We did it, Patrick! We saved Liberty!
The latest Helldivers 2 major order has had some issues—but fair play to Arrowhead, the climax of said order is very dang cool, and far better than the lack of rewards offered for the Menkent Line.
In case you've not been keeping up with your Super Earth-mandated news broadcasts, last week divers were deployed to Meridia, the site of a super colony of Terminids. They were instructed to inject dark fluid, an experimental substance that spaghettified some scientists and was "liberated from the Illuminate following the First Galactic War", into the planet's crust.
The Illuminate are a missing faction from Helldivers 1 that has yet to teleport their Protoss-adjacent butts into the sequel. But it's fine. We treated the dark fluid with three separate democracy baths and homoeopathic liberty injections, then let it stew while listening to the Super Earth national anthem. It's all good.
Upon completing the major order, however, Helldivers 2 players were immediately ejected out of the planet's orbit and delivered the following cutscene on the galactic map—captured courtesy of red-blooded patriot Interjessing-Salary on the game's subreddit.
This is what happened if you were in orbit around Meridia when the MO completed + bonus after from r/Helldivers
The dark fluid worked, yay! The dark fluid worked, oh no.
Arrowhead, instead of just cutting off Meridia from the Galactic Map, has graciously allowed brave divers to return to the site of their victory, where they may stare (democratically) into the yawning, dark abyss. While it is, essentially, a pretty series of particle effects and some gorgeous sound design, it's still a super cool and concrete cause-to-effect for a major order. It also makes whale noises, which is uh… that's probably normal, right?
Nearly three minutes listening to the void, these sounds don't sound very democratic to me from r/Helldivers
Still, the victory dialogue for the major order seeks to reassure divers: "The Supercolony has been destroyed. In its place, a beautiful black hole remains, drawing in every Terminid spore within several billion kilometres. Interstellar spore levels have already sharply decreased in every system. The destruction of Meridia came not a moment too soon … Containment is now once again possible."
Now, not to question the wisdom of Super Earth, but I can't help but look at the following words "the Moradesh Research Facility [where we made the stuff] has been decommissioned" without wondering why. After all, the black hole is beautiful—freedom was dispensed, right? Unless, you know, it was never supposed to do any of that.
As pointed out by spacer sleuth Khoakuma: "A mass of a typical planet cannot produce a black hole that big. You need to compress the mass of the Earth into the size of a pea (about 9mm) in order to turn it into a black hole." They then note that E-710, the fuel that Terminids just so happen to bleed, is used in FTL drives. "It's probably a wormhole lol. Super Earth high command is shitting their pants right now. Meridia should have shrunk into nothingness."
So just to lay it all out there. The black hole makes whale noises. It's way too big to be a black hole. It was formed by the FTL-engine-fuelling blood of billions of Terminids, and immediately after an incredible victory for Super Earth, the factory that was producing dark fluid shut everything down never to be repeated again. Houston, I think we might have a problem.
