Less than a year after launching 2024's best live service, Helldivers 2 creative director has already started working on "the next Arrowhead game"

Arrowhead Game Studios' CCO is already working on the team's next game after the mega-success of Helldivers 2.

Former Arrowhead CEO turned CCO and Helldivers 2 creative director Johan Pilestedt took to social media just before the new year to ask players what their "expectations and desires" were for whatever the studio cooks up after - or maybe even alongside - its smash shooter success.

"I am working on the high concept, but I would love to hear your speculation," he tweeted. "High concept" probably refers to overarching ideas he's playing with, and it sounds like any work that's being done doesn't involve the whole studio just yet, so we likely won't hear about Arrowhead's next project for a while. 

Helldivers 2 fans had plenty of ideas regardless. Some people mentioned that Arrowhead might be able to make a cool, on-rails space combat sim featuring Super Earth's Eagles, which frequently rain down support for divers and big explosions for the poor old bugs and robo-commies in the game. It would even be a way to canonize the Eagle-1 pilot that's been the centre of countless fan art. Arrowhead itself once made a prototype for a Star Wars TIE Fighter game, so the genre wouldn't be too left-field.

Others dreamt up single-player Helldivers spin-offs, Killzone revivals, or more PvE-oriented multiplayer games for people that find competitive shooters a little too intense. 

Two weeks ago, Pilestedt mentioned that Arrowhead is effectively making a threequel to its now-famous series with its ongoing Helldivers 2 support. 

"We are growing Helldivers 2 into Helldivers 3," he said. Helldivers 2 recently introduced a whole new game-changing enemy faction, more biomes, and much-requested features like melee weapons in its Omens of Tyranny update. A few more of those updates, and, yeah, the game's post-launch support would likely be robust enough to fill an entire sequel. The only question now is whether it comes out during or after Helldivers 2's run.

Helldivers 2 players beat the Illuminate back, but they’re still freaking out citizens, so High Command wants to build a surveillance center which definitely won’t be used for spying, right?