Not giving players much to go on but at least giving them a healthy sense of dread, Arrowhead Game Studios CEO Shams Jorjani says the next major update for Helldivers 2 is going to be a doozy.
Asked for a "tiny little hint" by a Discord user during his latest impromptu Q&A session, Jorjani simply said, "A lot of Helldivers will die." This is, of course, a fairly fitting description for basically every update in Helldivers 2's history, major or minor, meaning it doesn't actually tell us much about what's coming. Heck, I probably could've told you that. Jorjani did, however, have some other interesting things to say about future ideas.
Helldivers 2 players are especially curious right now because the future of the game isn't as clear as it once was. Another Discord user asked Jorjani if there is "any progress on the roadmap" which would help shed light on that future. Jorjani said it's still a work in progress.
"We are still discussing," he wrote. "We'd like to find a way to share [quality-of-life] and certain types of roadmaps but keep story and other things hidden."
Asked about Arrowhead's planning with Major Orders and significant narrative beats – with one user claiming the current MO is "mathematically impossible" – Jorjani said, "I'm not 100% familiar with the mission design - but [as far as I know] we've never had an order that was mathematically impossible. Some have been designed to be VERY hard. And sometimes the community has rallied and surprised quite a bit."
This reflects the work of famed Helldivers 2 dungeon master Joel and his cohort, which has evolved considerably since the game's release. But it's Jorjani's follow-up comments that stand out to me, dovetailing with his remarks on sharing some details to address gameplay concerns but keeping other information secret until the big surprise.
"[If I remember correctly] we run like you would any roleplaying game as a dungeon master," Jorjani said. "You plan for different outcomes along a rough campaign. We know roughly where you're gonna end up as we head into the next big update – but not the exact details. It's very hard trying to keep development open-ended."
