Helldivers 2 is a fun game with great physical comedy that flows naturally from the robust, friendly fire mechanics. It’s also a challenging game that pits extremely soft helldivers with limited resources against endless waves of giant bugs. But few people talk about what it’s like sometimes terrible Play thanks to the machines.
On Monday, however, the Helldivers rejoiced in a decisive and collective victory over the Automatons and their claimed territory. These Terminator-style robots are clearly designed to be malevolent. They patrol around, humming in binary code and surveying the land with glowing red eyes. If that’s not enough to convey “bad” in visual language, Arrowhead Game Studios has wisely added skulls impaled on spikes attached to their exo-skeletons. My primal brain’s first reaction when it sees a machine is “NO.”
I didn’t think much more about it because my friends and I were too busy following important orders from Super Earth Command on the galactic map. We failed to free Tibit, fought for Malevelon Creek, and fought helicopter gunships on several planets. I used to think the robots were much rougher than beetles, but I learned new strategies and it was deeply satisfying to finally drive the automatons off the galactic map. We all knew they would return because that’s how Arrowhead runs the game. We just thought it would take longer than two days.
Somehow the automatons returned.
As always suspected, the previous bot force was merely an advance guard. A massive fleet has now begun an attack on Cyberstan and the surrounding planets. Helldiver, hold back this unprovoked invasion. The fight goes on! pic.twitter.com/2DzEued7mm
— HELLDIVERS™ 2 (@helldivers2) April 9, 2024
The players were back fighting Beetles when the Automatons suddenly appeared with a new fleet, forcing us to defend two new sectors. They are making a massive push towards Cyberstan and the Helldivers are the only thing standing in their way. And the more I fight these guys, the more I realize that they are actually deeply existentially frightening.
If the player pays attention to dissident propaganda and reads between the lines of “Major Orders”, they learn that the Automatons were created by the Cyborgs, an enemy faction from the first game enslaved in the mines of the former cyborg capital of Cyberstan. The automatons are just trying to take back the city.
This moral complexity is not particularly surprising at a meta-level; Helldivers 2 isn’t subtle about Super Earth secretly being the villains. But it definitely changed my perspective…until I came across the whole body desecration thing.
The automatons don’t just commit the requisite amount of murder; They do their best. Their camps are littered with dismembered Helldivers and SEAF troops, displayed as trophies. They also built brain harvesting shrines – perhaps to fuel their endless killing? Suddenly the Super Earth propaganda about them stealing children seems a lot more plausible.
Even if the worst-case situation is true and the automatons are actually using human brains and nervous systems to create endless soldiers for their war, isn’t that at least somewhat justified? In a way, as a player, I have compassion for the Automatons, but I can’t muster the same compassion when I’m in the middle of combat with them, facing tanks, missile destroyers, and gunships.
The automatons are back and I will fight them (because I want my Grand Order medals, thank you very much). But I don’t feel very good about it. In fact, deep in my bones, I am terrified.
