Helldivers 2: Killing For “Freedom”…with Friends!
I’m supposed to be writing something else right now. I’m supposed to be working on a review of the books NBA Jam by Reyan Ali and Animal Crossing by Kelsey Lewin. I’m also supposed to be working on about six different “Joy of Movement” essays which range in topic from Final Fantasy VII: Remake to Silent Hill 2 to Donkey Kong Country to Spyro the Dragon. I’m supposed to be working on an essay about starting Chrono Trigger and exploring the Millenial Fair. I'm supposed to be working on my second “100 Hours of…” essay which is going to be about the Windows PC game Stronghold Crusader. I have my first essay about Metroid Prime started, and I have a new long-form essay about Assassin’s Creed II. There’s essays about Super Mario Sunshine and Odyssey that I want to write, to say nothing of the fact that I want to write essays about Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, and Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. And this is nothing compared to the 10 or 12 “Under 500 Words” essays that I’ve started about games such as Pokemon: Blue Version, Frogger, Dynasty Warriors 4, Final Fantasy VII, DK Junior Math, and that stupid Playboy game for Playstation 2.
This list ain’t even everything on my writing queue, it just serves to demonstrate that there are, as of this writing, a great number of videogames I want and need to be writing about.
Instead I’m writing about Helldivers 2.
And I’m writing about Helldivers 2 because the game rules.
I’d feel more guilty about this decision, but as the Nobel Prize winning novelist William Faulkner once said, “Follow the energy, ride the wave, write about what you want…and never pick Charmander at the start of the game, just get one of your friends to trade you one later.”
William Faulkner was a rad dude, and wise as all get out.
Though he did assume that some of us actually had friends growing up.
Helldivers 2 is a online multiplayer, third-person, science-fiction, action-adventure third person shooter videogame set in a future world where all humans have united under the banner of a single government called Super Earth. Beneath the veneer of positivity this world is in reality a dystopian, fascist nightmare. However, rather than explore the plight of the individual being manipulated through media suggestion and outright totalitarian military control, Helldivers 2 quickly pivots to action by demonstrating, through an objectively brilliant satirical recruitment video, that giant insects are attacking humanity and must be stopped (the game doesn’t even try to hide the fact that it’s inspired by the film Starship Troopers). At this point players run through a quick training level and are then immediately given control over their own personal space-ship with enough ordinance and resources for military operations to make the ghost of General George S. Patton weep. Once on the ship players interact with an onboard map and select missions on various planets where the insect race of Terminids are either occupying territory or invading. Likewise there are also armies of robots referred to as Automatons (often simply referred to as “The bots”) that are likewise expanding into various planets around the central hub that is Super Earth.
Players are told to select a mission, and then defend Democracy.
How does one defend democracy?
By killing absolutely everything.
Helldiver’s 2 is a third-person shooter game and its gameplay weighs heavily on violence. In fact as I consider the verbs of Helldivers 2 they are remarkably similar to Classic DOOM’s.
The primary verb is “shoot” since everything in Helldiver’s 2 is trying to kill the player. On more than one occasion players will land accidentally (or intentionally depending on the player and moment) smack dab into the middle of an enemy fortress at which point the only course of action is to begin shooting…or launch an Orbital strike at my location.
Always remember that in the world of Helldivers 2 suicide through giant laser is better cowardice.
On the note of Orbital Strikes, the second verb in Helldivers 2 is “call,” though this verb is admittedly weak for describing entering a series of codes using the directional pad (d-pad) that allows players to summon everything from turrets, laser strikes, airborne missiles, extra guns and equipment, mortar blasts, napalm strikes, rocket launchers, airborne drones that follow the player around providing extra support, flamethrowers, more Helldivers when team-mates die (which is totally gonna happen by the way) and even giant mechs players can operate. Perhaps the verb “enter” would be more appropriate since these codes are operated on an avatar’s wrist panel, or on various terminals scattered throughout the game, but I don’t like the way the word hits my ear. Plus characters typically announce this verb by saying out loud “calling down a support weapon” or “calling in an evac.” The point is, players will spend most of the game shooting enemies or calling in various forms of support.
There are other verbs in Helldivers 2, but apart from “shoot” and “call” the one players will employ the most is “explore.” Again Helldivers 2 is remarkably similar to Classic DOOM because while most of the promotional material for the game, as well as personal anecdotes from fans, focuses on the shooting, there’s large periods of the game where players will be navigating the open spaces of whatever planet they are on either looking for the next fight, or else looking for what amounts to collectible trinkets to expand their armory.
