Here's Why You Should Be Really Excited for Helldivers 2's Escalation of Freedom Update

Without any further ado, let's get down to brass tacks. Six months in, Arrowhead Game Studios promises that Escalation of Freedom is not only born out of the developer's own desires, but the new content is also based on player feedback. The new missions, objectives, fresh enemies, planets, and environments are part of the biggest update Helldivers 2 has ever seen.

What's up, doc?

The first and most notable feature is dialing up the difficulty. If previously, the maximum Combat Rating a Helldiver team could face was Level 9, now the CR is 10, a first for the game. It's called "Super Helldive," and it's supposed to be the "most challenging, most relentless dive difficulty level yet, and we hope that this is going to give players the intensity they're looking for on the battlefield." Of course, it has matching rewards.

Mission variation was getting a bit stale, so they introduced new mission objectives and bigger enemy outposts for Automatons and Terminids alike. In return, this offers brand new Super Sample rewards. The key point is that the new heavily fortified outposts allegedly require unprecedented player coordination and on-the-fly strategy.

A new objective would be babysitting a larva and carrying it to safety throughout the entire mission. This isn't a leisurely stroll like in Death Stranding. The baby bug will start crying its three little hearts out and summon help in the process. It's going to be loud and messy.

Luckily, the new objectives aren't exclusive to Super Helldive difficulty but are also available at lesser tiers. The Acid Storm weather effect now turns the damage output and input all the way up. It will reduce your armor and that of your enemies, practically shortening health points. It's like Call of Duty's online Hardcore mode, where a well-placed bullet is enough to end your life.

Bugs... why'd it have to be bugs?

Speaking about new disgusting bugs, we're reacquainted with an old friend or a three-some of an enemy. The Impaler is returning from the first Helldiver game, and it's a huge, heavily armored, tentacled-like bug. Its abilities include burrowing its head into the ground and making three large tentacles appear, meant to block your path while attacking you and your team from every position it can.

The Spore Charger is also new to the Terminid army, which is sort of like a White Walker from Game of Thrones, but instead of appearing in the face-cutting winds of winter, the Spore Charger comes shrouded in a disgusting fog. You will literally not see it coming.

The last new bug enemy is the Alpha Commander, a supercharged Brood Commander that will call in new and improved backup faster than you can spell patriotic duty.

Cyborgs Don't Feel Pain. You Do

For better or worse, Arrowhead Game Studios didn't leave out the Automatons, with new additions among their ranks. The Rocket Tank can shoot directly at you, or if you're too far away or hide behind something, it will fire a barrage of missiles in the air that will arrive shortly at your location.

With the wicked robot race constantly building bigger and more efficient war machines, we should expect more ground units that look like they're from a horror Terminator movie. Bigger and more dangerous siege mechs akin to the mighty AT-AT from Star Wars were also spotted out in the wilds.

The devs didn't reveal every new enemy machine in the blog post, so more "bot surprises" are coming. However, if you look close enough during the trailer at the 0:38 minute mark, you will spot a big chicken-like bot inspired by George Lucas' AT-STs. This one has four side rockets equipped, as well as dual machine guns at the front.

The new swamps are a spooky eye-candy delight, meant to instill fear in the hearts of brave young patriots. Upon exploring these treacherous bogs, you will encounter rolling fog, untamed flora, and blackened trees that obscure even light itself.

At last, the team-kicking feature has undergone a slight revamp. If you find yourself getting grief kicked off a team, you will spawn in a new session as the host, with your loot intact. You can pick up your items before extraction. More quality-of-life upgrades are inbound, like fixes to the social menu that will make diving with friends more facile.

Although it's wishful thinking, some new toys for players like ATVs, bikes, armored vehicles, tanks, mechs, or even a Jurassic World-like Gyrosphere wouldn't hurt either.

Shifting down

The latest Helldivers 2: Escalation of Freedom update will crash-land on August 6 on PlayStation 5 and PC alike. Speaking of PC, since the game's Steam rating dropped during the "Great Review Score Bombing of 2024," it now recovered fully. Helldivers 2 proudly salutes with an overall 74% Mostly Positive score, awarded by 652,394 players. Even the most recent 6,339 liberty-loving soldiers gave it a Very Positive 84% score.

The last time we heard about hard numbers from the devs themselves was on May 14, 2024, when Helldivers 2 was sitting pretty with a cool 12 million units sold across the board. This amazingly entertaining 3rd-person co-op shooter came out of left field and surprised everyone with record-breaking numbers. That includes Sony and the developers themselves. Selling this many copies on only two platforms (PS5, PC) from February to May is nothing short of catching lightning in a bottle.

To their credit, they even admit it openly on the official PlayStation Blog. Katherine Baskin, Social Media and Community Manager at Arrowhead Game Studios said: "We could never have predicted how far this game would go and how many Citizens would answer Super Earth's call to arms!"

In the meantime, of course, numbers have massively died down from the all-time peak of 458,709 concurrent players on February 19 to 345,188 on April 1, dropping even more to 120,973 on May 1 and seeing only 62,314 players on June 1, with a spike on June 13 to 91,692, only to fall again to 36,440 concurrent people on July 1. The downward trend seems constant and could stabilize anywhere between 20-30k+ monthly active users.

While it doesn't shine as bright as during its first months of life, Helldivers 2 is no sad story. Sony squeezed out the living daylights of this amazing game, raking in every cent possible, and it will continue to retain a firm and loyal player base for quite some time.

It's unlikely it will ever regain its former glory of 458k+ live players, but be sure that this $40 game will still have massive spikes from time to time, depending on what new engaging content Arrowhead Game Studios manages to whip out. Also, PlayStation Publishing LLC setting it loose on Xbox Series X|S consoles wouldn't hurt either.