The first and final 10 seconds of the new Helldivers 2 trailer demonstrate the transportive power of music. Developer Arrowhead is drumming up recruitment for the August 26 release of the Xbox Series X version of the space shooter, and it's using music and games from the late 2000s to do it.
Nelly's Here Comes the Boom, 2008 banger and soundtrack to countless Call of Duty montages and action movie trailers, helps bring incoming Xbox players up to speed. There's a war on, there are aliens, and we'd rather there be big ol' explosions where there used to be aliens.
But it's the 2009 throwback that really stands out, and Xbox players are sure to perk up their ears. Right at the end of the trailer, the Halo 3: ODST soundtrack makes a brief appearance as (what appears to be) a reinforcement Stratagem module makes landfall. Specifically, song 04, Rain, with its unmistakable somber horn, briefly fades in as rain peppers a city in the background.
The obvious implication here is that, after a Killzone collab with PlayStation, Helldivers 2 will see a Halo collab with Xbox now that the shooter's finally gone fully multiplatform. How that collaboration manifests, and how much it draws specifically from Halo 3 versus the broader Halo franchise, remains to be seen.
Halo, with its own intergalactic war and invasive alien species, is a perfect fit for this kind of collab. The Helldivers 2 Killzone crossover amounted to a selection of weapons and cosmetics. The teased Halo crossover could well see some iconic weaponry adapted for Helldivers 2's combat sandbox – people have been begging for a shield grenade based on Halo's bubble shield for ages, for one thing – along with Spartan skins.
Whatever's in store, it's enough for Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani to once again threaten the browning of pants. "What's the pant situation right now?" the CEO asked the Helldivers 2 Discord community following the trailer's release.
"Please prepare your pants," he later advised. "Muahahaha."
Jorjani previously said fans should thank Sony for the Xbox port, though "we were all in support."
