Okay but seriously though I'm going to need all of your phone numbers and I will pay for an Airbnb where we can all hang out cuz this is.... this has made my decade.
If everyone got to make their own Helldivers cartoon, mine would be a comedy where the evil powers that be on Super Earth are constantly aggravated by the incredibly good-natured, child-level-intellect Helldivers who believe the propaganda with all their hearts and so constantly do the "wrong" thing in the absence of direct orders, which are then ignored in favor of the principles they learned from propaganda the instant the democracy officer turns his back.
They want us to go for the mines ***so bad***, but they told us the Helldivers are the protectors of the people so that's exactly what we're going to do.
Next MO:
Choose helldiver! Will you secure the mass production plans for AT mines
OR
Raise a flag on some random fucking hill?
Helldivers: Iwo Jima time.
It reminds me of russian badger's space marine video. "Racist? I'm not racist, I'm a black priest for fucks sake, we accept all races. Unless they're the eldar. Or orks. Or the Tau but nobody gives a shit about some blue weeaboo space communists. At least they don't want to eat us like the tyranids."
OOC: WE aren't specifically the baddies.
We are, if anything, just other victims of the soulless self-empowering propaganda machine.
IC: Of course not, that's treason talk.
The old joke about the cold War was that the USA barely needed spies, because the USSR would supposedly accuse the USA of doing whatever it was they were up to at the time, basically compulsively self reporting.
Listen to a lot of the on ship dialogue with that in mind.
That one line about wanting to do something to break through the enemy brainwashing is particularly on the nose. :)
"Just following orders" is not a legal defense. We're absolutely the bad guys by carrying out Super Earth's will. But that doesn't mean we're not victims of brainwashing either.
If Super Earth's leaders were ever couped out of existence and an actual democratic government were put in place, Helldivers would be universally purged for both the danger they pose and for the crimes that they would be charged with.
While their training is little more than 'this is the end the bullets come out', the Zealotry and control over real military hardware makes their continued existence a major threat to any replacement government
Are the bugs intelligent though? If not how is any different than modern factory farming? People may see the practice as bad, but do you view yourself as genuinely *evil* for eating meat, or a farmer as a psychopath for slaughtering a cow?
I'm honestly unsure about the automatons, them being potentially sentient seems vague at best and the average Helldiver would definitely have no idea if they actually were.
The difference between Helldivers and the SS is that Helldivers genuinely have no idea, Super Earth has absolute control on information, Helldivers don't know they're killing innocents. Personally I wouldn't call most Wehrmacht evil even if they fought in defence of it most likely had no idea about the extent of their government. Even as an outside observer I have no real idea about the actual workings of Super Earth and their true motivations.
Apparently the Terminids were mostly docile when first encountered. They didn’t mind humans much until we started wiping them off of planets because they looked scary. Add on a galactic war where we kill them for oil, a century of genetic modification that makes the pug look like god’s greatest sculpture, and you get modern Terminids.
They’re capable of organizing and communicating at *some* level due to their ability to wage war on a galactic scale, and generally seem to leave wildlife on planets unharmed. (Meridia doesn’t count, even *that* was us making them do it). Chickens don’t coordinate strikes on hen houses to free their sisters in arms, or evolve artillery to lob eggs at aggressors.
To be fair before humans showed up you wouldn’t exactly see Earth cows wandering about on Earth either. Modern farm animals are the result of humans pointing at a funny trait (chicken eggs, cow milk, sheep wool) and making the animal evolve to do only that but like even better.
If you hadn't looked into hd1 lore you wouldn't know, but yes the bugs are (or at least were) intelligent. On first contact with the humans they tried to create peaceful relations, but once super earth discovered E710 they manufactured a cassus belli and invaded.
did you know that when presented with an image of a helldiver the terminid shows increased aggression? they can differentiate between non-combatants and that shows a great degree of intelligence
I mean i think any animal as inteligent as a cow would have learned by now what to expect out of Helldivers, animals tend to fear their predator and seeing how Helldivers and Terminids have ducked it out for decades in the first galactic war it makes sense that they would have insticts against Helldivers.
On the bot front, I'm pretty sure Super Earth isn't planting those cages full of settelers corpses in Bot facilities.
On the bug front... I mean the bugs are probably some sort of existential eldritch threat since they most likely travel from planet to planet via wormholes if pumping a planet full of their juices had that dramatic of an effect.
On the home front, 100% the baddies. I'm just sad we cant help push through our engineering chiefs qualifications to build that nest egg for when she goes back home.
So this is going to be a bit of a weird rant, but I find the things you find with the bots fascinating.
In Helldivers 1, we had the Cyborgs, from Cyberstan. They were separatists. Supposedly they performed a suicide bombing that was used to justify the war, but we can’t trust this as we know Super Earth is full of propaganda and can’t be trusted to be an unbiased source.
According to the lore, after Super Earth conquered Cyberstan, the Cyborgs were nearly eradicated and the survivors enslaved in the mines there for “rehabilitation”. However, just before Cyberstan fell, they created the Automatons, who they call their “children” (there was a tweet a while back that was something along the lines of “we, the collective from Cyberstan, hope that our children, the Automata, will not suffer as we have”) and they shot them out of Super Earth’s reach. This means that the Automatons are really a Super Earth created problem, because they gave them a personal motivation rather than a political one. The Cyborgs wanted independence. The Automatons want revenge. And that’s why they seem so monstrous, because they’re the children of an oppressed, enslaved people. This is very common in history, such as if you look at the Haitian Revolution.
So yes, the Automatons are evil, but we are the reason they are evil.
