The Helldivers 2 devs have a pretty simple process for designing new Stratagems: they just make a new one whenever they get bored of the old selection. That's perhaps oversimplifying the process a bit, but Arrowhead Studios CEO and creative director Johan Pilestedt says it's all about having a fun idea and iterating on it until it makes sense in the game.
“Generally, Stratagems are based on real world examples," Pilestedt tells the PlayStation Blog. "We’re interested in both war movies and pop culture, so in some cases the concept may be inspired by a pop-culture reference, but realism is added by taking real world guns and applying them to the mechanics.”
He says that “stratagems are generally designed in an iterative and sprint-based fashion. We play the game and get bored by the current selection, so we add another one. Maybe a designer that has an idea, such as the walking barrage, or something more advanced."
Helldivers 2 stratagems are a beast unto themselves, but they have their roots back in the original game, and it seems the process hasn't changed much for the sequel. The original game's Exo-44 Walker stratagem came about, Pilestedt explains "by the team saying, 'Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a mech?' Then the process started. What would a mech be like in this universe? What would the armament be? What would be the strengths and weaknesses of a mech? It all comes back to believability.” And now that Exo-44 Walker has gotten a big upgrade with the arrival of Helldivers 2 mechs, which brought us the Exo-45 suit.
In the same interview, Pilestedt also said Helldivers 2 patches are set to deliver "a massive list of quality-of-life improvement ideas" that Arrowhead has sourced straight "from the community," so it's looking like good times ahead even as the forever war continues.
If you need help figuring out how to activate the Terminid Control System in Helldivers 2, we've got you covered at that link.
