The director of Dragon's Dogma 2 has embraced its release date rival Rise of the Ronin by telling fans "it's okay if you buy both" next week.
26.02.2024 - 14:01 / gamesradar.com / Johan Pilestedt / AnneMarie Ostler
With Helldivers 2's severs holding firm, developer Arrowhead Game Studios is ready to return to its "original plan" for the shooter.
Helldivers 2 has enjoyed immense success since its arrival earlier this month, attracting so many players that it's managed to surpass the PC concurrent player record of massive titles like Destiny 2. Huge player numbers are, of course, great for the developer as well as fans, but it's also something of a double-edged sword as the servers have struggled to cope with the amount of players that want to get in on the action.
Thankfully, things now appear to be in hand. According to Arrowhead CEO and creative director Johan Pilestedt, Helldivers 2's servers managed to comfortably accommodate all players during the weekend just gone.
"I'm really happy and proud of the Arrowhead team for an amazing achievement," Pilestedt says on Twitter. "The servers handled all players this weekend without problem."
I'm really happy and proud of the @arrowheadgs team for an amazing Achievement, the servers handled all @helldivers2 players this weekend without problem.Now we have time to focus on improvements to the title and resume our original plan. Many exciting things upcoming!February 25, 2024
This comes after Arrowhead, anticipating another busy weekend, raised the server capacity once again, this time to support 800,000 concurrent users. And what a weekend it was. According to SteamDB, the game surpassed its own lofty concurrent player record, with a whopping 458,709 players all zapping bugs and robots together in the name of democracy on Saturday, February 24.
With server stability less of a priority, Pilestedt has also revealed that the team now plans to add to and improve Helldivers 2 in other ways. "Now we have time to focus on improvements to the title and resume our original plan," he says. "Many exciting things upcoming!"
The developer didn't give any indication as to what these exciting things might be, but rumors abound that Arrowhead intends to add mechs in a future update as well as reintroduce the Illuminate faction from the original game. The team is currently working on a roadmap that ought to give us a much clearer picture of what the future of Helldivers 2 will look like.
Meanwhile, Helldivers 2 players are pushing back against 'meta' builds because they just want to have fun.
The director of Dragon's Dogma 2 has embraced its release date rival Rise of the Ronin by telling fans "it's okay if you buy both" next week.
Helldivers 2's Cutting Edge Premium warbond, aka DLC battle pass, is now available to buy in-game, and it is chock-full of oddball gadgetry such as lightning shotguns, burst-fire laser rifles and experimental armour. As with the Arc Thrower stratagem, the lightning shotgun fires arcs of electricity that conduct between players and enemies alike, but there's a fresh armour perk, Electrical Conduit, which reduces arc damage by 95%, allowing close-knit teams of Helldivers to roll around the battlefield frazzling themselves without much penalty.
Helldivers 2 players who literally want to watch the world burn have put forward a spicy suggestion for a new Stratagem, which sounds like it has the potential to be incredibly powerful, if not massively risky for your fellow teammates. Enter the idea of the Guard Dog Flamethrower – an auto-firing companion bot that can spew flames whenever it wants, at whatever it wants.
While continues to dominate the video game industry, one star is eager for a crossover with the game his film inspired. It doesn't take a lot to recognize that Arrowhead Studios' game and Paul Verhoeven's cult-classic sci-fi have a great deal in the company especially given that both act as satirical comments on the modern military-industrial complex and the influence of propaganda on society. Despite these heavy themes, there's still a great amount of fun to be had in either given that they also spotlight soldiers firing big weapons at giant alien bugs.
In the violent future of Helldivers 2, the United Kingdom no longer exists on Super Earth, it would seem. The co-op shooter from Arrowhead Game Studios has become a smash hit thanks to its gameplay and sci-fi story that blends classic tropes and dark, cynical humor. Lots of gamers love Helldivers 2 and are always eager to learn more about its world and backstory.
Helldiver 2's Malevelon Creek is now so renowned that the player-driven campaign to retake the planet now has its own movie parody trailer, and it has the approval of the game's director to boot.
presents players with an abundance of different tools to eliminate the deadly armies of the Terminids and Automatons and Arrowhead Studios is giving fans some insight into how those Stratagems are created. One of the core components of the popular co-op shooter is the ability to call down equipment and support from the skies, most of which take the form of explosive air strikes or precision missile launches. They're undoubtedly one of the most fun aspects of and director Johan Pilestedt wants everyone to know how the team creates them.
The Helldivers 2 devs have a pretty simple process for designing new Stratagems: they just make a new one whenever they get bored of the old selection. That's perhaps oversimplifying the process a bit, but Arrowhead Studios CEO and creative director Johan Pilestedt says it's all about having a fun idea and iterating on it until it makes sense in the game.
If you’ve ever tried to stealth your way past a Terminid patrol in Helldivers 2 and found yourself somehow spotted despite your best efforts to creep silently about and remain out of sight, there might have been a very good reason for that: it turns out the horrible bugs can smell you.
If you've ever been in the middle of playing Helldivers 2 and wondered how one of the pesky terminids managed to track you down when it should never have seen you, there's a reason for that – they can smell you.
Over three decades after it was first released, cult classic NES Metroidvania Ufouria: The Saga finally has a direct sequel, and it's doing things a little differently.
As players fight tooth and nail to reclaim planets overrun by Terminids and Automatons, developer Arrowhead reveals that the intergalactic war is managed by only a single person. While the core loop involves running around alien planets and gunning down various enemies, there's a much larger scale meta-game at play that sees the community fighting to take control of several endangered planets. Given that opposing factions seemingly respond to player-led pushes, many assumed it was simply an automatic difficulty setting to make the experience more challenging.