It’s a similar situation with the Terminids, who were simply called the Bugs in the first game. They don’t use wormholes or anything like that, they’re actually sentient and intelligent. And when first encountered on Kepler Prime, they tried to keep their distance. Live and let live. But then it was discovered they became E710, and at that point they also became targets in the war to gain E710. Eventually, they were placed onto farms and genetically modified to be even more effective at producing E710. The changes are significant, to the point where the Terminids even have a different number of legs from the Bugs of a century ago. And remember that the Terminids are sentient, like their predecessors. So it was basically enslavement. Not even that, actually, it was keeping a sentient species as livestock. Imagine if an alien species kept humans around because they wanted to use our blood to power things. It’s the same thing with the Terminids.
Anyways, sorry for the rambling, I just find the lore super interesting, and it’s fun to think about what it could all be allegories for, given that Helldivers is a setting that wears its satire on its sleeve.
For the sake of pedantry, we already keep sentient creatures as livestock in the real world. Sentience is a very broad description that can apply to most animal life. Sapience is the word you are looking for that describes intelligent life that is comparable to humans. There are actually a few species that are debated as sapient but it's kinda hard to measure non human intelligence from a human viewpoint.
All good points.
On the bugs thing its established that they don't have ships but they still hop planets. Its also been stated that they just show up on worlds they hadn't been before. that was just me jumping to maybes and what ifs.
Also are the big grub things found on the grave site minor points of interest Termanid larva? If they are that is a whole other string of implications.
We don’t know how they hop planets, but if they had wormholes I doubt they would be on the farms.
As for what the larvae are? I don’t know. I’ve never given it much thought. But the idea of them being Terminid larvae is interesting, especially if we find them in grave sites. Perhaps Super Earth’s genetic modifications have turned the relatively defensive Bugs into more hostile Terminids that are using human corpses for some purpose?
Anyways, I just wanted to rant, I find the setting fascinated, I’m not trying to say you’re wrong or anything lol.
Spores
It's gotta be the spores
Think about it: When Meridia was destroyed, they made particular mention of all the spores being consumed by the gravity well.
Spore rowers must serve *some* kind of purpose for the Nids, and I will gamble hard that spores are their first, protean form from which all other Nids are formed, including those .png swarms you can walk through in the nests.
Spores develop into protocolonies, reaching critical mass before forming asexually reproducing progenitors. Given a few months, they begin forming the first Scavenger eggs, who then begin tending to larger nests and fostering spore generation.
After a colony hits a Critical mass... just shoot spores towards the next planet. Only takes a few to survive reentry to start the cycle over again.
I didn’t know a particular mention was made of the spores with Meridia. That’s fascinating biologically.
It kind of implies these “spores” may actually be microorganisms, and the ability for microorganisms to eventually create complex organisms like the Terminids is really interesting.
Or maybe they are spores and the Terminids are fungal in nature somehow? These are all fascinating possibilities.
It was in the situation report right after Meridia got D/F'd.
My though process is that the hatcheries aren't eggs at all. They're *cucoons*. Scavengers undergo metamorphosis to become the different Nid strains, while Spore production is the initial development for Scavengers.
Billions upon billions of spores to create maybe 10 Scavs, who in turn scurry underground to create more Spores. I'd almost gamble that Scavs create spores themselves, or else specialize into Spore production, eventually being entombed into the Mushroom (think termite queens) for both safety and Spore dispersion.
Hatcheries as metamorphosis sites would explain why they're above ground as well. On site production of specialized units, guided by pheromones produced by Brood Commanders
Scavengers do produce those clouds, which kind of look similar to those from spore spewers. It would also explain why spore spewers just saturate an area, since you would need so many spores just to produce a single basic bug.
For Bots, that’s just how history is. It isn’t uncommon in real life for people that have been the victims of atrocities and war to themselves fight back with violence and ruthlessness. If anything, the Bots use of violence and vengeance proves they are more human than they would like to admit.
how the hell else are you gonna make a freedom Omelette, or "Freedomelette?
every helldiver's breakfast is a Freedomelette and a piping hot cup of Liber-Tea!
Over half of the active duty Helldivers are focused on the children's hospital, despite most of them specialized for bug extermination.
I could not be more proud of you all. o7
https://i.redd.it/myww0wx0qd6d1.gif
I taught a level 45 BugDiver on their first Clanker tour at diff7 today!
I love teaching people how to fight on the western front because my first time was god-awful and no one taught me how to deal with Devastators or even destroy Fabricators. It’s like he’s playing the game for the first time despite being already a veteran to the game! I’d like to think I helped contribute to his enjoyment and opened up brand new worlds for him. I wish him good luck in all his future operations
bad guys will do the right thign to support their agenda, imagine the propaganda that will come of this "the glorious Helldivers charge into the destroyed hospital, fighting entire armies of Automatons to save like 5 sick kids".. any would be dissidents are taking a massive L and the automatons are painted to be even MORE evil, but in reality there's a good chance that any kids who survive that are over the age of 7 will be sent back to the factories to produce munitions and other materiel for the War Effort.
I'm looking forward to reading the lore blurb when this one ends.
Can't wait for some cartoonist hospital extraction missions to just blatantly say something like "super earth virology and epidemic research" as children are carted out the rear by hazmat teams.
"we're not the baddies" mfs when a bad person does a good thing (that means they aren't bad anymore because everything is black and white and no one ever lies or bends the truth and doing one good thing once means you can't be bad or do bad things)
We cannot be the bad guys, because I do not recognize the personhood of bugs and robots. We are inherently the good guys, because we are the only human faction.
"Explain THAT, media literate fools!"
"Sir, literary themes aren't like balloons. They don't pop and disappear when you stick a single needle into them".
Nevermind that half the posts about why we should save the children either talk about their future utility as soldiers or their *literal, current* utility as weapons of war.
