WITH great amounts of bullets, comes great responsibility when shooting them, at least according to the developer of Helldivers 2.
One of the biggest releases of 2024, Helldivers 2 is an extremely popular multiplayer game inspired by Paul Verhoeven’s satirical action science fiction film Starship Troopers from 1997.
The game blew up in popularity for various reasons, such as its hectic gameplay, where players would team up and find themselves fighting for their lives on bug-ridden planets while desperately trying to complete objectives.
In other action games, with the amounts of bullets that fly across the screen, developers often turn off something called “friendly fire”. With it turned off, players can spray their firearm recklessly and not worry about hurting or killing their teammates.
For Helldivers 2, developer Arrowhead Games Studios have left it on since the game launched, which has led to many funny moments players have experienced, from accidentally killing their entire team as they scramble away from alien bugs to accidentally calling for a bombardment just as a teammate runs across the area.
For Arrowhead Games, this is part of the game’s design and a core philosophy since development.
“Things should be consistent in the game world and therefore, we must have friendly fire,” said Arrowhead Games CEO and creative director Johan Pilestedt on a PlayStation Blog post.
“If your bullets can kill enemies, and the enemies can kill you, then logic dictates that your bullets must also be able to kill your friends.”
Pilestedt goes on to say the design is systematic and provides complexity to the gameplay. To survive, even with the game’s big guns and weapons of mass destruction, players still need to actively think when playing.
He says that players would need to engage their brain and do it like solving a puzzle, but in a primal, creative problem solving manner.
“Also, the chuckles that happen when you accidentally carpet bomb your friends allows for a playfulness that in reality would be a tragedy, but within the self-bounds of games, we can explore the dark humour of these situations”.
