be the last straw, and they’ll finally decide we pose enough of a threat to all other alien civilisations that they can no longer stand by withou💜t interference🍎. Or maybe I’m going off the rails with the speculation – who knows?
Ecological Destruction Is Intrinsically Tied To Colonisation
If you haven’t drawn the satirical links here yet, fear not: I will do it for you. Helldivers 2 is overt in its criticism of capitalism – Super Earth massacres Terminids to ha🌜rvest Eleme꧟nt 710, which is just OIL upside down. It’s for resources and control that Super Earth wages continual war with different factions in the galaxy, trying to impose a false, fascist ‘freedom’ and ‘managed democracy’ on every planet that isn’t Super Earth. It has no right to do this, of course, but this is just what colonisation does.
The Terminid Control System was a tool of genocide, an attempt to manipulate planetary ecosystems to Super Earth’s gain. This has happened time and time again in human history – how can we see this and not think of the colonisation of America and the murder of millions of Indigenous people? Arrowhead isn’t so much broadening the scope of its satire as it is deepening it. Its main conceit of imperialism extends to the environment as well, in how we actively work against it on the battlefield and try to subjugate it to our own ends. Nobody’s surprised that pesticide just created pesticide resistant pests, since that happens all the time. I’m more surprised that Arrowhead is determin🎃ed to go deeper than it already has.
Helldivers 2 is the sequel to the third-person shooter from Arrowhead Game Studios. This time out, the Helldivers are deep in the Galactic War, and it's up to you to bring Managed Democracy to the masses.