Arrowhead Game Studios’ Helldivers 2 is in a much better place after dropping into a technical mess earlier this year. With a much smaller file size and a host of performance fixes, the brilliant co-op game has returned to its regular content drops with new warbonds and even a winter festival.
Now that Arrowhead has the game back on a solid technical foundation, COO Johan Pilestedt revealed that he would like to add “sequel-level features” to the fantastic co-op tile instead of making an eventual Helldivers 3.
In the past, Pilestedt explained that the plan for Helldivers 2 is to turn it into its own sequel. Since then, major additions have come to the multiplayer game including weapon customisation, new enemy types and extra mission objectives. However, Pilestedt has other plans for major features that could make the game even bigger in the future.
When asked about the features he’d like to add in a recent video, the Arrowhead COO explained that “there’s quite a lot of them actually and I think the community is pretty good at picking up where they sort of want the game to head when you consider sort of the sequel-esque approach to it.”
Pilestedt specifically claimed that “eight-player missions would be one of those”, putting more Helldivers into a single mission against hordes of enemies. This idea was recently shut down by Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani as the goal was to “fix performance, not kill it”. However, we could see it come to the game some time in the far future.
“Larger open-world maps where you maybe come across other Helldiver teams to then take on bigger challenges together,” Pilestedt continued in his explanation of wishlist features. “Operations that affect other teams, as well, would be those kind of level of features.”
Of course, there’s no proposed release for any of these features at the time of writing. For now, they’re just a pipe dream, but it’s clear that Helldivers 2 is going to be a platform for huge changes in the years to come.
As a huge fan of Arrowhead’s multiplayer game, there’s only one big feature I truly want: multi-faction battles. Similar to Dynasty Warriors maps or Halo maps featuring both The Flood and Covenant, having maps where multiple factions are fighting each other as well as the Helldivers would be icing on the cake.
Arrowhead has already confirmed that the next four arcs for Helldivers 2 have been planned. With the studio now making sure that features aren’t added to the game last minute anymore, the next year of the multiplayer game should hopefully be more stable while continuing to add awesome storylines, weapons, and more.
