Helldivers 2 has changed a lot over the past five months, but that change has been largely incremental, taking place across a number of smaller, steadily released updates. It seemed like every other week, there was some new feature, enemy, or environment that was being debuted. Eventually, these releases slowed down, at least in part because they were causing numerous problems for the community. Now, Helldivers 2 is back with its first “major update” and it’s packing a lot of heat, including a higher difficulty, some new game modes, and the return of a favorite enemy.
Arrowhead Game Studios has announced that with the “Escalation of Freedom” update, which is coming August 6, things are going to get worse for players, in a fun way. That begins with the reintroduction of the Impaler, a Terminid enemy type that burrows in the ground and unleashes large, ferocious tentacles to fight players. According to Helldivers 2’s design director Miklas Malmborg, the Impalers are meant to “cut off your escape route” with their large tentacles, at which point you can reroute or stay and fight. Fans actually began theorizing that the Impalers were on their way to Helldivers 2 months ago, after a blog post mentioned tentacles a few times and seemed to show off at least one new weapon specifically meant to combat them.
There are even more enemies, too. Terminids will also be getting a new variant of the Charger that rocks a bunch of noxious spores on its carapace and is followed by a fog effect. Expect to see these things pop out of nowhere every now and then, folks. Automatons, the brutal robot horde that Helldivers 2 players are also combatting in the ongoing Second Galactic War, are also getting some upgrades. Basic foot soldiers seem to be getting a jump pack upgrade, but the biggest incoming threat on that front are new rocket-launching tanks. From afar, you can see them unleashing volleys into the sky to come back down on your head; otherwise, they’ll be firing right at you.
These updates to the enemy forces are being accompanied by a whole new difficulty level. While Arrowhead didn’t go into too much detail about what to expect on difficulty 10, it’s probably safe to assume that it’ll be a nightmare, especially if these new units are a part of things.
Mission variety is also being spruced up in the Escalation of Freedom update. Arrowhead most heavily teased a new mission type about the retrieval of a Terminid larva, which goes into a case on a player’s back and then must be escorted back to extraction. To make things difficult, the larva will cry, which can be heard by the bigger Terminids, who will proceed to swarm squads. Additionally, and perhaps most exciting to me personally, there will now be bigger enemy outposts to take out. Arrowhead’s CEO Johan Pilestedt referred to these things as fortresses and goddamn, do they kind of look like it.
These encampments have always been randomly generated and placed around the map, but they were hardly an issue due to their small size. Throwing the right kind of stratagem (deployable weapons and abilities like orbital strikes) into one would wipe it off the map, and eventually we even got weapons that were really excellent about taking out even the biggest bug nests in a matter of seconds. These much larger outposts seem like they’ll present far more of a challenge, whether due to their increased scope, the new enemies bound to populate them, or the sheer density of foes we should likely escape, especially on the new difficulty.
The additions simply don’t stop there, either. There will be a new version of the swamp environment because Arrowhead wanted to “spook it up.” It appears to tout a darker sky with the occasional crack of lightning, and the whole thing really does look a fuckton moodier than before. There will also be new environmental hazards and reworks of existing ones, like the Acid Storm, which now applies a debuff to both players and enemies instead of just limiting visibility.
There will even be some quality-of-life fixes in the new update that players will likely appreciate. Social menus are being improved to make it easier to join friends, and kicking is being retooled to stop griefing players as much. Kicked players will now become the host of their own session immediately after being given the boot, and they will be able to pick up any loot from the last match.
Elsewhere, the galactic war is still in full swing, and while the studio teases developments for the story, including mention of Terminid migration patterns and “irregular readings” of their spores in sectors of the galaxy, it stops short of giving away anything major. In fact, the trailer ends with various members of the studio doubling down on secrecy and outright declaring that they haven’t shared everything new that’s coming. Fine, keep your secrets.
As far as I’m concerned, this major update marks the beginning of a new kind of season for Helldivers 2, as well as a new cadence for releases. Seeing Arrowhead begin to take its time to properly stew on some ideas and mechanics is a relief after they released new content at an alarming clip in Helldivers 2’s early months, and it seems to be going over well with fans. Updates began to get consolidated into more impactful patches that didn’t break the game as much, and after an especially turbulent period following the game’s PSN login debacle, fans appreciated the stability, as well as the ability to just keep up with their new favorite game.
I wouldn’t mind if we moved to a model where we get one of these major updates every few months over the past haphazard schedule. As impressive as it was, Helldivers 2’s early content releases and surprises always seemed untenable, and this new update feels a hell of a lot more healthy for everyone involved. Moreover, slapping a date on a bunch of new content has me genuinely excited to jump back in when Helldivers 2 receives its first major update in just two weeks.