Arrowhead wants Helldivers 2's assault on Cyberstan to really sell the promise of the Galactic War: 'We don't know how it will play out. We don't know if they will win'

One of the biggest draws towards Helldivers 2 is the Galactic War—a high-concept metagame that sees the entire community taking objectives, defending planets, and securing story-relevant goals to shape the fate of the galaxy itself. Or at least, that's the premise.

Throughout the game's lifespan, it's been occasionally called into question. Take the Menkent Line, for example, which had players disillusioned with the whole exercise back in April 2024 because the sleight-of-hand involved in ensuring players get cool stuff regardless of whether or not they win is vital.

Things have steadily improved, though. The Battle for Super Earth genuinely threatened the galaxy's base of operations entirely—leading to a potential Helldivers 1-style reset if the playerbase beefed it and, in a recent interview with IGN, game director Mikael Eriksson hopes the current update's march on Cyberstan, home of the Automatons (and now Cyborgs), will be similar.

"One of the central points of Helldivers is that we play the game together with the community, and the actions of the community are not known to us and the outcomes are not predetermined," Eriksson claims. "This has been the case since launch, but of course, we've tried to expand on this with almost every update to make this more impactful, and to make it more obvious what the different outcomes are and what the consequences will be."

Cyberstan aims to be the ground of Arrowhead's most ambitious swing at this overarching narrative yet, so sayeth Eriksson: "The Battle for Cyberstan will be the most ambitious one yet with a new type of meta gameplay … they can attack the planet from many different angles and it would be very obvious when players get there, what the consequences are and what's at stake."

The key part of that being: Arrowhead doesn't have a victor in mind. "Players can win, and players can lose, and it's going to be super fun to see that play out. Last time, with the Battle for Super Earth, which I think was maybe the biggest one before this, we also didn't know. Eventually, players actually managed to defend Super Earth, which was super cool to see.

"Following that was pure fun for everyone at the office except for maybe the Game Master who was sweating a little bit, but for everyone else it was fun to see."

Ultimately, Arrowhead takes its cue from TTRPGs, where the fact that outcomes aren't predetermined is part of the magic that lets players "take these memories with you, and they can be (and often are) very powerful … We know that players will now go to Cyberstan, but we don't know how it will play out. We don't know if they will win. We don't know if they will lose. And there will be impacts on the Galactic War level."

As for the future? "We really want to have persistent story changes depending on community actions, and also persistent Galactic War consequences that you would be able to see and shape for all future time, and also tie rewards and actual gameplay differences to these things as well. That's the more high-level goal."

Honestly, given the sheer amount of history in the game so far—and the chunky free updates that've accompanied them—I think Arrowhead's done a halfway decent job. No, the studio hasn't magically spun up entirely divergent expansions or thrown work it had done in the trash, but the magic trick has mostly pulled the rabbit from the hat every time, even if it occasionally gets stuck on the rim.