Mysterious Helldivers 2 update drops an Illuminate teaser so obvious that it's downright suspicious: "I wouldn't be surprised if they were just trolling us"

Helldivers 2 players have been speculating for months when and if the Illuminate faction from the first game could ever make a return in the gloriously democratic sequel, but what looks like the most obvious teaser yet has some fans feeling suspicious.

As highlighted by VG247, over on SteamDB today, Helldivers 2's update history revealed something a tad strange. Developer Arrowhead made some changes to some of the game's depots (essentially, groups of files), with the term "gameplay_illuminates" repeated again and again over multiple lines of alterations. Gameplay Illuminates. It's certainly more solid evidence to suggest that the Illuminate could be making a comeback than those fabled blue beams that players started reporting in the game months ago, so why isn't everyone buying it?

Great things are happening on SteamDB rn from r/Helldivers

Frankly, it seems almost too obvious. "Can't wait for it being an update on the lighting in the gameplay and everyone getting bamboozled. I would expect them to troll us. I would expect them to accidentally leak it too. So 50/50?" one Helldiver on Reddit contemplates. 

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Another agrees, "I wouldn't be surprised if they were just trolling us," while one player predicts that the next patch notes will announce: "We updated the lighting engine. Terrain should be illuminated much more realistically now."

The thing is, Arrowhead seems to know how to keep changes like this hidden if it wants to – as VG247 points out, scrolling through the SteamDB changelist, you'll come across loads of things called "mimosa" and "wushu," for example, which give very little away about what they could possibly contain. So why would the studio suddenly slip and give something so huge away? 

Of course, it might not be an attempt to troll at all, it could be a way to drop a genuine teaser for those who were eagerly keeping an eye out for new content, but whether we'll get any confirmation either way any time soon remains to be seen. After all, even when players started finding flying Terminids in the game itself, we were told that any footage of them was "propaganda from bug sympathizers."

Helldivers 2 creative director once said transmog "doesn't make sense" for the shooter, but has now confirmed Arrowhead is "looking into" armor color customization.