Helldivers 2
Helldivers 2 is known for its ever-changing and dynamic solar system-wide war against bugs and bots, and players are tasked with defending or taking over planets in order to prevent various invasions from reaching “Super Earth.” They try, and lately, they’ve often been failing.
As it turns out, this is not some fully dynamic system that Helldivers 2 dev Arrowhead has set in motion and simply lets it run and do its thing. They actually have a single guy in the studio who serves as the “Game Master” of the game, a Dungeons and Dragons term, who is controlling large-scale aspects of the conflict, and including directly messing with the entire player population.
Speaking to PC Gamer, Arrowhead CEO: Johan Pilestedt explain the role of Joel. The guy’s name is Joel:
“We have a lot of systems built into the game where the Game Master has a lot of control over the play experience. It’s something that we’re continuously evolving based on what’s happening in the game,” Pilestedt said. “And as part of the roadmap, there are things that we want to keep secret because we want to surprise and delight.”
Helldivers 2
Sometimes Joel thinks the war is not going in an appropriate direction, and will push back against or in favor of players on his own volition:
“There have been some sudden moments where maybe one planet was too easy or one was too hard and [Joel] had to get up in the middle of the night to give the Automatons a bit of reinforcements so the players don’t take [the planet] too quickly.”
Later, after a number of questions about Joel’s role in the wake of the interview, Pilestedt took to Twitter to add a few more points:
- The main role is to choose what major order is happening, and the dailies.
- It’s also to choose where enemies are attacking at any given time.
- But the overall war and liberation of planets through fighting is “all you,” the playerbase.
- Joel can reinforce planets if needed and give out temporary equipment to the whole community. And there will be the ability for other actions in the future that haven’t been revealed yet.
In the wake of Joel’s public debut (I am only 60% convinced Joel is real), players have been blaming him for the recent loss of Malevelon Creek, aka Robot Vietnam which fell to the Automatons after furious fighting for the better part of a week. When Joel sent a bunch more Automaton reinforcements to make that fight even tougher is unclear, but players are certainly blaming him. I think they’re joking. Maybe.
So, what will Joel do next? It’s anyone’s guess. But some are hoping for a rain of mechs to help take the fight back to the rust buckets and bugs. We’ll see what he has planned for the future.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
