Super Earth Has Been Invaded!

Last week, I wrote a short post about the sudden attack from the Illuminate through the Meridian singularity. The challenge for the week was a delaying action to give Super Earth time to rally defenses. We failed the Major Order with just a couple hours to go. I was planetside fighting for democracy when it happened.

There were leaks suggesting new maps and missions. The video announces new enemies. We have already been fighting the big guys and the strafing fighters, but the massive leviathan ship is definitely new, and we haven't been able to shoot at the giant motherships before. The smaller saucers have either been already on the ground or just swooping in to drop off troops, but now it seems they will be landing to establish new enemy bases.

Helldivers 2 has been doing a great job as a live service game. It works like a massive tabletop game, because apparently some guy at Arrowhead Studios named Joel is directly planning the action and keeping the story dynamic. Everything that happens in-game is cannon. Weapon nerfs and buffs are blamed on logistics and manufacturing. Whether players succeed or fail on weekly mission objectives affects what outcome occurs, and sometimes partial success is rewarded a bit, although it looks like this last failure was just a straight-up loss.

Unfortunately, I won't be online myself quite yet. I plan to go on a short road trip through the Idaho panhandle, so alas, I will abandon Managed Democracy for a while. But when I do return, I'll be bringing all firepower to bear on those perfidious Squids! If you play, please drop your friend code in the comments so we can send these invaders back to their wormhole and purge their voteless horde from our beloved homeworld!