With little fanfare, Helldivers 2’s creative director shares that Arrowhead are prototyping a roguelite mode

I think there is a very compelling case for Twitter not being the place that information about, well, honestly anything, should be casually shared in a matter of fact manner. It is a site for, if we must use it, posting things like “just downloaded some MP3s to my iPod Touch,” not sharing that Arrowhead are currently testing a roguelite mode in Helldivers 2, which is exactly what the game’s creative director Johan Pilestedt did today.

He said it as simply as that too. In response to someone suggesting to him that a roguelike mode might be fun, Pilestedt simply, and politely, responded, “Hey! We have a prototype of a rogue-lite mode – it changes the game fundamentally!” You cannot do this, Pilestedt, because now you’ll have folks badgering you for only the gods know how long until such a mode is formally announced and/or available.

There are zero (less than one, more than minus one) other details to be found about such a prototype as Pilestedt has not shared them, and I imagine will not until there is something solid to be shared. This is a live service game after all, concepts and features change all the time, who knows if this one will even make it out the door?

It’s also worth remembering that this is a live service game that has been struggling under its own weight recently. Back in October it received a massive update that fixed more than 200 bugs (not that kind), an update that came after months of performance issues. These problems had been so prolific that they had to stop adding new bits like content and feature updates for a while, the thing that keeps the money wheel turning. So, yeah, if that roguelite mode ever comes it, expect it to take a while.

Things seem to be in shipper shape these days, and it was just last week that Arrowhead released a build of the game that cut its file size down to 23GB from 154GB, exactly the kind of news my hard drive likes to see.