The notion that we ought to read Helldivers 2's galactic war as a straightforward story about humanity's noble defense against alien bugs and robots is too oblivious to warrant serious debate—Super Earth has a Ministry of Truth!—but in the endless churn of social media discourse, the interpretation has been posed.
In a talk at game development conference Nordic Game in Sweden this week, Arrowhead Games chief creative officer Johan Pilestedt put the studio's intentions plainly. The "original hypothesis" for Helldivers 2, he said, was to cast players as the "evil guys in the galaxy," like stormtroopers, and to see how they fare as background extras who are meant to fly off balconies when the good guys charge in shooting.
