helldivers 2 is an interesting game
Uploaded: 7 march 2024, 12:00
I'll preface this by saying that I am not in the slightest experienced in this game. I just got it recently, and it's been a lot of fun, and wanted to talk about some interesting things I find about the game. I've also done pretty much no research for this either. it's kinda just me trying to draw conclusions from stuff I've observed.
Helldivers 2 is a kind of hard game to describe for me? It's a squad based shooter set in the future where you're a soldier for an intersteller empire fighting against aliens and robots, and your matches directly impact the wider events of the game, through attack and capture mechanisms on the various planets. There was a first game (as one might conclude from the name of the game lol), but I don't really know anything about it, so moving on. As of right not there's only two enemies in the game? There's the bugs (I think they have a better name than that, I juts don't remember. oh, terminids? yeah, i think that's it), which are creepy little (they're not actually little. freakishly large, actually) things that come out from nests in the ground. yeah, they're fun. Then, directly on the opposite of where (i assume?) the super earth empire (oh, right, that's the empire that you fight for. i should have mentioned that...) controls, as opposed to the termanids, are the robots (I think they're actually called automatons?)! I'm actually not sure how they... reproduce... but they drop from ships in the game. definitely a lot more technically advanced than the terminids.
Slight interruptions: I looked it up, and apparently helldivers (1) was a top down shooter game??? helldivers 1 and 2 are entirely different lol. one's top down (of all things), and the other is one of the coolest 3rd person shooters I've played in a long while.
But the world is quite interesting! The way that they characterize the faction that you fight for (super earth) really just incapsulates the "American dream" that juxtaposed with the violence and death that it creates on both sides. The intro cinematic (which absolutely bonkers btw; I have no clue how it looks so good) talks about the helldivers, "what they are", what they do, and, most importantly, why you should join.
I'm just going to interrupt what I was saying, and mention that what you see above, consistent with the little "uploaded" thing at the top of the page, was written on the 7th of march, but this, on the other hand, is, well, was (when you're reading) written on the first of april. yeah. I got a little distracting and forgot to finish this page. I'll continue this page, but keep in mind that the rest was written significantly later.
The motivation is quite unique, and there's a lot about "maintaining the way of life", no matter the cost. They will purge many planets and various species, both intentionally, and in the crossfire, along with throwing hundreds of thosuands of people's lives away to fight a way, just so that they can maintain how they live. I think that that's probably one of the most important parts of the lore of the game, but I haven't really looked into too much info about the actual lore of the game, so I'm not so sure. I think that it's quite interesting how that is, and that it's very reminiscent of conservatives and the way that they thing. That they'll fight tooth and nail to defend their own way of life, causing a multitude of damage to everyone else. Probably the closest parallel would be cars, but oil is also a very close contender. In the case of oil, there's a mountain of evidence that fossil fuels are extremely damaging to the environment, and that switching to other sources of energy like nuclear would do wonders for the planet (seriously, i cannot comprehend why we don't just switch the nuclear. If you actually look into it, you'll notice that there's basically no drawbacks to nuclear, especially when compared to fossil fuels.), though most of the misinformation, which generates the pushback (and the source of inaction in the government) comes from the fact that oil is extremely profitable, and so the poeple at the head of oil companies are stupidely rich, and therefore have enormous amounts of power in the american government, at least. so that comparison isn't too close. with cars, I think it's a bit closer, because people adore their cars, and ignore, once again, the mountain of evidence that shows that the quality of life in car dependent areas is far worse than in places where it's walkable and bikeable. Like, there's people in amsterdam (y'know, basically the most bike and walking friendly city in the world) who drive for no other reason than they just want to, which just baffles me. why would want to sit in a car and drive through the middle of a city, likely not a very far distance, when you can just ride a bike instead. idk. But people, especially here in America, love their cars, and will defend their right have buildings bulldozed so that their giant 18 lane, or whatever, highways can carve their way directly through a city. Though honestly, this suffers from the exact same comparison flaw as the other one, as it's not the people fighting for this, it's the rich! (who woulda thought...) yeah, who knew, making literally the entirety of america dependent on cars is pretty profitable for the car company, who sell the cars! There's a long history of lobbying, basically propaganda, and prevention of proper transit plans to make America the car loving place that it is today.
Though, I would like to bring up the point, that maybe this is what they intend. It's not the people who want to defend the way of life, willingly throwing theirs and others lives away, just so that they don't have to change the way that they live in the present, but rather the people at the top. The leaders of Super Earth, who look at this, and just see money. again, I know very little about the lore of this game (I've just been playing casually now and then, so all that I'm talking about is scraped together from various lines that you get from the player characters along with the lines of the cinematics and NPCs), but i think this is a pretty good guess at what the devs are trying to say with the game. There's undoubtedly people who play Helldivers 2 and think "wow, what a great cause!" or whatever, totally missing the fact that Super Earth is almost certainly in the wrong in this situation, and that almost adds to the point for me. This is a commentary on our real world society and the way that we navigate situations, namely how the rich and powerful will do all that they can to improve their situation, with little to no regard to the people. And these people who miss the point on this? well, that exactly the rich and powerful's intention. They spread lies and misinformation so that people see something like this, and think nothing of it.
Though, that's just a theory, a game theory, lmao.
I think I maybe sounded a little conspiratorial towards the end there, whoops. I just didn't really want to spend time explaining all my points, as I assume you basically already know what I'm talking about. I more or less came up with most of this, or least how to word it, on the fly while writing it, so I hope it's not too bad, or i don't contradict myself too much. I just really wanted to comment on a few things regarding the plot of the game and a few things I noticed about the gameplay... which actually I forgot to include... which basically just includes how, interestingly, the most common way that I've noticed I die in the game is not to the enemies, like you may expect, or to myself, but rather to friendly fire. It's kind of shocking how many times I've had a teammate throw down a orbital strike near where i was fighting, and I just happen to back up at the precise moment for it blow me up. There's probably something intriguing there as well, but honestly I'm kind of too lazy to think about it this moment.
so yeah, hope you enjoyed! this is the first time that I've done something in this style, and I'm planning on doing more! Just don't expect it to happen in a timely manner, because my motivation to do things like this is a mystery even to me. we'll see though! anyways, 'til next time :)