Helldivers 2 “Escalation of Freedom” update coming on August 6th
Arrowhead Games has announced the biggest update yet for Helldivers 2. It’s called Escalation of Freedom, and is coming on August 6th.
The update was announced on the official PlayStation Blog, where Social Media and Community Manager at Arrowhead Game Studios, Katherine Baskin, explained “We’ve taken the time to gather feedback from our players on the front lines, and we’re bringing greater variety to our content. From missions and objectives to enemies and planets, we’re delivering lots of new content for both our veteran players and brand-new Helldivers on the battlefield. Get ready for our biggest update yet!”
The update will add combat rating 10, which is “Super Helldive”. Baskin says that “CR 10: Super Helldive is our 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. And with a great challenge comes greater rewards.”
One of the criticisms aimed at Helldivers 2 has been the variety, or lack of during missions. To address this, Escalation of Freedom adds new objectives and bigger enemy outposts for both the bug and bot missions. There are also new enemies, and the Impaler is returning from the original Helldivers game.
There’s also a Spore Charger (a charger that now has a fog shroud to make it hard to see until it’s right up on you). The Alpha Commander is the last of the bug enemies to be added, and it’s a “supercharged Brood Commander that’s bigger, meaner, and doesn’t hesitate to call in other bugs for backup.” Onto the bots, then, which now have a Rocket Tank to use against the heroes.
One other less dramatic change to the game is how the team is addressing grief kicking. Basically if a player is kicked from a game after this update, they will spawn into a new game session as the host, with all of the loot from the previous session. This loot can be grabbed and you can extract as normal, while the squad who has kicked the player will be informed it’s happened, and their loot doesn’t change.
Baskin says: “With these changes, all players have the opportunity to leave with all loot collected on mission, with no one Helldiver losing out. We’re committed to making changes that will improve the player experience and encourage healthy, cooperative gameplay.”
Helldivers 2 is out now for PC and PlayStation 5, and the Escalation of Freedom update hits on August 6th.