Let me clarify my vocabulary real quick before it’s misunderstood for derision.
There is what videogame critic Tim Rogers refers to as a “Trinket economy” in Helldivers 2, however unlike other games I’ve played where the collecting is self-serving, the trinkets players collect actually provide in-game benefits. There are “super credits” that open “War Bonds” that are effectively collections of weapons, outfits, skins for support vehicles, and more super credits. Super credits can be purchased through microtransactions (which I have many opinions about) however they can also be acquired in the missions themselves giving players the option to grind for these perks or just buy them outright depending on their play style. There are also trinkets referred to as “samples” that vary from plant life, minerals, body parts of organisms, or even just notes left behind by other Helldivers that can be collected to increase the ordinance of the ship and thus give players perks such as more powerful laser strikes, faster reload times for turrets, more opportunities for airborne firepower, etc.
I admit freely that I get tired of the expanding Trinket economy designs of many Triple-A videogames. But I give Helldivers 2 credit for structuring this overused design in a way that feels entertaining.
Exploration in Helldivers 2 has to be balanced alongside mission objectives because if players take too long to explore the map they can miss their window for extraction and thus may fail the mission they are on, or have to wait for the next possibility which means having to survive on the planet. The lesson a player learns is that the verb “explore” has to be second to “shoot” otherwise they risk losing all of those wonderful trinkets they worked so hard to find.
Exploring will also allow players to stumble across various enemy fortresses and camps which can be destroyed for extra points which in turn will allow players to steadily acquire credits to acquire better gear such as armor, firearms, and capes which are important to battle.
I should clarify capes don’t actually provide any in-game benefits, but they look awesome. And as the Pulitzer-Prize winning author John Steinbeck once said, “Looking awesome makes killing Robots way, way more fun.”
I recognise this analysis of the game would at first make it seem like Helldivers 2 might have a plot or progression system that players will be working towards.
This impression is false.
There is no story to Helldivers 2.
Or at least note a playable one.
The narrative of Helldivers 2 is largely communicated through the constant stream of advertisement material that plays on the ship, the descriptions written about weapons and armor, the occasional line delivered by npcs on the ships, and the repetitive nature of the play itself. Playing Helldivers 2 is not about following a single character and their emotional journey in the war against the automatons and terminids. In fact players are almost certainly never going to be playing the same Helldiver they started the game with. This is because death is an inevitability, not just in life, but in the actual game. I’ve already written one essay about dying in Helldivers 2, but I’ll just note that death is as much a part of the narrative design as every other part of this game.
Helldivers 2's is a story about constant unending war and death.
And I can’t emphasize this enough, it absolutely rules.
Structurally the actual game is just a series of missions that vary in difficulty and content. Some missions will involve Helldivers arriving on a planet, raising a flag for Super Earth, and then leaving. Other missions will involve launching an ICBM, drilling for precious resources, destroying every armed settlement on the planet, decimating factories of robots (some of which have chainsaws for hands(some of which are covered in bulletproof armor(and some of which can only be destroyed using high powered guns and/or airborne missiles))) and then launching back to their ship. Every other real-world day the developers craft new solo missions for players that are typically just challenges involving how many bots can be shot in the legs or blown up, or else pseudo-narrative goals about Super Earth territory being invaded that boil down to encouraging players to focus on one planet rather than another.
This sounds repetitive as I write it, and it is, but what keeps Helldivers 2 from becoming an empty time-killer is a combination of the ridiculous and fantastic ways to die while on missions, and the other factor is the multiplayer system.
To lay it out straight, I love Helldivers 2 because of the cooperative play.
Cooperative, rather than competitive play, is not something I’m unfamiliar with. I’ve written, as of this writing, three different essays about the videogame Death Stranding and two of them have briefly explored how players cooperate with one another over the digital divide. In Death Stranding players can build structures such as bridges, viewing towers, safe rooms, ladders, mail-boxes, and highways that can be used by other players. Part of the fun of the game is observing how players have worked together to make the process of delivering packages easier. Likewise players can leave small messages to one another that can serve to either warn other players about rain, BTs(Beached Things), Mule Camps, etc. or to lift their spirits by leaving encouraging icons that can provide a stamina boost for Sam, or increase BB’s happiness levels. The point is, as long as the player has the Bridges system switched on they will encounter other players indirectly by the tools they’ve left behind, and all of this establishes the perception that I am one person in a greater whole working towards a common goal.
