Helldivers 2 in 2023!

Helldivers 2 is coming in 2023 to PS5, PC and it’s safe to say the series from Arrowhead Games looks to be getting a pretty big glow up.The most obvious change is the transition from arcade style, top down shooter to third person. It’s hard not to look at the parallels between Housemarque and their transition to Returnal after they declared arcade was dead.

UPDATES

At the Sony State of Play on September 14, it was confirmed that Helldivers 2 will be releasing on February 8, 2024.

Crossplay also confirmed on January 9th on the PlayStation Blog

The big question is after the success of Returnal, will Arrowhead be able to make the same leap forward with Helldivers 2?

The same core elements are still present in Helldivers 2 with the four player alien liberating gameplay along with friendly fire, stratagems and tongue in cheek tone. The switch to third person might be a pain point for some fans of the series, but Helldivers does have a strong cult following who will give it a chance. This is divergent from the path Returnal took as it was a brand new IP from Housemarque, so there was no alienating people initially (pun intended)

The choice to develop strictly on PS5 and PC is evident in the trailer as the visuals are stunning with the amount of things happening on the screen at once, the destruction of the bugs, and the lighting effects.

Evolution

Outside of changing perspective, here are few things that will HOPEFULLY make their way into the sequel.

Crossplay

One of the most requested features from Helldivers was cross play between PC and PlayStation. Will Helldivers 2 have cross play? I would lean towards that it will for a few reasons. The first game was crossplay between PS3, PS4 and Vita, so the team has some understanding of how to incorporate a feature like that. Helldivers came out on PC about six months after the PlayStation version and it seems with Helldivers 2, they will both be launching at the same time. Finally, Helldivers 2 is only coming to PS5 and not PS4, which means that they will need a bigger pool of players, leading to cross play making a lot of sense.

More Teamwork, Makes More Dreams Work

Helldivers 2 is looking to be turning up the co-op and teamwork aspect of the game to 11. Success is very hard without strong communication and watching your friendly fire, but in the trailer, you can see one player loading another players weapon. This leads me to believe that some of the more deadly weapons will require two people to operate. There were small instances of this in the first game with reloading larger weapons, but we are talking about the use of huge weapons that require two players at all times of things like a mech. I assume the same thing goes for stratagems. To activate something deadly might require the right combination of buttons from two players simultaneously.

Single Player Mode

You could play Helldivers in single player but it would only send you out alone. This did allow you to play the game but it made it very hard and very slow because you had to play very cautiously. This removed a lot of the bombastic nature of the game, and hopefully for the times that you just don’t want to play online with randoms and your squad isn’t on, there will be some type of AI squadmates that you can deploy with.

New Opportunity

The transition to third person does open up the door to new opportunities and features. This change will likely lead to a lot more tactical changes and options. Customization of your weapon with long scopes or short scopes will change how you approach the game. Also being this close to the action will hopefully allow you to target enemies tactically by possibly shooting legs off bugs to slow them down and things of that nature.

The best part about this reveal is that we won’t have to wait long as Helldivers 2 is scheduled to release in 2023 and if the reaction from the studio at the reveal is any indication to go by, they should be hitting this target.

UPDATE

At the Sony State of Play on September 14, it was confirmed that Helldivers 2 will be releasing on February 8, 2024.