Helldivers 2 players have done the impossible, or at least what would be impossible in any other game.
After months of waging war against Automatons in the Helldivers 2 Galactic Map, the soldiers of Super Earth didn’t just constrain them, but as per the last Major Order, they have wiped Automatons completely off the map. As in, there are no more Automaton-controlled planets or regions. Anywhere.
Helldivers 2’s official account celebrated the news with what is almost a “game over, you won” message, complete with a George W. Bush “Mission Accomplished” banner.
However, rather than celebrating, players now feel a sense of ominous dread that something much bigger and much worse is coming. And soon.
Yes, something is coming. I joked about how it would be great if Arrowhead just rolled credits and shut down the servers, but instead what everyone fears is likely to come to pass, though what form it takes exactly has not been revealed.
The seeds of this have been planted for weeks, where players intercepted communications from Automatons to some place outside known space, talking about an operation known as “The Reclamation.” All evidence points to this being a large-scale assault on the north west of the map to try to reach and “reclaim” Cyberstan, the original home of the Cyborgs who now live under democratic oppression (sorry, “liberation”). They are the progenitors of the Automatons and the idea is that the robots want their parents back.
It is not entirely out of the realm of possibility that while the Automatons go dormant, this could be time to introduce the game’s third faction, the Illuminate aliens, but the dominant theory is still the invasion of Cyberstan coming up rather quickly. We are getting another Terminid-focused campaign for a while after so much slugging away with the bots, then I bet in a week or two whatever is going to happen, happens.
One of the reasons Helldivers 2 is so much fun is because of exactly what’s going on here. There are no roadmaps, no one can fully predict what’s coming next. The idea is that Helldivers players themselves are shaping the story whether they win or lose assignments, and while I’m not sure how much Arrowhead is or is not leaning on the scales, it at least giving the appearance of that.
In this case this is just not something we’ve seen in the game to this point, the complete elimination of an entire faction from the map. Again, no one believes this is permanent, but it’s a pretty stunning development all the same that things could get to this point. As ever, Helldivers 2 continues to rule.
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