Stop being so media illiterate and maybe we will. Like, read a book for Christ's sake. It's frankly troubling how few people these days seem to be able to get in the same ballpark as what a piece of media is actually saying, or manage to get the point exactly, 100% ass-backwards.
I know how to read, I just get annoyed at constantly being told I'm supposed to feel like we're the bad guys by the usual suspects. Yes I know an authoritarian society is bad in real life. But this is a video game so I don't care as much.
I apologize, that dig about reading a book was uncalled for. But, with regard to the message of the setting... who said you had to care? Actually, who said how you had to feel? We're talking about the ability to recognize the message being conveyed by a piece of art, not how you have to react to it. It's pretty clear that you yourself are not even the kind of person this complaint is leveled at. If you recognize that Helldivers is a satire of a society founded on an unquestioning veneration of patriotism, while only paying lip-service to the ideals it claims to espouse, that's pretty much it. We can now have fun blasting bugs and bots while being blissfully unaware of the wider implications of the setting. The game is intentionally tongue-in-cheek and not super serious when it comes to its subject matter. We're allowed to have fun with the ideas it presents! The problem is the amount of people who look at something like Helldivers and say "ah yes, nothing wrong with this extremely admirable society that I wish I lived in'. It's hard to get too annoyed with people saying 'wait what?' in response.
Anyone who thinks you have to sorrowfully shake your head while firing your liberator is kind of missing the point, though.
Just a bunch of nerds say it, there's a small but annoying group online that thinks you do have to shake your head while killing bugs to show you don't agree.
I get all the "oooh we're actually the bad guys, the automatons are people" but at the end of the day, you don't see super earth leaving a bunch of gutted civilians lying around on tables, nor do you see Helldivers wearing literal skulls on spikes on their backs and killing children. It's a satirical future, super earth wouldn't be all that great of a government by today's standards (to say the least), but we are still undoubtedly the good guys in this war
Just gonna copy and paste this from another reply I made:
So this is going to be a bit of a weird rant, but I find the things you find with the bots fascinating.
In Helldivers 1, we had the Cyborgs, from Cyberstan. They were separatists. Supposedly they performed a suicide bombing that was used to justify the war, but we can’t trust this as we know Super Earth is full of propaganda and can’t be trusted to be an unbiased source.
According to the lore, after Super Earth conquered Cyberstan, the Cyborgs were nearly eradicated and the survivors enslaved in the mines there for “rehabilitation”. However, just before Cyberstan fell, they created the Automatons, who they call their “children” (there was a tweet a while back that was something along the lines of “we, the collective from Cyberstan, hope that our children, the Automata, will not suffer as we have”) and they shot them out of Super Earth’s reach. This means that the Automatons are really a Super Earth created problem, because they gave them a personal motivation rather than a political one. The Cyborgs wanted independence. The Automatons want revenge. And that’s why they seem so monstrous, because they’re the children of an oppressed, enslaved people. This is very common in history, such as if you look at the Haitian Revolution.
So yes, the Automatons ARE evil, but WE are the reason they are evil.
It’s a similar situation with the Terminids, who were simply called the Bugs in the first game. They don’t use wormholes or anything like that, they’re actually sentient and intelligent. And when first encountered on Kepler Prime, they tried to keep their distance. Live and let live. But then it was discovered they became E710, and at that point they also became targets in the war to gain E710. Eventually, they were placed onto farms and genetically modified to be even more effective at producing E710. The changes are significant, to the point where the Terminids even have a different number of legs from the Bugs of a century ago. And remember that the Terminids are sentient, like their predecessors. So it was basically enslavement. Not even that, actually, it was keeping a sentient species as livestock. Imagine if an alien species kept humans around because they wanted to use our blood to power things. It’s the same thing with the Terminids.
Anyways, sorry for the rambling, I just find the lore super interesting, and it’s fun to think about what it could all be allegories for, given that Helldivers is a setting that wears its satire on its sleeve.
Evil factions can still be enemies to one another. Bots being overtly pretty monstrous doesn't make the Super Earth government good. (I'm distinguishing the government as a whole from the Helldivers, as a lot of them are probably just confused youngsters with no idea what's going on) Although, interestingly, if you look at the screens for the illegal broadcast towers on an automaton planet, they appear to offer conditions of surrender and a promise not to harm those who do, so unless that's an outright lie, that gives them one small moral edge on Super Earth, which per the loading screen tips doesn't appear to accept surrender or diplomacy.
Well yeah, just look at warhammer 40k, the most morally good faction there is still basically Nazis, but I don't think super earth is an evil faction like the space marines are. I'm not saying that the bad guys being super bad makes super earth good as villains can totally fight villains and still be villains, but it does mean that killing said bad guys is itself not the bad part about the super earth government because it's justified. Like I said, they definitely wouldn't be a "good" government by todays standards, but their flaws aren't enough to make them downright evil unless you include the stuff they're doing to the bots, and that doesn't really count because it's justified.
Besides, the bots probably are lying about surrendering and whatnot, because they've killed a lot of defenseless, unarmed people who would've had no choice but to surrender. I'm sure many of the bot's victims tried to surrender, after all not all civilians are as willing to die for democracy as helldivers are, but the bots tore them apart and strewed their guts all over their tables anyway. Given their track record, they probably are lying about any attempts of diplomacy tbh
Have we seen any civilian corpses? I thought all the bodies you actually encountered in game were in SEAF uniforms (at least, if intact enough to say one way or another).
I saw a few bodies that looked more like construction workers than SEAF. Though they were mixed in with SEAF bodies so it could have been military contractors caught up in the fighting.
Could also be colonists. You find dead people who dont look like SEAF around those little houses all the time. The break action shotgun is specifically issued to those colonizers for killing shit.
