After many requests and some datamines, vehicles are now a part of the Helldivers 2 experience. Up to five divers can squad up in one beefed-up car for some co-op carnage - and it really is chaotic, mainly because developer Arrowhead Game Studios were trying to maximize "laughter-per-minute" with them.
"It's pretty much the experience we want to make with the whole universe," production director Alex Bolle told GameRadar+ ahead of the Omens of Tyranny update. "It's hard to master. It's really fun in the situation it creates - you go a little bit too fast, you take the wrong bump, and then everyone gets yeeted out of the car."
Bolle explains that the team managed to thread the line "between arcade and simulation," which is apparently Arrowhead's philosophy toward Helldivers 2 as a whole. You can see that everywhere from the way weapons are handled to the physics, which can be brutally realistic or brutally absurd when you're ragdolling through the air.
"We think it's very important that playing our game is fun," game director Michael Eriksson explained. "[CCO Johan Pilestedt] says often that one of the key metrics we should be chasing is laughter-per-minute. With everything we're adding, we want to get these chaotic, tense, fun moments, and with the vehicle, it was the same deal. We needed to make it both fit in the universe and work as you would expect, because that's also super important for us - the believability... We thought it was very important to allow for those sorts of situations to happen."
The main takeaway with both leads is that, sure, cars were added because they were highly-requested. But it was really another "co-op feature" - a natural extension of everything else in the game. "This promotes playing together, sticking together, and also gives you a new way to play the game, a new way to experience the game against all factions," Eriksson said.
