[NEWS] New Helldivers 2 gameplay video - BILE TITAN LIBERATION

Helldivers General
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I posted on Steam a breathless, babbling report about the truly NEW Helldivers 2 gameplay video - BILE TITAN LIBERATION Gameplay video – introduced by Arrowhead’s CEO:

I think the new stuff starts when the CEO starts yakking around 13-15 seconds in. Here’s a repaste of what I babbled on Steam after pausing the video in a few key places and jotting some notes. :slight_smile:

Highlights Where You May Want to Pause The Video
[*] 20 seconds: Galactic War Map
Stuff: Difficulty Settings Shown: Challenging | something? lower video UI is blocking? | Extreme

[*] 22 seconds: Close Up of Galactic War Map

[*] 27 seconds: Close up of an Operations Information Panel - shows Operation Status, Mission Completed Bonuses (1st, 2nd, 3rd).

The far left info panel shows Mission Description; and also a Modifiers tab - perhaps we can choose different mission “modifiers” (mutators?) for more or less challenging missions? (speculation only :-))

[*] 28 seconds: at LEFT, Operations Panel seems to have more detailed brief of mission description and objectives; the Mission Panel at right spells out your main objective and also appears to show a TIME ESTIMATE? (40 minutes). Let’s hope that’s what it means, and it’s not a timer. :slight_smile:

The blurry “STREAMING DATA” maybe indicates that when available your see some streamed video of what to expect to encounter on the mission maybe?

[*] 33 seconds: Helldivers enter their pods. I confess this looks pretty damn cool even if I would’ve preferred another top-down game. :slight_smile:

[*] 44 seconds: Helldivers Pods land on the planet surface. Combat commences.

[*]1 minute: GUARD DOG DRONE returns. 4-jet Drone with underslung machine turret appears above player; when moving, the turret is on bottom of Drone, and when in combat, the turret appears to flip to the top of the drone and start firing. Neat. :slight_smile:

[*]1 minute, 2 seconds: Bug Breach Detected message appears top of screen. I guess it’s important, but I’m not sure I understand what it indicates? I think it’s about the bugs emerging from tunnels.

[*]1 minute, 10 seconds: Bug Titan appears. I guess we’re not friends. :smiley:

[*]1 minute, 15 seconds: UPPER LEFT CORNER, player pulls up a full STRATAGEMS MENU with these choices (I THINK the numbers in white squares indicate the SECONDS it takes for them to deploy after we activate them?):
-REINFORCE (5-button combo)
-RESUPPLY (dimmed, maybe already used) (4-button combo)
-EAGLE 110M ROCKET PODS (4-button combo)
-ORBITAL PRECISION STRIKE (3-button combo; dimmed)
-EAGLE STRAFING RUN (3-button combo)
-EAGLE AIRSTRIKE (4-button combo)

[*]2 minutes, 12 seconds: Reinforcement

[*]2 minutes, 45 seconds: Post mission-completion rewards, including upgrades to your SHIP. Can’t tell what they do, or if strictly cosmetic.

[*] 3 minutes, 10 seconds: Certain familiar enemy type makes a brief cameo appearance in an aircraft that looks awfully like one of the spacecraft in the Space: 1999 series. :slight_smile:
I tried to put away that I’m dismayed with the switch to 3rd person, and that the Arrowhead folks no longer communicate at all with us here or on Steam (hopefully that might change next year closer to the rescheduled release date), and just tried to get excited about HD2.

Which could last until I try it on Steam next year, get motion sick in 5 minutes, and then have to refund it. For now though, let’s be optimists. :slight_smile:

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Questions:
DUMB ONE
-Why are ALL the stratagems named “Eagle,” how about Hawks, Vultures, Pidgeons,Cockatoos and Parakeets? :slight_smile:

MODERATELY SMARTER ONES:
-Will the Steam/PC version have text chat as HD1 did? I know it makes no sense for the PS versions. I really just don’t use headsets much, still.
-Does HD2 still have the four useful quick-audio-chat macros as HD1 has?

-I can’t tell in the new video if players only going as B4, D3 etc. in the interface and as the name label when they are dropped back in via Reinforcement, is that just for internal testing purposes (keeping dev names anonymous)? Or is it a system to keep name labels concise or something? Like am I going to refer to Cusman as C1 and YOPG as D4 or something? :slight_smile:

-How is avoiding friendly fire in a 3rd person view, where we can’t SEE players who are behind us or at angles behind us, going to work? Is the UI going to warn us somehow?

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Also noticed it says In-Game purchases at the beginning. I’m not against them as it ensures that there’s likely to be updates and stuff in the future but I am concerned with how it’ll effect the gameplay. Hopefully it just means cosmetic stuff as I’d hate for it to have a pay2win features.

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Yeah at Steam forums everyone’s worried it’s a Live Service Game, I think meaning paid Season Passes instead of updates everyone gets etc., which tends to get problematic in online co-op games in terms of your pals maybe not choosing to purchase them all.

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Also, it says preorders start THIS FRIDAY, Sept. 22. Why isn’t there more breatheless announcement overhype about this? I’ve never heard of “stealth pre orders,” seems to defeat the purpose. Here’s a screenshot about that:

Sept. 22 Preorders, 1 a.m. PST (which I guess is around 9-10 a.m. in Sweden?):

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Guess I quit paying attention, was told on Steam that they’d announced the preorder bonuses that I was utterly oblivious about :smiley:

They announced the preorder bonus a while ago. For the standard preorder you get 3 armor sets, and for the deluxe you get those 3 armor sets as well as another armor set and a gun.

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Were the paid DLC in original Helldivers considered In-Game purchases? I was perfectly fine and happy with that model of paid DLC that accompanied expansion content updates available to all, because it ensured no split in the player base, while also providing meaningful benefit for players that paid, and funding for the developer to continue supporting game with more content updates.

I don’t like the subscription / battle pass model, because it is driven by pay or grind, or pay and grind. It just doesn’t feel as good to be part of that type of monetization / game design.

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Judging by what they’ve included in the super citizen edition I think it’s probably fairly safe to say it won’t be battle pass based. It includes a weapon, armour and stratagem which should be pretty cool. It might just mean you can buy in-game currency and we’re overthinking this. This is also supported by the fact that there’s a premium warbond in the citizen pack.

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Something interesting to note about this edition is that it’s revealed some interesting gameplay tidbits. We appear to have a status of some kind so maybe for defeating boss enemies you could obtain something like this, similar to the names of the ranks we had in the original. Another is that there’s armour which might have more functions other than the regular terrain based gear; then again it could be purely aesthetic which is still just as nice. Also armour and capes are separate so we’re looking at maybe a three piece set and a cosmetic cape now?

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The preorder for HD2 is mostly cosmetics. The MSG Knight is a weapon dlc for now. If previous gamer of HD1, the weapons DLC are just optional. Eventually there will be more DLC. I played all those HD1 DLC weapons and play/stick to a few I like. The rest is forgettable.

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