Hell Divers 2 was one of Sony's biggest hits of 2024, catapulting its developer, Arrowhead Studio, to an unexpected level of fame. Why are we talking about this on Nintendo's site? Well, while the party shooter might not share that much DNA with House of Mario, one of the studio's old game concepts does: an arcade shooter inspired by… wait for it… Star fox.
That's according to Arrowhead CCO and Creative Director of Helldivers 2 Johan Pilestedtwho in a New Year's post on Twitter asked fans what they hope to see from the studio in the future, highlighting some of the team's previous prototypes (thanks for the heads up, Eurogamer).
Answering one fan suggestion for a “Star Fox-style game,” Pilestedt revealed that Arrowhead once did a concept for just that. Tentatively titled “Eagles of Democracy”, Studio CCO stated that the game will “basically try to capture Star Fox” in its mix of arcade and grounded gameplay, and even went so far as to build a prototype in Unreal to show it off.
Pilestedt shared the following images of the high-flying project that, ironically, never came to fruition:
We find it highly unlikely that anything from the Sony-published Helldivers team will make it to a Nintendo console anytime soon, but the mere mention of Star Fox has us yearning for a reboot of the series again — come on, Nintendo, the Wii U entries were released almost 10 years ago year!
Arrowhead has recently come under fire for its release Helldivers 2 X Killzone crossoverwhich many consider drastically overrated. Studio later took the blame for prices, release the second wave of crossovers for free.
