After Helldivers 2 players come up short in latest Major Order, Arrowhead casually declares that "The Second Galactic War" is upon us
Everything up until now was apparently "merely an elaborate special operation". There's no satire going on here.
Hello. Helldivers 2's community failed its last Major Order. Sorry I had to break that to you. Anyway, now Arrowhead says that all of the fighting up until this point - an entire war's worth, was just the prelude to "The Second Galactic War" which has just kicked off.
While they did manage to kill a lot of bugs - enough to make Helldivers 2's very impressive sales numbers look tiny in comparison, players have been enduring a bit of harder fight as of late, though things should at least get a bit less frustrating via a spawn rate revamp that's coming soon. For now thoough, get your correctly coloured Tenderizer ready, the second war has begun.
In a war update posted to Helldivers 2's Discord server, community manager Baskinator got the honour of delaring this new era's commencement, in typical Helldivers style - and by that I mean dripping with ironic humour. "After five days of intense decommissioning of Automatons into scrap metal for use in advanced anti-tank mines, the Helldivers came 78% towards the stated goal of 2 billion dead bots," they wrote, adding: "This means that the new stratagem will continue to elude the Helldiver arsenal for now..."
So far, so normal, right? Get a load of this next bit. "The war now escalates into what is officially called "The Second Galactic War." All conflict leading up to this was merely an elaborate special operation," the community manager declared, "New recruits are being trained to bolster the ranks of SEAF, and the Helldivers are tasked with guarding these training facilities so that each recruit can be given their rigorous 72 hour basic training."
So, yup, there you go, an entire new war and what looks very much like it could be a lampooning of the way the Russian government's referred to the invasion of Ukraine it launched back in 2022.
That last bit concerns the new Major Order, which tasks players with maintaining control of the planets Aeris Pass, Vernen Wells, Heeth, and Angel's Venture so that those massive SEAF training facilities can be erected. Folks on Reddit reckon those new recruits being trained might be NPC squads, but who knows.
Maybe the next galactic war will be something even more like Star Wars' Clone Wars than the base game, something some Helldivers 2 modders have been working on recently.