Helldivers 2 is overhauling how it tells its stories this month

'We've struggled to communicate'

Since Helldivers 2 launched in 2024, the community has collectively been fighting the game's galactic war against various types of enemies. Automatons (robots), Terminids (bug-like aliens), and Illuminate (humanoid aliens) forces all must be repelled, and the events of the war are determined by which planets are successfully liberated and which are overwhelmed by foes.

However, in a Steam blog post, Mikael Eriksson, game director at Arrowhead Game Studios, admitted that the team has "struggled to communicate" how much the actions of the community actually impact the game, "or if it's all just smoke and mirrors." He also explained that "unless you joined right at the start of a big event like the 'Battle for Super Earth' or the 'Cyberstan Invasion,' it's been difficult to understand what's going on."

Until now, major orders have been how these events were communicated to players, instructing them where to go and what to do to fight on behalf of Super Earth. These are being replaced by galactic war campaigns, which will be between one and three weeks long. The intention, according to Eriksson, is that "it will always be clear what the active campaign is, how it's going, what the outcomes have been, and what's at stake."

Missions are also undergoing some changes with the introduction of planet warfronts. Eriksson explains that while dynamic warfronts on planets were promising, "we realized we didn't have the content needed to do it justice at the time." That's all changed now though; roguelite-inspired mechanics are coming to Helldivers 2, and missions will be categorized as either "defend," "frontline war," or "behind enemy lines."

"Players will fight to reach key strategic locations on planets, like cities, which can have different active enemy variants in different areas of the planet. Of course, you’ll still have the game masters to contend with, too. In the final version of this feature, there will also be gameplay-altering effects and consequences for achieving planet liberation goals, like reaching and liberating a city within X time or disabling enemy artillery in one location to unlock crucial operations."

Personal orders are being tweaked to align with the galactic war progression too, so no longer will you need to abandon your squad because you need to kill X amount of a specific enemy type and they don't. Rebranding as "personal campaign progression," every galactic war campaign will have a personal campaign associated with it. This isn't coming immediately, though; the team plans to deploy it this year.

Ship customization is also coming, as is the ability to unlock new ships, alongside an "overhaul of the ship module system." The latter promises to "add more player agency and significantly increase the offerings for players to progress." These changes are a little further away, but more details will be shared "later this year."

Finally, one change has garnered the most praise on social media despite being the smallest tweak on the surface, with Reddit users Plasma7007 calling it "amazing," VelvetCowboy19 considers it "the biggest immediate change," and thisbackgroundnoise deems it a "huge W." What is it? The ability for players to use assisted reload, no matter whether the carrier or the reloaded have the backpack equipped. This should enable assisted reload weapons to be much more viable in the meta, as they're far less cumbersome to use.

There's plenty more to read about coming to the game later this year, including committing to fixing "stratagem bouncing," hellpod steering improvements, and a level cap increase to 300, all detailed in the blog post.