Arrowhead Game Studios
Helldivers 2 is not getting rid of or making friendly fire optional
The creative director of Helldivers 2 restated that friendly fire is one of the main pillars on which the success of the game has been built, so it’s here to stay.
Helldivers 2 didn’t become a viral success by chance, but by a variety of identifiable features purposefully designed for it. One of them, which provides a greater dose of coordination between players, is the presence of friendly fire, but which has also been the object of frustration among a few players since it is by no means a frequent feature in the shooter genre. For this reason, the community has not stopped asking Arrowhead Studios, if they plan to make it optional in the near future. The answer is a very emphatic no.
“Things should be consistent in the game world and therefore, we must have friendly fire”, said Johan Pilestedt, creative director of Helldivers 2, in a post on the official PlayStation blog. “If your bullets can kill enemies, and the enemies can kill you, then logic dictates that your bullets must also be able to kill your friends. This kind of design is inherently systematic, where we create a rule set that applies to everything in the game world, with minor exceptions.
Pilestedt assures that friendly fire is essential. “What this does, and maybe most clearly noted by friendly fire, is create a complexity to the gameplay where players have to actively think during combat sequences – not in a “solve the puzzle” way but instead in a very primal creative problem solving way. Also, the chuckles that happen when you accidentally carpet bomb your friends allows for a playfulness that in reality would be a tragedy – but within the self bounds of games we can explore the dark humor of these situations. And finally,, the friendly fire element makes the players a true interactable part of the game world that plays a great part in positioning and helps with team play.”
Helldivers 2 is now available on PlayStation 5 and PC.
What other games are there with friendly fire?
Although it’s being considered a huge novelty, Helldivers 2 is by no means the only recent game that has this feature. Apart from the very successful Rainbow Six Siege, other more popular shooters like some installments of Battlefield have specific servers with friendly fire, as well as some specific skills from Valorant that are capable of harming members of our team. In addition, we also find somewhat more niche titles such as Hell Let Loose and Ready or Not, and of course, the eternal Arma 3.