Helldivers 2 boss explains how new Stratagems get made: "We play the game and get bored by the current selection, so we add another one"

Helldivers 2 Patriot Exosuit mech.

The Helldivers 2 devs have a pretty simple process for designing new Stratagems: they just make a new one whenever they get bored of the old selection. That's perhaps oversimplifying the process a bit, but Arrowhead Studios CEO and creative director Johan Pilestedt says it's all about having a fun idea and iterating on it until it makes sense in the game.

“Generally, Stratagems are based on real world examples," Pilestedt tells the PlayStation Blog. "We’re interested in both war movies and pop culture, so in some cases the concept may be inspired by a pop-culture reference, but realism is added by taking real world guns and applying them to the mechanics.”