While Arrowhead Game Studios has been doing a great job of keeping its future plans for Helldivers 2 to itself, a new social media post by creative director Johan Pilstedt has indicated that the studio has already planned out the next four major story arcs that will come to the co-op shooter. He didn’t really offer many details about this, and the post is basically a picture of Pilestedt hanging out with fellow developers from Arrowhead Game Studios.
“With the directors, talking about Helldivers 2’s next 4 arcs,” wrote Pilestedt in a caption accompanying the photo. “Any hot takes?” he continued, prompting Helldivers 2 fans for their own ideas about the direction that the shooter should take. One fan responded to this asking for what kind of timeline Arrowhead Game Studios would be aiming for with these four arcs, asking whether it would take over three years for it to play out.
To this, Pilestedt responded by saying that the studio hopes to release the planned content at a better pace than over the course of over three years. This, he said, was helped by the fact that Helldivers 2 has seen quite a few improvements made to it on the technical side. He said that “we’ll deliver a bit more often than that. Especially now that we are in a better technical space.”
While it is unknown what kind of stories Arrowhead Game Studios will tell through these future arcs, the studio has done a great job of crafting a few narratives over the first two years of Helldivers 2’s release. Among these have included the story of the defense of Planet Mort, the destruction of Meridien, and even the invasion of Super Earth by the Illuminates.
One of these narratives – the defense of Mort – was celebrated earlier this year by Helldivers 2 game master Joel. In a video series celebrating the title’s first year of release, Joel spoke about the Galactic War metanarrative and how players have helped shape the galaxy’s story with the choices they made.
“Over the course of the last year of the Galactic War, we have, on numerous occasions, been positively surprised by the actions and choices that the community have taken,” says Joel. “Choices that are now canon, that are now part of Helldivers lore for all time.”
The Galactic War has acted as the main narrative feature of Helldivers 2 since its release. The narrative essentially works with Joel – as game master – picking planets that will be targeted by one of the three main enemy factions of the game. Players then have to decide how they want to save these planets by accomplishing various goals, and their success or failure defines how the next stage of the invasion will play out.
Pilestedt also recently spoke about how the studio has a prototype of a roguelite game mode for Helldivers 2. While he didn’t too many details about this mode, he did note that it brings fundamental changes to the core gameplay of the co-op shooter.