GamesThird Person ShooterHelldivers 2Illuminates invade! Helldivers 2’s biggest update yet drops today with a new alien faction and four-person vehicleWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesThird Person ShooterHelldivers 2Illuminates invade! Helldivers 2’s biggest update yet drops today with a new alien faction and four-person vehicleWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Super Earth needs us more than ever: Joining the Terminids and Automotons, Helldivers 2’s much-teased third faction has just been added in a surprise update called Omens of Tyranny, which was announced during The Game Awards. The mind-controlling Illuminates are “back with a vengeance” after previously being exiled from the galaxy, and Helldivers 2 creative lead Johan Pilestedt says that even experienced defenders of Super Earth should expect the new alien threat to give them trouble.
“The Illuminates are mostly going to be for the players that have played the game for some time, know the ins and outs, and know how to be able to handle that threat,” Pilestedt told me earlier this week after guiding me on a hands-on tour of the update. See the video above for gameplay footage of that session and our thoughts on this new era for Helldivers 2.
Here are the big additions in the Omens of Tyranny update:
The Illuminates were in the original Helldivers, and we’ve been expecting them to show up ever since Helldivers 2 blew up earlier this year. “The Illuminates were exiled 100 years ago or so from the galaxy after they lost the first Galactic War, and now they’re finally back with a vengeance,” Pilestedt told me.
The balancing decisions Arrowhead has made over the past year have been controversial—the normal state of affairs for any popular shooter—and recently, some have felt that the co-op shooter’s toughest enemies have become too easy. Pilestedt says they’re trying to be consistent with Helldiver’s themes.
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A new faction of legendary aliens who are pissed off and coming in hot is a big opportunity to tweak the threat level, though. Arrowhead hadn’t originally intended for Terminids to be viewed as the easier enemies and Automatons the harder ones, but players have latched onto that hierarchy, and the studio is running with it. The Illuminates are the new hardest faction, unless players figure out some brilliant way to undercut their supremacy.
“Of course, we know that there’s a lot of players that want that challenge that comes from playing Helldivers,” said Pilestedt. “The Illuminates are a step in that direction, and playing a high difficulty Illuminate mission is going to be a tremendous challenge for even the most experienced players, I hope. But who knows? The community is so smart and so skilled at the game that they have a tendency to surprise us, to our delight.”
Omens of Tyranny is available now as a free update for Helldivers 2.
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