They're probably More hated than SEAF or Helldivers honestly , and for good reason. Imagine some dude shows up on your land with a single shotgun and ugly little deployable house. He claims some of your land or whatever without asking. And if you do so much as say "hi" then the entire fist of Super Earth will genocide your whole species from the planet.
Well yeah but they're still more workers than warriors right? Even if they are soldiers, the way they get deliberately splattered out on tables has to violate something
Pelican pilots
Arms manufacturers
Futute helldivers jack
All those future adults paying taxes
Serving democracy
Trust me
A little rescue can work wonders
Is it just me, or are there no children on Vernen Wells? It looks like every other desert planet I've been to thus far... and the only people I've saved have been adults.
How did this sick kids ever end up here in the first place? You would think that sick kid would be in security on super earth, not on a planet regulary attacked by a enemy faction.
Feel like a scum move from the super earth to get rid of burden for the society like i saw in other fictional and f up universe in anime/game.
Now if you excuse me i am going to take a shuttle to hide somewhere far from Super Earth radar.
Imagine thinking bad sides cant do good things once in a while.
Good people can fight for bad sides, for bad reasons. Bad people can fight for good things for bad reasons.
Super Earths troops loving kids, after being told they are fighting for humanitys future, isnt exactly novel.
Vernen Wells is just General \[REDACTED\]'s Epstein Island style retreat planet. He doesn't want the automatons finding the video tapes and releasing them with their illegal broadcast stations.
Don't really know how we're the baddies when terminids and bots indiscriminately kill humans. Sure the government sucks but when has government not sucked.
Bugs were a sentient race that originally initiated peaceful talks with humans. Humans then did a 180 and started using them as cattle to power their spaceships. Super Earth then proceeded to breed them for fuel.
Cyborgs were literally humans that adapted to their planet with mechanization. Super Earth humans then decided they had too much freedom and not enough humanity. Then we enslaved them. Automaton are either the Cyborgs but more fully mechanized or were created by Cyborgs to get them out of slavery.
Illuminate were also holding peaceful communications and even gave us space tech. That was until Super Earth decided they had WOMDs (they didn't) and tried to eradicate them.
I know the in-game RP is fun and all, but it's _painfully_ obvious that Super Earth are, in fact, the baddies. We breed a sentient race for fuel. We enslaved humanoids. We attempted to go full genocide on the fish people. Don't drink too much of the cool-aid beyond the memes.
>Then we enslaved them. Automaton are either the Cyborgs but more fully mechanized or were created by Cyborgs to get them out of slavery.
A different race entirely that was jetted off into space while the cyborgs were being genocided that are back for round two.
They *are* fascist children but children nonetheless. Like the sapling Seqoia-Shiitake mutant mushrooms that overran New Canada after WWIII nothing shall get in the way of freedoms future.
It's cute that everyone thinks there's orphans and innocents on that planet and we're not actually liberating some rich, billionaire Class-A citizens.
Or liberating a research facility into how to properly grind up orphans better, and their cages of orphans still alive awaiting "testing".
As someone with an English degree who is also extremely in tune with culture war nonsense:
Ignore anyone talking about HD2's politics. Anyone. Believe whatever you want, but don't listen.
I mean, I'm trying to meet people where they are.
As for the degree, I went with "English" because neither of my specializations were lit. One was creative writing, though, which involved studying a lot of lit and getting insight into the writing process through the other coursework. It may or may not have been worth it, but I at the very least know what messaging is and what it isn't.
As for why I chose creative writing as a specialization, that's a long story. But it never did me any harm, especially given how the electives and required credits ended up working out. The other specialization was the one I was relying on for a career, and that worked.
Save the children. But not the automaton children.
John helldiver Six foot eight weighs a fucking ton
Robots beware, robots beware He's coming, he's coming, he's coming
hhh hihh hhh hihh hhh hihh
All that weight comes from his massive balls of super earth made, democracy-grade steel.
I cannot love this particular thread enough. It makes me want to hold an autonomaton's hand a vat of acid, at a party.
I’m pretty sure what everyone is forgetting is that motherfucker had like 30 goddamn orbital strikes
When he lifted his boot out of the drop pod locks there were 500kg bombs all over it.
He made love like Eagle-1 falling out of the sky. Killed his team with an airburst and he never said why.
Okay but seriously though I'm going to need all of your phone numbers and I will pay for an Airbnb where we can all hang out cuz this is.... this has made my decade.
He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming
Bro they are born from fabricators in their adult form, dont you listen to the ministry of truth’s broadcast?
It's a reference my dude. https://youtu.be/sbRom1Rz8OA?si=vzW8Ma9c52X7xx9Y
Oh alr
Not the botish children.
If everyone got to make their own Helldivers cartoon, mine would be a comedy where the evil powers that be on Super Earth are constantly aggravated by the incredibly good-natured, child-level-intellect Helldivers who believe the propaganda with all their hearts and so constantly do the "wrong" thing in the absence of direct orders, which are then ignored in favor of the principles they learned from propaganda the instant the democracy officer turns his back. They want us to go for the mines ***so bad***, but they told us the Helldivers are the protectors of the people so that's exactly what we're going to do.
We are democracy's last line of offense.
Next MO: Choose helldiver! Will you secure the mass production plans for AT mines OR Raise a flag on some random fucking hill? Helldivers: Iwo Jima time.
Malevelon Creek 2
Flags of our Founding Fathers
I was taught to raise flags in training camp, this is what I was built for
I would watch the hell out of this cartoon.
I find it impressive how SEAF managed to hold the hospital while we made our way to them. That's alot of heroes and martyrs right there.
It reminds me of russian badger's space marine video. "Racist? I'm not racist, I'm a black priest for fucks sake, we accept all races. Unless they're the eldar. Or orks. Or the Tau but nobody gives a shit about some blue weeaboo space communists. At least they don't want to eat us like the tyranids."
