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Helldivers 2 has been a massive success! This is illustrated by Arrowhead’s recently shared player stats, along with its enormous sales making it one of Sony’s most popular exclusives, to the point where Sony is even making a movie. Arrowhead didn’t foresee HD2 becoming so big, and a large part of its success can presumably be attributed to Helldivers 2’s biggest change from HD1.
Helldivers 2 dev explains biggest change from HD1
Arrowhead recently conducted a livestream to celebrate the studio’s anniversary. During this livestream, a lot of questions from the community were answered. The developer responded to whether five-person squads will be added, and they also discussed scrapped concepts during development.
Alongside a plethora of other topics, the developer also discussed and explained the biggest change between HD2 and HD1. During the stream, a user in chat asked why Helldivers 2 uses a third-person view rather than the top-down isometric view used in the original battle for democracy that launched in 2015.
In response, game designer, Patrik Lasota, said there were a “whole lot of reasons” and “really some big ones”. The biggest reason was because there’s a “bigger market” for third-person shooters compared to top-down.
While Arrowhead wanted “more people to experience” HD2, another reason is because “it’s a more detailed game,” and Arrowhead knew they “wanted to do something a little bigger” because the “studio had just come off of making two smaller projects in Gauntlet and Helldivers”.
There is a lot of love and fondness that remains for the OG Helldivers experience, but the switch to third-person was probably the best decision Arrowhead made in making the game so much bigger. We don’t know the total sales of HD2, but it reportedly sold 12 million units in just three months to become PlayStation’s biggest game ever.
For more Helldivers 2, check out our guide to the best warbonds ranked, along with the best stratagems and best throwables. We have also a guide to the best weapons, and, if you’re coming back to HD2 for the first time in a long while, we have a bunch of tips and tricks to help you get reaccustomed to the battlefield.
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