Helldivers 2 devs reveal the first Galactic War was just "an elaborate special operation," and "The Second Galactic War" has already begun

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This is just the beginning...

Helldivers 2
(Image credit: Arrowhead Game Studios)

Helldivers 2 players failed to complete their latest Major Order, and apparently that means that the entire Galactic War is set to "escalate."

In a post on the official Helldivers 2 Discord last night, community manager Baskinator noted that players had failed to reach the requirement to kill two billion bots in the five-day Major Order. Previously, they succeeded in a bug-shaped version of that Order, but that's probably because an error counted Terminid kills way faster than intended. Arrowhead has now fixed that issue, which is probably why the Automaton threat wasn't taken out so quickly.

That means that the Anti-Tank Mines that would have been offered as a reward for completing the Order won't be made available just yet. More important, however, is the reveal that the Galactic War we're been fighting all this time seems to be about to get a lot worse.

Underneath that Major Order failure, Baskinator said that "the war now escalates into what is officially called 'The Second Galactic War'," and revealed that "all conflict leading up to this was merely an elaborate special operation." To help kickstart the real conflict, new recruits are being trained, and Helldivers will be "tasked with guarding these training facilities so that each recruit can be given their rigorous 72 hour basic training."

This isn't the first time that Galactic Game Master Joel has pulled this kind of bait-and-switch. Last month, Arrowhead revealed that the entire Automaton army we'd been facing since launch was just a vanguard force, and that a full-scale fight was only just beginning. However, the idea that the 'first' Galactic War is over and that we're preparing to enter an entire second phase seems like a pretty big deal. Given, however, that Arrowhead's CEO only recently suggested he wants the war to last "forever," perhaps this is the kind of thing we should come to expect.

Meet the new hero of Helldivers 2: Dremskiy, a player kicked despite insisting "Im frend," who now has a full Steam friends list after even PlayStation shared the love.

Ali Jones
Ali Jones
Managing Editor, News

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for news, shaping the news strategy across the team. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.