Helldivers 2 spiritually follows this structure.
But with guns.
Lots of guns.
A player can choose to play Helldivers 2 alone, but every facet of the game’s design encourages cooperative play. Unless someone has their account or a group’s account as private any player can join any squad at any time regardless of level.
For example.
Literally the day before I wrote this sentence I joined a squad of three players who were between levels two to four while I was level 20. They were launching an ICBM on a planet infested with bugs (and please don’t ask me which planet because I honestly can’t remember). The only relevant, and important information for this story is that they were fighting terminids and they were playing a “Medium” level mission. Apart from immediately feeling like “that old dude” the game was a ton of fun, and not just because my outfit made me resemble Hunk from Resident Evil 2. Despite my upper levels these dudes took point (I assume they were dudes (there’s actually legions of women, trans, and non-binary Helldivers out there(sexism and homophobia are treason against democracy anyway))), and in no short amount of time we’d cleared the surface of every sample available, we’d adjusted a satellite relay, we’d uncovered three different bunkers full of Super Credits, launched the ICBM, and killed somewhere around 1000 terminids. These actions by themselves were fun, but the best part was during extraction when, as the last swarms of bugs were closing in, I threw an orbital laser. As a beam of plasma carved across the field obliterating the horde of insects the three avatars of my fellow players just…stopped.
They literally stopped and stared and I did what any good helldiver would do. I turned my back to the laser beam and saluted Super Earth.
I provided this anecdote admittedly to brag (it was one of the few moments in my life when I felt “cool”). But I also share with the immediate follow-up that there have been numerous comparable moments while playing Helldivers 2 with other players achieving moments of what Pulitzer Prize winning author Edith Wharton would describe as “sheer, goddamn, beautiful, crazy bad-assery.”
Fun fact, after publishing her novel The Age of Innocence in 1920 Edith Wharton would pen a number of really solid Terminator fan-fiction novellas. They’ve mostly been ignored by literary critics, which is why I’m glad I abandoned academia when I did.
Every mission of Helldivers 2 is an opportunity to join a group of complete strangers and work in collaboration towards a goal…while killing giant space bugs and robots.
In my near 50 hours of playing the game every session (except for one) I encountered players who worked together to achieve the collected goals. Players are all working together to complete missions that stack (sometimes painfully slow) for the benefit of Super Earth, and even when I play with friends and we run missions that are just excuses to watch our avatars die in spectacularly beautiful and hilarious ways there’s a wonderful emotional and intellectual revelation: I’m having fun with other human beings playing a videogame.
I recognise in the year of our Lord Neptune 2025, that sentiment ain’t anything revolutionary, but it is to me dang it.
I’ve never enjoyed multi-player games because, up till now, they've always been centered on competition, and, honestly, I suck at them. It makes sense to me at least that if the only muti-player experience involves losing over and over again it’s gonna be difficult to establish a positive impression.
Helldivers 2 is the first online multiplayer game where I’ve derived a real joy from playing and it’s entirely because the design of the game is about cooperation. I’m helping other players complete missions which will bring me in-game benefits, but there’s far more personal enjoyment from the experience of helping another player complete a mission. The ridiculous poses, hyperbolic parody of a militaristic fascist society, point systems to acquire armor that’s almost always entirely superficial, swarms of enemy npcs that assure me that death is just one well-timed swipe of a chainsaw away, and an endless series of explosions are wonderful aesthetic and narrative structures, but it’s the act of cooperation between players where the real meat of this game is.
Videogames as a medium are about interaction, both in terms of the software itself and the other people who have engaged with the media. Helldivers 2 is just one of a number of online videogames where players (like me) have found community and solace in engaging with the software and then discovering another human soul. Even if I’ll only play one or two missions with another player, the moments when we’re both fighting for our lives before a charger crushes us, or as we both throw an orbital strike at the same automaton factory stick with me. We’re both fighting for democracy, prosperity, liberty, and the sanctity of Super Earth.
We may have only contributed a 0.00002% difference in the war effort, but what’s most important is we made sure to grab all the samples one of us dropped when they died, and if that ain’t friendship I don’t know what is.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
11.14.2024
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