I keep returning to Helldivers 2, not because I’m interested in trying out new weapons or conquering the highest difficulty, but because I’m totally invested in the current story playing out. As Helldivers, the players are following orders from Super Earth — including the ones that are obviously doomed. Previously, we sprayed Termicide all over planets in order to thwart the voracious Terminid hordes. The Termicide technically backfired, causing hideous mutations and the development of a super colony on Meridia.
Over the weekend, Helldivers descended on Meridia, using Dark Fluid in order to extinguish the super colony. The mysterious experiment required the brave sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of Helldivers… and fans think that the most recent operation may have triggered the arrival of a third enemy faction.
Meridia was once a peaceful swamp planet, but the Terminid Control System — meaning, players spraying Termicide everywhere — hit it particularly hard. By the time Meridia had developed into a super colony, the planet was an utter nightmare, crusted over with Terminids and chitin that developed into terrifying towers. Spore towers, which act as an optional objective that players can destroy in some missions, spotted the terrain everywhere. Massive pits yawned open across the surface of the planet. Spawn nests were absolutely ubiquitous; no matter how many I plugged up with my handy grenade launcher, there were always more dotting the terrain.
Things only escalated once we completed our assigned mission on Meridia. Even on the lowest difficulty possible, finishing the mission triggered an eruption of an endless swarm of flying bugs, flocking towards the delicious Helldivers on the surface. This was a suicide mission in all but name, except command kept sending down Helldivers until we ran out of reinforcements. Meridia was a meat grinder, and I absolutely loved the wild challenge.
That’s not to say that the Meridia major order went off flawlessly. There were bugs that plagued the experience — and I’m not talking about the Terminids. Bile Titans would explode out from underneath the drills that were injecting Dark Fluid, destroying the drills and causing chaos. At the start of the major order, players would all receive a much lower ranking than warranted. Arrowhead was able to iron out some of these issues, but it took time.
While the execution was flawed, the premise was extremely cool — and as we succeeded in the Major Order, I got the treat of watching Meridia collapse and my ship making an FTL jump back to Super Earth. There’s just one problem: What’s left of Meridia looks a little less like a black hole, and a little more like a wormhole. I’m no scientist, but it’s possible we just launched a planet full of bugs into some other sector of space for some other faction to find.
Perhaps the Illuminate, a high-tech alien faction from the first game that have been suspiciously absent from Helldivers 2, will be the ones to receive that particular gift. Either way, I’m pretty sure that the Meridia story isn’t over yet, but the high-stakes mission made for a fun chapter in the ongoing story of the second galactic war. The next Major Order has us claiming Terminid planets to make room for new Super Earth settlements, seemingly unaware of the risks of what we’ve done.
