At what point should a live service game stop updating its live service and move into a new title? If you’re the guy behind Arrowhead Studios’ Helldivers 2, you’re going to add things to the game to the point that another sequel won’t really matter.
Arrowhead CCO and H2 creative director Johan Pilestedt replied to a Twitter thread that asked about the potential for eight-player co-op, noting that several technical hurdles prevent the shooter from supporting more than a four-person team. “As a catch all reply: Its not impossible, and its something we talk about often at the studio,” he wrote. “Future will tell what happens.”
This in turn caused the thread’s OP to joke about a third game coming in 2032 that would add both eight-player gameplay and swimming, which brings us to Pilestedt’s remark about updating:
“We are growing Helldivers 2 into Helldivers 3…. so you may be correct. Except maybe swimming – I don’t think its possible to swim in a heavy plate carrier with rifle and support weapons.”
Of course, this doesn’t really give any ideas about what updates will be incoming to the shooter, but it does clearly express the studio’s overall aspirations. For what’s possibly next, there’s a discussion on Reddit about miniguns where Pilestedt is taking suggestions on how to add them to H2 in a believably realistic fashion from a ballistics standpoint. It’s also likely the game will be more careful about collaborative store items, as Arrowhead elected to give out the second part of the Killzone collab items for free ahead of their original release in response to earlier player backlash.