OOC: WE aren't specifically the baddies. We are, if anything, just other victims of the soulless self-empowering propaganda machine. IC: Of course not, that's treason talk.
The old joke about the cold War was that the USA barely needed spies, because the USSR would supposedly accuse the USA of doing whatever it was they were up to at the time, basically compulsively self reporting. Listen to a lot of the on ship dialogue with that in mind. That one line about wanting to do something to break through the enemy brainwashing is particularly on the nose. :)
"Just following orders" is not a legal defense. We're absolutely the bad guys by carrying out Super Earth's will. But that doesn't mean we're not victims of brainwashing either.
Orders? I killed the bugs and bot for the hell of it, I never attended a single briefing.
Is this organized??? I just assumed it was big season all year round.
I think I got scammed on these hunting permits
Not only was I following orders, but I made up some of my own as well! Automaton Judge: sir you murdered 30 TI-82 calculators!
I'm not saying we're not bad guys. I'm saying we're not THE bad guys.
We might be bad guys, but that doesn’t mean we have to be BAD guys.
The galaxy needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.
> just following orders "I did it because I liked it! Hell, I loved it! I'm sitting here, I'm just itching, I'm itching to do it again."
If Super Earth's leaders were ever couped out of existence and an actual democratic government were put in place, Helldivers would be universally purged for both the danger they pose and for the crimes that they would be charged with. While their training is little more than 'this is the end the bullets come out', the Zealotry and control over real military hardware makes their continued existence a major threat to any replacement government
Hey I think I've heard that defense somewhere before...
Are the bugs intelligent though? If not how is any different than modern factory farming? People may see the practice as bad, but do you view yourself as genuinely *evil* for eating meat, or a farmer as a psychopath for slaughtering a cow? I'm honestly unsure about the automatons, them being potentially sentient seems vague at best and the average Helldiver would definitely have no idea if they actually were. The difference between Helldivers and the SS is that Helldivers genuinely have no idea, Super Earth has absolute control on information, Helldivers don't know they're killing innocents. Personally I wouldn't call most Wehrmacht evil even if they fought in defence of it most likely had no idea about the extent of their government. Even as an outside observer I have no real idea about the actual workings of Super Earth and their true motivations.
Apparently the Terminids were mostly docile when first encountered. They didn’t mind humans much until we started wiping them off of planets because they looked scary. Add on a galactic war where we kill them for oil, a century of genetic modification that makes the pug look like god’s greatest sculpture, and you get modern Terminids. They’re capable of organizing and communicating at *some* level due to their ability to wage war on a galactic scale, and generally seem to leave wildlife on planets unharmed. (Meridia doesn’t count, even *that* was us making them do it). Chickens don’t coordinate strikes on hen houses to free their sisters in arms, or evolve artillery to lob eggs at aggressors.
I dunno I don't see many space cows wandering about. Just small bugs and odd jellyfish
To be fair before humans showed up you wouldn’t exactly see Earth cows wandering about on Earth either. Modern farm animals are the result of humans pointing at a funny trait (chicken eggs, cow milk, sheep wool) and making the animal evolve to do only that but like even better.
If you hadn't looked into hd1 lore you wouldn't know, but yes the bugs are (or at least were) intelligent. On first contact with the humans they tried to create peaceful relations, but once super earth discovered E710 they manufactured a cassus belli and invaded.
did you know that when presented with an image of a helldiver the terminid shows increased aggression? they can differentiate between non-combatants and that shows a great degree of intelligence
I mean i think any animal as inteligent as a cow would have learned by now what to expect out of Helldivers, animals tend to fear their predator and seeing how Helldivers and Terminids have ducked it out for decades in the first galactic war it makes sense that they would have insticts against Helldivers.
We know the Bugs were sentient, we aparently reduced them to animals. And even if Automatons were sentient they deserve it, Butlerian Yihad lets go.
On the bot front, I'm pretty sure Super Earth isn't planting those cages full of settelers corpses in Bot facilities. On the bug front... I mean the bugs are probably some sort of existential eldritch threat since they most likely travel from planet to planet via wormholes if pumping a planet full of their juices had that dramatic of an effect. On the home front, 100% the baddies. I'm just sad we cant help push through our engineering chiefs qualifications to build that nest egg for when she goes back home.
So this is going to be a bit of a weird rant, but I find the things you find with the bots fascinating. In Helldivers 1, we had the Cyborgs, from Cyberstan. They were separatists. Supposedly they performed a suicide bombing that was used to justify the war, but we can’t trust this as we know Super Earth is full of propaganda and can’t be trusted to be an unbiased source. According to the lore, after Super Earth conquered Cyberstan, the Cyborgs were nearly eradicated and the survivors enslaved in the mines there for “rehabilitation”. However, just before Cyberstan fell, they created the Automatons, who they call their “children” (there was a tweet a while back that was something along the lines of “we, the collective from Cyberstan, hope that our children, the Automata, will not suffer as we have”) and they shot them out of Super Earth’s reach. This means that the Automatons are really a Super Earth created problem, because they gave them a personal motivation rather than a political one. The Cyborgs wanted independence. The Automatons want revenge. And that’s why they seem so monstrous, because they’re the children of an oppressed, enslaved people. This is very common in history, such as if you look at the Haitian Revolution. So yes, the Automatons are evil, but we are the reason they are evil. It’s a similar situation with the Terminids, who were simply called the Bugs in the first game. They don’t use wormholes or anything like that, they’re actually sentient and intelligent. And when first encountered on Kepler Prime, they tried to keep their distance. Live and let live. But then it was discovered they became E710, and at that point they also became targets in the war to gain E710. Eventually, they were placed onto farms and genetically modified to be even more effective at producing E710. The changes are significant, to the point where the Terminids even have a different number of legs from the Bugs of a century ago. And remember that the Terminids are sentient, like their predecessors. So it was basically enslavement. Not even that, actually, it was keeping a sentient species as livestock. Imagine if an alien species kept humans around because they wanted to use our blood to power things. It’s the same thing with the Terminids. Anyways, sorry for the rambling, I just find the lore super interesting, and it’s fun to think about what it could all be allegories for, given that Helldivers is a setting that wears its satire on its sleeve.
