A Helldivers 2 Story Marketing campaign Would Completely Defeat The Objective

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Highlights

• A single-player marketing campaign would defeat the aim of Helldivers 2, as the sport thrives on multiplayer chaos and teamwork.
• Hero tales and character growth don’t have any place on this conflict sport, the place troopers are replaceable and names do not matter.
• It is too late for a marketing campaign in Helldivers 2, as the main target wants to stay on sustaining the live-service elements and participant satisfaction.

When Helldivers 2 first got here out, what seems like a lifetime in the past, I wrote about the way it didn’t want a marketing campaign however that I still wished it had one. Whereas the Recreation Grasp-guided emergent narrative makes for some fairly fascinating real-time storytelling, I nonetheless craved extra perception into the lore and any semblance of a plot.

I don’t need that anymore, which is nice, since developer Arrowhead’s CEO says it’s not going to happen. As somebody who’s been dipping out and in of the sport for months, I’ve realized over time what it’s that makes it so compelling and drew me to log in a number of instances every week for months earlier than I lastly burned out. Whereas the narrative is fairly fascinating – Arrowhead has managed to inform a reasonably cool story concerning the penalties of appearing like an imperialistic, militaristic software on the galactic stage – the gameplay is what makes Helldivers 2 so rattling enjoyable.

A Single-Participant Marketing campaign Defeats The Objective

Essentially, that requires multiplayer. That’s how the sport is designed to be performed, and that’s the place it shines most. After I first began taking part in, I used to be blown away by simply how humorous it was to get smushed right into a bloody, gory paste by a reinforcing squadmate, and the way nice it felt if you obtained a crew of random gamers in matchmaking that was on the identical wavelength as you, even with out turning mics on. A single-player marketing campaign wouldn’t really feel the identical, as a result of it wouldn’t play the identical.

‘However what about co-op campaigns?’ I hear you cry. This brings me to my subsequent level – campaigns are usually hero tales. You need characters to root for? You desire a significant story arc? There aren’t any, and that’s by design. Helldivers 2 is a sport the place the person doesn’t matter. When your nameless Helldiver dies, you’re instantly changed with one other nameless Helldiver, and so forth and so forth. There are not any heroes on this conflict, simply our bodies thrown into battle, fully indistinguishable from one another and whose names don’t matter.

That is your complete level – just like in real life, war is meaningless. Troopers can’t develop or change in the event that they’re useless, giving their lives in service of some summary thought of victory. With out development, growth, and regular characters, what would a Helldivers 2 marketing campaign appear like? How would it not complement an emergent narrative that’s altering in actual time? I’d love a prequel marketing campaign, however that brings me to my third level…

It’s Too Late For A Marketing campaign

Arrowhead is a live-service firm, and never a large one at that. Its website says it has “120 staff and rising”, and contemplating the studio already appears to be struggling to maintain up with the patching, balancing, and updating calls for of a highly regarded live-service, there may be completely no method it will probably put a marketing campaign within the works with out some critical growth and reprioritising.

If a marketing campaign was going to be included, it could have been when the sport was first launched, however Arrowhead merely can’t afford to pivot now. There’s an excessive amount of at stake with the live-service facet already, and with participant satisfaction dipping within the wake of controversies and unpopular steadiness modifications, it could be an enormous danger to start out engaged on one thing that its CEO stated, accurately, can be “like constructing a wholly new sport”.

We’ll simply have to come back to phrases with the truth that there’ll seemingly by no means be a narrative marketing campaign for Helldivers 2, and that it’s most likely higher this fashion. If we wish Helldivers 2 to proceed to be nearly as good as it’s now, and even higher, Arrowhead has to remain targeted on the sport that’s already on the market, as a substitute of the one which exists inside our imaginations. For $40, I believe it’s already fairly nice.