Helldivers 2 should become Helldivers 3 through updates!

Helldivers 2 was certainly one of last year's successes, with Arrowhead Game Studios showing more and more of its potential, while working with one of the most successful live services.

Of course, Arrowhead Game Studios's CCO, Johan Pilestedt, suggested that the second game could end up becoming the third, if the long-term plan continues to be successful!

Yes, while many people spent the holidays fighting against the Illuminate, after Arrowhead Game Studios managed to contain the negative reactions about the crossover equipment prices from the game Killzone, Pilestedt talked to some of them on social media about what the future may hold.

In a post on X, the CCO answered some questions, one of them being the possibility of playing with up to 8 players in co-op mode, and the answer so far has been no...

However, the CCO justified his answer, saying that some technical aspects of the game may not handle very well with 8 players in the same match, but that could change in the future!

He added that, although it requires a "significant investment", this kind of thing "is not impossible, and it's something we frequently talk about in the studio." The next part might be the most interesting of the response, however.

While responding to a joke that Helldivers 3 will be released in 2032 with an eight-player limit and swimming, Pilestedt said: "We are growing Helldivers 2 into Helldivers 3... so you may be correct. Except maybe swimming - I don't think its possible to swim in a heavy plate carrier with rifle and support weapons."

Naturally, this sparked a lot of discussion on the game's subreddit. There is quite a bit of support for it, at least in theory, given that the game was released less than a year ago and people are eager for Arrowhead Game Studios to continue focusing on creating significant updates for it in the immediate future.

However, some have concerns, with user pokiane writing: "You have to wonder how limiting their old engine will be. I'm all for just adding things to the game instead of making a third, but it would be a shame if we lost great new features (more than 4 players, huge maps, more variety of enemies, and so on) because of this."

While letting people debate this among themselves, Pilestedt was busy discussing another thing that could come to Helldivers 2 in the future - full-size miniguns.

"There are things we want to do before that," he wrote in response to a Reddit user who posted a video of a guy shooting what appears to be a Nerf minigun, "Miniguns as a carried weapon are notoriously problematic, you can see that in all videos of people shooting with a minigun from the hip - they are more or less thrown back by the insane recoil."

"The way we would solve this is by moving players back unless they take a stable firing position. This would probably also apply to the HMG (which was added perhaps a bit prematurely). Additionally, the backpack magazine is necessary and unfortunately the game currently does not support a weapon occupying 2 slots, which will have to be resolved before a minigun can be added. Once all of this is done, the 5.5mm minigun will be ready to be deployed."