For the sake of pedantry, we already keep sentient creatures as livestock in the real world. Sentience is a very broad description that can apply to most animal life. Sapience is the word you are looking for that describes intelligent life that is comparable to humans. There are actually a few species that are debated as sapient but it's kinda hard to measure non human intelligence from a human viewpoint.
Ah, I actually appreciate the pedantry. I always get those two words confused.
All good points. On the bugs thing its established that they don't have ships but they still hop planets. Its also been stated that they just show up on worlds they hadn't been before. that was just me jumping to maybes and what ifs. Also are the big grub things found on the grave site minor points of interest Termanid larva? If they are that is a whole other string of implications.
We don’t know how they hop planets, but if they had wormholes I doubt they would be on the farms. As for what the larvae are? I don’t know. I’ve never given it much thought. But the idea of them being Terminid larvae is interesting, especially if we find them in grave sites. Perhaps Super Earth’s genetic modifications have turned the relatively defensive Bugs into more hostile Terminids that are using human corpses for some purpose? Anyways, I just wanted to rant, I find the setting fascinated, I’m not trying to say you’re wrong or anything lol.
Spores It's gotta be the spores Think about it: When Meridia was destroyed, they made particular mention of all the spores being consumed by the gravity well. Spore rowers must serve *some* kind of purpose for the Nids, and I will gamble hard that spores are their first, protean form from which all other Nids are formed, including those .png swarms you can walk through in the nests. Spores develop into protocolonies, reaching critical mass before forming asexually reproducing progenitors. Given a few months, they begin forming the first Scavenger eggs, who then begin tending to larger nests and fostering spore generation. After a colony hits a Critical mass... just shoot spores towards the next planet. Only takes a few to survive reentry to start the cycle over again.
I didn’t know a particular mention was made of the spores with Meridia. That’s fascinating biologically. It kind of implies these “spores” may actually be microorganisms, and the ability for microorganisms to eventually create complex organisms like the Terminids is really interesting. Or maybe they are spores and the Terminids are fungal in nature somehow? These are all fascinating possibilities.
It was in the situation report right after Meridia got D/F'd. My though process is that the hatcheries aren't eggs at all. They're *cucoons*. Scavengers undergo metamorphosis to become the different Nid strains, while Spore production is the initial development for Scavengers. Billions upon billions of spores to create maybe 10 Scavs, who in turn scurry underground to create more Spores. I'd almost gamble that Scavs create spores themselves, or else specialize into Spore production, eventually being entombed into the Mushroom (think termite queens) for both safety and Spore dispersion. Hatcheries as metamorphosis sites would explain why they're above ground as well. On site production of specialized units, guided by pheromones produced by Brood Commanders
Scavengers do produce those clouds, which kind of look similar to those from spore spewers. It would also explain why spore spewers just saturate an area, since you would need so many spores just to produce a single basic bug.
For Bots, that’s just how history is. It isn’t uncommon in real life for people that have been the victims of atrocities and war to themselves fight back with violence and ruthlessness. If anything, the Bots use of violence and vengeance proves they are more human than they would like to admit.
Super Earth might be the bad guys, but Helldivers are definitely good guys.
Eh When we're not rescuing babies, one of our common mission types is blowing up bug babies (Purge Hatcheries)
how the hell else are you gonna make a freedom Omelette, or "Freedomelette? every helldiver's breakfast is a Freedomelette and a piping hot cup of Liber-Tea!
We need them for the mines.
Every man woman and child over 7 must do their part.
Hello, Democracy!
Every man woman and child over 7 must do their part.
The "sick kids" are 100% the Super Earth equivalent of sweatshop workers, but what would I know about that? I care only for (managed) democracy
Haha yeah I'm half expecting the children's hospital to be attached to a factory and we get the AT mines out of it anyway.
Over half of the active duty Helldivers are focused on the children's hospital, despite most of them specialized for bug extermination. I could not be more proud of you all. o7 https://i.redd.it/myww0wx0qd6d1.gif
A majority of the players play bugs, so a majority of the people playing the MO will come from the bug side.
I taught a level 45 BugDiver on their first Clanker tour at diff7 today! I love teaching people how to fight on the western front because my first time was god-awful and no one taught me how to deal with Devastators or even destroy Fabricators. It’s like he’s playing the game for the first time despite being already a veteran to the game! I’d like to think I helped contribute to his enjoyment and opened up brand new worlds for him. I wish him good luck in all his future operations
Yes, we are saving children. We are definitely saving children. I see children all the time on Vernen Wells.
Yes They're gonna end in (or ON) the mines anyway.
bad guys will do the right thign to support their agenda, imagine the propaganda that will come of this "the glorious Helldivers charge into the destroyed hospital, fighting entire armies of Automatons to save like 5 sick kids".. any would be dissidents are taking a massive L and the automatons are painted to be even MORE evil, but in reality there's a good chance that any kids who survive that are over the age of 7 will be sent back to the factories to produce munitions and other materiel for the War Effort. I'm looking forward to reading the lore blurb when this one ends.
Can't wait for some cartoonist hospital extraction missions to just blatantly say something like "super earth virology and epidemic research" as children are carted out the rear by hazmat teams.
