Arrowhead Game Studios
Helldivers 2 has revealed an exciting secret feature where devs can invade your game
Helldivers 2 has been a massive success so far on PlayStation 5 and Steam, but now a new tabletop-like feature in the game has been revealed.
It’s no secret that Helldivers 2 has been a massive success at launch, with news popping up about how it’s surpassed Palworld and even God of War records on Steam. And even though the studio is in “crisis mode” trying to handle overloaded servers, it turns out there was a significant secret that they kept until now: members of the studio are watching you play in real time, and they can invade your game at any moment.
The secret feature of the game was revealed by the PlayStation Access YouTube channel, in a video about the game with Sagar Beroshi, the director of the game, who confirmed that members of Arrowhead Game Studios are watching player matches in real time, and are able to alter the flow of combat by choosing to help or hinder the players depending on how the game is going to create a personalized experience.
Helldivers 2 has dungeon masters
As it turns out, Helldivers 2 had many inspirations behind it design, with a prominent one being tabletop games and their strategic nature. That’s not so surprising to hear, as anything with “Space Marines” inevitably owes a lot of the base concept to Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40K franchise. But something that they’ve focused on is how in tabletop games often there is a “dungeon master” that guides the players and chooses how the story goes.
As it turns out, they never once discussed during the marketing phase of the game that they had an entire set of features to do that, with real people behind it at all times. “It’s very hard to achieve exactly what you get at a table but we wanted flavours of that in this game,” said Beroshi. “This is not a minor part of our game: this is a significant feature we’ve designed that is by the way quite different from the first game.”
Beroshi revealed that the feature is a mixture of tools and real human beings watching over the players, who “are observing the gameplay as it’s happening and responding in real time.” He gave an example of how during a preview game with PlayStation Access, one of the team members chose to drop a powerful bomb for them to use as an “extra strategy”.
He continued: “We can drop in more or less things like buffs but sometimes debuffs will happen too. A good challenge can sometimes be really valuable”. But it doesnt stop there, as Arrowhead will also be watching how the game’s story progresses. In Helldivers 2 it’s the entire community working together to push back the alien forces they’re fighting against, but the “dungeon masters” can also react to that.
“They will look at what you’ve done, respond to the ways in which you as the community have behaved, and react in a way that changes the face of the galaxy thereafter. So if you are clearing the way to some planets you have to get to, and you take over the next territory and the next one, it’s hard to say what the enemies might do in response… they might try to circle around, or meet you head-on, or do something else.”
“The war that you’re playing in plays out almost in real time. It’s not like in a few weeks the war is gonna be over. Players who join us from day one are going to experience the full story, they’ll see everything, as Super Earth as arrogant as it is digs itself into deeper and deeper problems.”
Helldivers 2 is now available on PlayStation 5 and Steam, and it seems like the best time to jump in is right now at the start of the interstellar war.