Helldivers 2's third enemy faction is probably almost certainly about to be released, with players reporting sightings of the mysterious threat on the game's Galactic War map. Development studio Arrowhead, aka the majestic government of Super Earth, is, as usual, downplaying the rumors. They claim (via an in-game stream) that the temporary appearance of a strange purple blob on the map screen is actually the result of fluids leaking from the corpse of a long-dead communications technician, trapped in a server farm. Who are we to believe? Oh, if only there were some way to shed light on the reports. Some way to shed light on the situation.
If you didn't play the original Helldivers and therefore didn't understand this reference, it's almost certain that Helldivers 2's third faction is the Illuminate, a fleet of evil squid-like creatures that have returned armed with Tesla beams, cloaking devices, and tripod mechanisms. The evidence for this begins with an in-game post in February about Illuminate sightings that Arrowhead/Super Earth described as “the work of dissidents.” Arrowhead also added weapons to the game that appear to have been designed with Illuminate biology in mind. And then there was the Grand Order, which resulted in the creation of what data divers speculate may have been a wormhole to the monstrous dimension the Illuminate are now from.
Add to all this the “leaked” character models and in-game imagery of uncertain origin. The purple blob on the Galactic War map (adorned with Illuminate iconography of a circle within a circle) seems like it could be easier to craft than the actual enemy models – I just checked and it doesn't appear in my game. But still, Arrowhead to have It was officially acknowledged on Xitter, with Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani describing it as “fake news.”
I haven't played Helldivers 2 for a while, mostly because, like certain shark species, my journalist brain needs to constantly swim forward or drown, but also because I tend to play solo, and because the difficulty stops being very fun after a certain point. I'm also starting to get a little tired of Illuminate's provocation, so we haven't covered some of the other recent hints and rumors – not Winds-of-Winter level delayed gratification, but it's getting a little old.
In other news, Arrowhead recently announced a new approach to balancing Helldivers 2, with one particular update upsetting players so much that they started allowing Automatons to win. Are you playing much right now?