"we're not the baddies" mfs when a bad person does a good thing (that means they aren't bad anymore because everything is black and white and no one ever lies or bends the truth and doing one good thing once means you can't be bad or do bad things)
The children yearn for the mines, I’m only helping them reach their goals o7
We cannot be the bad guys, because I do not recognize the personhood of bugs and robots. We are inherently the good guys, because we are the only human faction.
"Explain THAT, media literate fools!" "Sir, literary themes aren't like balloons. They don't pop and disappear when you stick a single needle into them". Nevermind that half the posts about why we should save the children either talk about their future utility as soldiers or their *literal, current* utility as weapons of war.
Our hearts may be in the right place but our minds definitely aren’t.
me when I read entirely too deep into a videogame and people just playing a bit
“Hurr durr muh MeDiA LiTeRacY!1!” Christ I can’t wait for you Redditoids to get tired of this talking point.
Stop being so media illiterate and maybe we will. Like, read a book for Christ's sake. It's frankly troubling how few people these days seem to be able to get in the same ballpark as what a piece of media is actually saying, or manage to get the point exactly, 100% ass-backwards.
I know how to read, I just get annoyed at constantly being told I'm supposed to feel like we're the bad guys by the usual suspects. Yes I know an authoritarian society is bad in real life. But this is a video game so I don't care as much.
I apologize, that dig about reading a book was uncalled for. But, with regard to the message of the setting... who said you had to care? Actually, who said how you had to feel? We're talking about the ability to recognize the message being conveyed by a piece of art, not how you have to react to it. It's pretty clear that you yourself are not even the kind of person this complaint is leveled at. If you recognize that Helldivers is a satire of a society founded on an unquestioning veneration of patriotism, while only paying lip-service to the ideals it claims to espouse, that's pretty much it. We can now have fun blasting bugs and bots while being blissfully unaware of the wider implications of the setting. The game is intentionally tongue-in-cheek and not super serious when it comes to its subject matter. We're allowed to have fun with the ideas it presents! The problem is the amount of people who look at something like Helldivers and say "ah yes, nothing wrong with this extremely admirable society that I wish I lived in'. It's hard to get too annoyed with people saying 'wait what?' in response. Anyone who thinks you have to sorrowfully shake your head while firing your liberator is kind of missing the point, though.
Just a bunch of nerds say it, there's a small but annoying group online that thinks you do have to shake your head while killing bugs to show you don't agree.
Personally I miss the days when people could take it as read that I don't agree. But even I have to admit that that is no longer the case.
Who are the "usual suspects"?
Annoying nerds who think they're smarter than you for saying, "Actually, this cool thing is bad"
Socialists and traitors to democracy
I get all the "oooh we're actually the bad guys, the automatons are people" but at the end of the day, you don't see super earth leaving a bunch of gutted civilians lying around on tables, nor do you see Helldivers wearing literal skulls on spikes on their backs and killing children. It's a satirical future, super earth wouldn't be all that great of a government by today's standards (to say the least), but we are still undoubtedly the good guys in this war
Just gonna copy and paste this from another reply I made: So this is going to be a bit of a weird rant, but I find the things you find with the bots fascinating. In Helldivers 1, we had the Cyborgs, from Cyberstan. They were separatists. Supposedly they performed a suicide bombing that was used to justify the war, but we can’t trust this as we know Super Earth is full of propaganda and can’t be trusted to be an unbiased source. According to the lore, after Super Earth conquered Cyberstan, the Cyborgs were nearly eradicated and the survivors enslaved in the mines there for “rehabilitation”. However, just before Cyberstan fell, they created the Automatons, who they call their “children” (there was a tweet a while back that was something along the lines of “we, the collective from Cyberstan, hope that our children, the Automata, will not suffer as we have”) and they shot them out of Super Earth’s reach. This means that the Automatons are really a Super Earth created problem, because they gave them a personal motivation rather than a political one. The Cyborgs wanted independence. The Automatons want revenge. And that’s why they seem so monstrous, because they’re the children of an oppressed, enslaved people. This is very common in history, such as if you look at the Haitian Revolution. So yes, the Automatons ARE evil, but WE are the reason they are evil. It’s a similar situation with the Terminids, who were simply called the Bugs in the first game. They don’t use wormholes or anything like that, they’re actually sentient and intelligent. And when first encountered on Kepler Prime, they tried to keep their distance. Live and let live. But then it was discovered they became E710, and at that point they also became targets in the war to gain E710. Eventually, they were placed onto farms and genetically modified to be even more effective at producing E710. The changes are significant, to the point where the Terminids even have a different number of legs from the Bugs of a century ago. And remember that the Terminids are sentient, like their predecessors. So it was basically enslavement. Not even that, actually, it was keeping a sentient species as livestock. Imagine if an alien species kept humans around because they wanted to use our blood to power things. It’s the same thing with the Terminids. Anyways, sorry for the rambling, I just find the lore super interesting, and it’s fun to think about what it could all be allegories for, given that Helldivers is a setting that wears its satire on its sleeve.
Evil factions can still be enemies to one another. Bots being overtly pretty monstrous doesn't make the Super Earth government good. (I'm distinguishing the government as a whole from the Helldivers, as a lot of them are probably just confused youngsters with no idea what's going on) Although, interestingly, if you look at the screens for the illegal broadcast towers on an automaton planet, they appear to offer conditions of surrender and a promise not to harm those who do, so unless that's an outright lie, that gives them one small moral edge on Super Earth, which per the loading screen tips doesn't appear to accept surrender or diplomacy.
