Helldivers 2's Illuminate invasion is the cherry on top of one of the best first years a live service game has ever had

Helldivers 2 was on my radar pre-release, but from its first week I knew it was one of those games I'd be playing for a very long time. I've dabbled in lots of live service games without ever going full no-lifer on any of them and, being a middle-aged dad, Helldivers 2 instantly ticked a lot of the boxes I wanted: Quickfire sessions, simple and self-contained goals, and a real sense of progression atop that, which might be the game's greatest achievement of all. Helldivers 2 isn't just a game I like to play: It's a miniature social phenomenon I love watching play out.

The Game Awards saw developer Arrowhead surprise-drop the game's long-awaited third faction, the Illuminate, alongside a bunch of other substantial new content and, just for good measure, a Warthog-style four-man space jeep. Off the bat they've revitalised Helldiver tactics and forced players to re-calibrate from the familiar foes to a much beefier, weirder challenge. It feels like the biggest change in the Galactic War to date, and the capstone on what has been an exceptionally well-planned and delivered first year (well OK, 10 months: The game released February 8, 2024).

Rather than running through all the game's patches in chronological order, I'm going to hop around a bit to try and explain the elements that have made Helldivers 2 really sing as a living experience. And the single biggest factor is how Arrowhead engages with and responds to the community in an unprecedented fashion.

These interactions are by far the strongest element of how Helldivers operates as a live experience: Arrowhead reacts fast and, more often than not, it reacts with humour and it reacts well. Like the time the Helldivers got it wrong and botched a Major Order at the last hurdle, and Super Earth issued a missive commending their "tactical brilliance." To take a few more examples, in August the Helldivers worked out how to short-circuit a Major Order and complete it by cheating. The Super Earth response was to ensure all non-cheating Helldivers got their rewards, while as for the cheaters…

"Super Earth High Command has detected a large batch of counterfeit samples within the delivery of the last Major Order," read the in-game message. "As is customary, Medals have been awarded to all Helldivers who honorably performed their duties, and the ones submitting false samples have had their pet fish summarily executed."

Another great example came a few months in, when the community struck upon the idea of the Martale Gambit. This involved liberating their own target planets with the idea of disrupting enemy supply chains and, much to their shock, game master Joel got involved: Offering a two-for-the-price-of-one deal on liberated planets if they pulled it off.

The sad end to the Martale Gambit is that it came agonisingly close, but the Helldivers fell short at the last. Nevertheless it became such a rallying point that it subsequently inspired further, successful gambits outside of the game's own Major Orders, as well as the formation of groups like the Freedom Alliance to guide such efforts.

"When the community manages to [pull off] gambits, that's where the galactic war shines," Arrowhead CCO Johann Pilestedt told PC Gamer in a new interview. "And it's something that we want to keep investing in."

And finally, my favourite moment in the game to date: When the Helldivers were given a choice between unlocking a sweet new weapon or going in to save a 'Hospital for Very Sick Children.'

You guessed it: No sick child will fall to the bugs while democracy's heroes breathe! The Helldivers absolutely smashed this MO and, in a nice gesture, Pilestedt and Arrowhead responded to the sentiment by donating $4,300 to Save the Children.

Pilestedt is a great outspoken presence around the game, alongside the likes of community manager Twinbeard rallying the troops (who recently spoke to us following his departure from the game), and perhaps the main character: Game master Joel. Arrowhead did a great job of building mystique around Joel, and of course the name quickly became a go-to reaction whenever something went wrong for the Helldivers.

The CCO reveals in a new interview with PCG that Joel has now evolved into a hivemind or, to be more accurate, that was the case all along. "Joel is now a team of people working together, and it's always been like that," said Pilestedt. "There's a lot of people that make the world of Helldivers work, and the team has gotten better and better at working together with the community, figuring out what the community is going to enjoy."

I think the only major misstep Helldivers 2 made in this opening year was one that the studio relatively quickly self-corrected on. The first few months of Helldivers 2 saw a whole load of balance patching, as Arrowhead tried to tamp-down overpowered weapons and strategies while making other options more viable. But this eventually ended up crimping the fun of the whole thing a little, and let's remember we're playing a PvE game with space cowboys shooting space robots, which Arrowhead itself came to belatedly realise in late summer.

Solution? Screw the balance, bring on the buffs! The studio set itself a 60-day schedule to make things more fun again, and from the first patch everything suddenly felt a lot more powerful. This is a game where the alien scum should be rightfully trembling at your loadout and, if Helldivers 2 lost sight of that for a moment, it quickly got back to where it should be. The flames of liberty shall forever burn bright!

October was a big month because of the 26th, Liberty Day, and saw a fittingly gargantuan tribute as the Helldivers fought to protect the construction of a Democratic Space Station that is controlled by literal democracy (players vote on targets). Naturally the thing went live and immediately began incinerating Helldivers from orbit: Woopsies! And this is another of the game's many threads, set-ups that don't quite pay off like players expect.

And Arrowhead does a great line in teases, fakeouts, and possibly deliberate leaks. The Illuminate were first glimpsed on the Galactic Map in early September, which Pilestedt immediately pooh-poohed and dismissed as "fake news".

There are dozens of other little bits. The running will-they won't-they battle over Anti-Tank mines, which for some reason players took against. The lovely day when the Helldivers cracked a Major Order at the very last minute and we all got awarded mechs. Mechs! The "T-pose of Democracy" glitch that players can use to avoid fall damage, which Arrowhead found so funny it's stayed in the game. The game got review-bombed over a Sony account controversy: Arrowhead made a cape commemorating it.

Finally, as all of the above shows in some form, Helldivers 2 has a tone and it sticks to it. This is a comedy game that also takes itself seriously, and from the game's opening video you're sold on the galactic dystopia it presents, and the ludicrously bombastic ideals of Super Earth. Players talk to each other using the game's language, joke about reporting each other for infringements of democracy, and semi-inhabit the fiction outside of the game. Hell there's an official Super Earth anthem, and it really does make you want to jackboot some commie bugs into paste.

Helldivers 2 has managed to tell a story that's quite unlike any other I've experienced in a game, and all we're really doing as players is going from planet to planet annihilating alien scum. None of this would work if the core of the game wasn't great, which it is, but what keeps me coming back for another quick session is catching up on where the Galactic War is at, what new wheezes my fellow Helldivers have cooked up, and what Arrowhead's saying and doing about everything.

The whole game feels responsive and alive in a way that so few do and, while part of that is the excellent new content being added regularly, the community's engagement in everything that happens is what excites me most. Whatever the game's second year might bring, if it can keep troop numbers and morale as high as they are, then the sky is the limit.