Helldivers 2 Fans Find Wild Enemy Detail That Shouldn't Be Possible
It's a fine time for theorizing in "Helldivers 2." As players continue to wage war across the galaxy, they're also starting to look at the game on a deeper level, and some of what they're discovering is pretty shocking. Players are working out the dark ties between the Automatons and Super Earth, as well as details about the Helldivers themselves that make us question the basic reality of the game. Other players have been focusing their investigations a little closer to home. While looking at the inner workings of High Command and Super Earth, some have started to believe that we're being tricked into making the galaxy worse by following Major Orders. The true intentions of Super Earth are still very much up for debate, but while doing a little digging, one player who goes by WitchBaneHunter on Reddit found an alarming detail about enemies who've supposedly come to the planet.
Every planet in "Helldivers 2" lists the enemies that have died on it, and Super Earth actually has 16 confirmed Illuminate kills. For fans who know their "Helldivers" lore, this discovery may have huge implications for the future of the game and the fate of Super Earth itself.
Who are the Illuminate?
If "Helldivers 2" is your first foray into this franchise, then you probably only have the vaguest idea of what the Illuminate is. Maybe you've seen people talking about blue laser beams being sighted throughout the galaxy, and maybe you heard about players catching Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt lying about the existence of said lasers. Without knowing the larger context, those stories and rumors may be a bit confusing.
In the original "Helldivers," which was set 100 years prior to the current game, the Illuminate were a major enemy faction, easily identifiable because of their gleaming white technology and the aforementioned blue lasers fired by their snipers. Thanks in large part to those snipers, the Illuminate were some of the more challenging enemies you could face in the game. The Illuminate aren't officially in "Helldivers 2" just yet, but the real story is obviously more complicated than that. Multiple players have seen their lasers being fired on various planets, and despite the game's creative director initially saying, "Blue lasers aren't real, it can't hurt you," everyone is preparing for the worst. The new discovery of confirmed Illuminate kills on Super Earth is just further proof that a big reveal may be just around the corner. However, some gamers aren't so sure about this seemingly impossible detail.
Brace for Illuminate impact?
WitchBaneHunter's Reddit post got some big reactions from the rest of the "Helldivers 2" community, but not everyone is sold on the Super Earth stats being at all significant. "We will occasionally see 1 Helldivers [sic] deployed on planets like Cyberstan," wrote one user, referring to a planet that's been off-limits in the war so far. They added, "My guess is the devs test things from time to time and the location gets logged weird because they aren't actually in a deployable zone."
Others were fully prepared to go into tinfoil hat mode. One of the more popular theories is that the Illuminate have done some small scale attacks on Super Earth in preparation for an even bigger invasion. "Imagine we conquer the outer sectors of the star map to then have the inner sectors attacked by the Illuminate," wrote another user.
The only thing this latest discovery definitely confirms is that the Illuminate exist in some form in "Helldivers 2." We basically knew as much already, but now we have some hard evidence. All that's left now is to wait for them to make their move and respond in force. Time for players to grind out some nearly impossible missions to train for the next wild turn of the Galactic War. If the fighting comes to Super Earth, the "Helldivers" fanbase be ready for it.