Nose around Helldivers 2‘s Galactic War map and you might notice that there’s a lot of empty space. Around half the celestial sphere is given over to the dominions of the Automatons and Terminids, leaving ample room for another enemy faction to be inserted via free update or paid DLC. What could that next faction be? Surely it can’t be any worse than a horde of giant bugs or a legion of robots. Surely it can’t be, say, a highly advanced elder species of teleporting illusionists equipped with lightning guns and cloaking devices. Oh dear.
The patriotic Super-Earthers of The Loadout have been keeping a close eye on in-game news broadcasts from the Super Earth government. They call attention to one that discusses “rumours of Illuminate sightings”, the Illuminate being an enemy faction in the first Helldivers. Naturally, TheLoadout proffer the treacherous speculation that Arrowhead are bringing the faction back for Helldivers 2.
These rumours are the “work of dissidents”, according to said in-game broadcasts, and no true Super-Earther should give them any credence. After all, everybody knows that Super-Earth stomped the Illuminate flat in the previous war. Any evidence to the contrary is anti-democratic agitprop and absolutely not some kind of teaser campaign.
If you didn’t play the first Helldivers, the Illuminate are a bunch of fish people who have evolved into something like the Protoss from StarCraft. Where the cyborgs are big on ranged weapons and armour plating, and the bugs are all about rolling over your position in a screeching tsunami, the Illuminate rely on stealth and sheer technological superiority.
Their old units include a kind of teleporting energy dome, a pile of angry alien spaghetti in a floating chair, and something called the Great Eye, which you know, definitely don’t try to solo that one. The trick to fighting them was to avoid getting spotted by their cloaked scouts, who could summon reinforcements.
One question is how it might feel to fight such creatures in over-the-shoulder third-person view, as opposed to the original Helldivers top-down perspective. Another question is how many enemy factions Arrowhead plan to add to Helldivers 2. There’s room for at least two on the map screen, I reckon.
We continue to enjoy Helldivers 2, despite its server issues, which have contributed to a Mixed user review consensus on Steam at the time of writing. In other recent news, Arrowhead’s CEO has said they aren’t planning to add PvP because they don’t want a toxic community.
