Helldivers 2’s creative director, Johan Pilestedt, has stated that friendly fire is one of the game’s “pivotal functions”, cementing that it’s not going to be changed in the future.
Your hunt for democracy in Helldivers 2 is an incredibly deadly one, with aseemingly endless amount of things that can kill youat any given moment (something that’s about to get scarier with the addition of a third faction). As scary as Terminids and Automatons are, though, the biggest threat in Helldivers 2 is one that’s much closer to home -your teammates and their deadly friendly fire.
Although veteran Helldivers players are very used to how brutal the friendly fire can be and have likely mastered avoiding their teammates when firing a gun (something half the people I team up with don’t seem to understand), newcomers to the series have been getting rocked by it since the game launched last month.
If you’ve been having trouble with team-killing and hoping for friendly fire to be changed in the game’s future, you might want to think again.Helldivers 2’s creative director, Johan Pilestedt, recently took part in an interview with PlayStation Blog, where he talked about the game’s development and how Arrowhead brought forward the core mechanics of the first game into the sequel.
At several points in the interview, Pilestedt brings up friendly fire as a mechanic in Helldivers 2 and makes it very clear that it’s an important part of the game. In fact, at one point Pilestedt even calls it one of the game’s “pivotal functions”, and that it’s a core part of making players feel the “fragility of humans”.
“Things should be consistent in the game world and therefore, we must have friendly fire. If your bullets can kill enemies, and the enemies can kill you, then logic dictates that your bullets must also be able to kill your friends. This kind of design is inherently systematic, where we create a rule set that applies to everything in the game world, with minor exceptions.”
Pilestedt went on to say that Helldivers 2 needs to be believable and have consistency, which means that friendly fire had to be a thing in the game and that you had to be able to kill your friend. He also said that having friendly fire as a core mechanic in the game that must be dealt with and thought around means that players are always having to problem-solve and think about what they’re doing.
Of course, beyond all that, Pilestedt also notes that one of the reasons why friendly fire is so important in Helldivers 2 is because of how funny it is and how much “dark humour” it allows for. That’s certainly true from my experience, and it sounds clearer than ever that Helldivers 2 isn’t going to be getting rid of its friendly fire or making adjustments to it any time soon.
