Back when Helldivers 2 first released, watching a Bile Titan emerge from the dirt would send a small shiver down my spine. Just one titan, with its four towering legs, thick-armored carapace, and noxious acid spray could instantly wipe a squad of Helldivers and spin a mission out of control. Bile Titans, and to a lesser extent Chargers, demanded a squad’s attention with their dramatic strides and unmatched lethality. Fighting them was a thrill, because they were essentially boss encounters that could kick off at any point in a mission.
But after yesterday’s big “buff everything” patch, Helldivers 2’s largest enemies have lost a lot of their sting. Arrowhead boosted the damage on loads of underwhelming guns and, crucially, reworked enemy armor so that way more support weapons, air strikes, and even some primary guns rip straight through thick armor.
Now when a Bile Titan, Charger, Impaler, Hulk, Tank, and or even a Factory Strider shows up on the map, our game plan is the same as any other bug or bot: shoot it with the biggest gun we have and it’ll die. Quickly, too—we’re beheading Bile Titans before they have time to spew acid, exploding Charger butts before they can even charge, and ending Impalers with Napalm Barrages before its tentacles can whip anybody around. Our newfound bulldozing abilities are empowering, but they’ve also reduced what used to be Helldivers’ most intense showdowns to routine.
I’m not saying I want to go back to the old days of 48 hours ago, because that sucked for other reasons. Yes, Bile Titans were a proper existential threat, but there were so few viable options to kill them that we all felt forced to bring the same three stratagems to every tango: Orbital Laser, 500kg Bomb, and Railcannon Strike. Our nights in Helldivers no longer need to begin with deciding who will take up the mantle of “obligatory rocket guy” so everybody else can have fun experimenting with weird Arc Thrower builds or equipping three different flamethrowers. It is unreservedly awesome that I can now square up against a Charger with my favorite support weapon, the Anti-Material Rifle, and blow its head off with a few accurate shots.
Nemesis to fodder
I’m also not suggesting that Helldivers 2 is too easy now, because levels 8-10 will still chew through those 20 lives in a blink. The problem is that fights are less interesting when the biggest threats go down so quickly, and all cranking up the difficulty does is increase how many enemies appear. Raw difficulty is never what made Helldivers 2 fun in the first place. Arrowhead’s secret sauce is its rare, dialed-in sense for friction: Guns are powerful, but helldivers are fragile and friendly fire is on. Players are heavily outnumbered, but they can invoke the almighty power of Super Earth at regular intervals. You will die, but you can come back. Yesterday’s patch smoothed off a bit of that friction, and I wonder when, or if, we’ll get it back.
Now that Arrowhead has solved the problem of too many weapons being useless, it’s easier to see where Helldivers 2 can go from here. Deeper health pools for larger enemies might bring back some of that lost tension (apparently Arrowhead did this already in the new patch, but it’s not noticeable), but I’d be more excited by new enemy types that force us outside our rocket launcher-shaped comfort zones. Possibly those of the Illuminate variety?
I’d be amazed if yesterday’s patch wasn’t formulated with future threats and potential power creep in mind—after all, we’re still waiting on those datamined vehicles. What will Helldivers 2 be like once a squad can huddle into a strapped APC and cross the mission map in a minute flat? I imagine we’ll need even tougher bugs and bots to counteract the cars—and what happens when angry fans decide those enemies are too powerful and that cars should actually be unstoppable death machines?
That’s my real issue with this new balancing direction. I like most of the changes that Arrowhead eventually landed on, but not the ugly arm-twisting from fans that got us here. We can now see, at least partially, the eventuality that Arrowhead was trying to avoid by nerfing stuff. The galaxy’s apex predators have been demoted to common fodder.