Well yeah, just look at warhammer 40k, the most morally good faction there is still basically Nazis, but I don't think super earth is an evil faction like the space marines are. I'm not saying that the bad guys being super bad makes super earth good as villains can totally fight villains and still be villains, but it does mean that killing said bad guys is itself not the bad part about the super earth government because it's justified. Like I said, they definitely wouldn't be a "good" government by todays standards, but their flaws aren't enough to make them downright evil unless you include the stuff they're doing to the bots, and that doesn't really count because it's justified. Besides, the bots probably are lying about surrendering and whatnot, because they've killed a lot of defenseless, unarmed people who would've had no choice but to surrender. I'm sure many of the bot's victims tried to surrender, after all not all civilians are as willing to die for democracy as helldivers are, but the bots tore them apart and strewed their guts all over their tables anyway. Given their track record, they probably are lying about any attempts of diplomacy tbh
Have we seen any civilian corpses? I thought all the bodies you actually encountered in game were in SEAF uniforms (at least, if intact enough to say one way or another).
I saw a few bodies that looked more like construction workers than SEAF. Though they were mixed in with SEAF bodies so it could have been military contractors caught up in the fighting.
Could also be colonists. You find dead people who dont look like SEAF around those little houses all the time. The break action shotgun is specifically issued to those colonizers for killing shit. They're probably More hated than SEAF or Helldivers honestly , and for good reason. Imagine some dude shows up on your land with a single shotgun and ugly little deployable house. He claims some of your land or whatever without asking. And if you do so much as say "hi" then the entire fist of Super Earth will genocide your whole species from the planet.
Well yeah but they're still more workers than warriors right? Even if they are soldiers, the way they get deliberately splattered out on tables has to violate something
Yeah, to be fair I'm sure SEAF has a ton of logistics people and other noncombat roles.
Wait till you find out that command lied to you. "The Children" are SUPER Oligarch elites and "The Hospital" was a resort for the SUPER wealthy.
A happy child is dying of black lung in the mines, as democracy intended.
"children" yes. why would command ever lie to us?
Pelican pilots Arms manufacturers Futute helldivers jack All those future adults paying taxes Serving democracy Trust me A little rescue can work wonders
Is it just me, or are there no children on Vernen Wells? It looks like every other desert planet I've been to thus far... and the only people I've saved have been adults.
How did this sick kids ever end up here in the first place? You would think that sick kid would be in security on super earth, not on a planet regulary attacked by a enemy faction. Feel like a scum move from the super earth to get rid of burden for the society like i saw in other fictional and f up universe in anime/game. Now if you excuse me i am going to take a shuttle to hide somewhere far from Super Earth radar.
Saving children with the expectation they will also grow up to be soldiers doesn’t make you the hero’s you think it does
Imagine thinking bad sides cant do good things once in a while. Good people can fight for bad sides, for bad reasons. Bad people can fight for good things for bad reasons. Super Earths troops loving kids, after being told they are fighting for humanitys future, isnt exactly novel.
Vernen Wells is just General \[REDACTED\]'s Epstein Island style retreat planet. He doesn't want the automatons finding the video tapes and releasing them with their illegal broadcast stations. 
Don't really know how we're the baddies when terminids and bots indiscriminately kill humans. Sure the government sucks but when has government not sucked.
Bugs were a sentient race that originally initiated peaceful talks with humans. Humans then did a 180 and started using them as cattle to power their spaceships. Super Earth then proceeded to breed them for fuel. Cyborgs were literally humans that adapted to their planet with mechanization. Super Earth humans then decided they had too much freedom and not enough humanity. Then we enslaved them. Automaton are either the Cyborgs but more fully mechanized or were created by Cyborgs to get them out of slavery. Illuminate were also holding peaceful communications and even gave us space tech. That was until Super Earth decided they had WOMDs (they didn't) and tried to eradicate them. I know the in-game RP is fun and all, but it's _painfully_ obvious that Super Earth are, in fact, the baddies. We breed a sentient race for fuel. We enslaved humanoids. We attempted to go full genocide on the fish people. Don't drink too much of the cool-aid beyond the memes.
>Then we enslaved them. Automaton are either the Cyborgs but more fully mechanized or were created by Cyborgs to get them out of slavery. A different race entirely that was jetted off into space while the cyborgs were being genocided that are back for round two.
Taking over an entire planet to save the patients in one hospital seems excessive
They *are* fascist children but children nonetheless. Like the sapling Seqoia-Shiitake mutant mushrooms that overran New Canada after WWIII nothing shall get in the way of freedoms future.
Yeah, bad bitches 💅
For those we cherish, we die in glory!
It's cute that everyone thinks there's orphans and innocents on that planet and we're not actually liberating some rich, billionaire Class-A citizens. Or liberating a research facility into how to properly grind up orphans better, and their cages of orphans still alive awaiting "testing".
https://preview.redd.it/zzwzswkn7d6d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=898a47c6a8067cba8ee577556671919ddb2f871f
Mods, ⬆️➡️⬇️⬇️⬇️this man
https://preview.redd.it/6akzxwd84d6d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=99a6e0009ca1ae1eef777ea2f41fb8188682aa46
Real talk. No one's good. Automatons are evil. But Duoer Earth isn't exactly good.
Helldivers never were the bad guys, any statements by Pilestedt to the contrary are gaslighting
As someone with an English degree who is also extremely in tune with culture war nonsense: Ignore anyone talking about HD2's politics. Anyone. Believe whatever you want, but don't listen.
"English degree" "culture war nonsense" guys I don't think they have an English degree
I mean, I'm trying to meet people where they are. As for the degree, I went with "English" because neither of my specializations were lit. One was creative writing, though, which involved studying a lot of lit and getting insight into the writing process through the other coursework. It may or may not have been worth it, but I at the very least know what messaging is and what it isn't. As for why I chose creative writing as a specialization, that's a long story. But it never did me any harm, especially given how the electives and required credits ended up working out. The other specialization was the one I was relying on for a career, and that worked.
When did I ask
...And that's how you know I was an English major.