The true enemy of Helldivers 2 has been unveiled, and he has a name to make players quiver in their boots: Joel.
Players have been bickering over the past few weeks over the global progression over certain missions. In particular, Malevelon Creek was deemed a key planet in the battle against the automatons, which for a while was the primary focus for players logging in to complete missions. (Or maybe a lot of players just fell in love with it from taking so many missions there, as it wasn’t often considered a “Defend”-mission planet.)
When the mission to redeem Malevelon Creek was marked as failed, with the planet appearing overwhelmed, fingers started being pointed. Farmers were called the main culprits of the situation, as it counts as an overall global mission loss if you do objectives and make no attempt to extract. After all, it’s an incomplete expedition if you don’t expedite out of there.
At some point, though, PC Gamer talked to CEO Johan Pilestedt about the cross-galaxy wars and unveiled a deeper secret: they’re all controlled by one guy, an official Game Master named Joel. He treats the game like any overarching RPG campaign (or even a Dungeons and Dragons one), able to control the “twists and turns” at any level, from mission-by-mission mechanics to just the overall density of mission types.
"We have a lot of systems built into the game where the Game Master has a lot of control over the play experience,” Pilestedt explained. “It's something that we're continuously evolving based on what's happening in the game."
Joel’s apparently quite the dedicated type, scheming even late into the hours as new developments arise. The team is also keeping an eye on developments such as Malevelon Creek, which players grew very attached to, and understand how they can use such scenarios as key pieces in further overarching “storylines” as the war rages on.
We’ve yet to see how the system will progress further, but the community is taking this development with delight, glad to have a name to the shenanigans—and perhaps glad that the mission system isn’t a bot itself.
How are we feeling about our fight for liberty lately, fellow Helldivers?
