Helldivers 2 has done a fantastic effort with its post release strategy, reliably adding new bells and whistles routinely since it came out in February. It’s a proper example of how a Live Service title should behave, where the playerbase feels constantly engaged and rewarded without any selfish needling or FOMO practices to keep them shackled to the game.
Some of the best new features that have even arrived in Helldivers 2 without any marketing fanfare – the team at Arrowhead just shadow dropped hot new things and waited for players to notice, like terrifying flying bugs and giant quadruped robots.
And in the most recent update, those delightful developers have added a little something that I was asking for right from the moment I returned from my first mission.
…Persistent muck n’ gore.
Now, I don’t want to come across as a sicko – I am not speaking of gore for gore’s sake. There is a place for blood, and often it’s cleanly where it makes the most sense; such as on oneself when you have survived a gruelling videogame ordeal. Often I would see my Helldiver climb aboard his extraction dropship looking like fresh roadkill, only to arrive back on the ship looking fresh as a daisy. A bummer by any metric, I’d often muse to my colleague that it was a shame – so much so that “Yes Ash, we know.” became a routine response.
Right after this most recent patch was deployed however, I was overjoyed to see that those of us that managed to extract after a drawn out hellish battle still bore the evidence of our terrible time planet side. Coated with grime, blood (ours) and oil (theirs) we returned to the Super Destroyer bridge as proper veterans of the battle – a little worse for wear, but reasonably intact. Our brethren who didn’t make the extraction greeted us in pristine uniforms; as they had been freshly thawed to replace the stiffs left behind.
This is what Managed Democracy is all about – bearing the scars of your efforts and flaunting them to others. Medals are blasé in the universe of Helldivers (Christ, we use them as CURRENCY) so having a proper badge of bad-arsery feels …well, badarse.
So consider me tickled by how immaculately disgusting it is that we can now take a little bit of the battlefield home with us. Delightful fluids await all Divers that make extraction after getting a coating of the stuff, such as oil from the Automatons and a green goop for all your Terminid hunting efforts:
Comment
byu/the_teal_skies from discussion
inHelldivers
It’s such a delightfully simple little feature, another side-dish on an already appealing meal.
It actually has players asking if they can possibly get a decontamination station for their ships deck (gotta spend that requisition on something) and personally I think that is a brilliant idea. Hosing oneself off after a particularly hard day at the office is an institution.
In response to Helldivers returning from missions covered in blood, guts and oil. Kindly…
byu/Asian-Neo inHelldivers
Until then – I guess my new thing to complain about is that if you are covered with crud and do the ‘Hug’ emote with a mate, they don’t get covered in shared gunge.
Chop chop Arrowhead, make it happen.
Have you noticed your Helldiver is a little more banged up after making extraction nowadays? Tell us all about it in the comments or on our social media.
Known throughout the interwebs simply as M0D3Rn, Ash is bad at video games. An old guard gamer who suffers from being generally opinionated, it comes as no surprise that he is both brutally loyal and yet, fiercely whimsical about all things electronic. On occasion will make a youtube video that actually gets views. Follow him on YouTube @Bad at Video Games
