Helldivers 2 boss turns to the community for an Eagle stratagem brainstorming session: 'This is way more fun than a conference room' (2024)

Even if Arrowhead is signaling a move towards a slower, more sustainable pace of Helldivers 2 updates, you can never have too many ideas to work with when you're dreaming up the next installment of Super Earth ordinance. Arrowhead chief creative officer Johan Pilestedt seems to think so, at least. Taking to Twitter over the weekend, Pilestedt put out a call asking for the community's best ideas for Eagle air support stratagems.

Helldivers 2 fans were more than happy to provide their creative input. At time of writing, Pilestedt's request for stratagem ideas has gotten over 5,000 replies. Suggestions range from Dr. Strangelove references to simple requests for punchier strafing run audio. And unsurprisingly, some took the opportunity to air their grievances about balance changes.

As to whether we're likely to see any of these ideas appear in-game: I wouldn't expect to actually see any mini-mech squads or drone swarms hit the Helldivers battlefield. "Let's see if any gets picked up," Pilestedt said in a follow-up post to appreciate the "many great ideas," which is a gentle let-down if I've ever read one.

Presumably, sourcing feature concepts directly from the community could expose the studio to potential intellectual property disputes, which likely leaves this brainstorming session safely in the realm of a community creative exercise. But you never know with Helldivers 2—if airdropped mini-mech squads eventually appear, I certainly won't refuse them.

Lincoln Carpenter

Contributor

Lincoln spent his formative years in World of Warcraft, and hopes to someday recover from the experience. Having earned a Creative Writing degree by convincing professors to accept his papers about Dwarf Fortress, he leverages that expertise in his most important work: judging a video game’s lore purely on the quality of its proper nouns. With writing at Waypoint and Fanbyte, Lincoln started freelancing for PC Gamer in Fall of 2021, and will take any excuse to insist that games are storytelling toolkits—whether we’re shaping those stories for ourselves, or sharing them with others. Or to gush about Monster Hunter.