Helldivers 2 was designed to make players feel like "no single person can do this alone" as its director believes a great co-op game "makes players want to play together"

Helldivers 2 helldivers hugging — (Image credit: Sony)

The director of Helldivers 2 says the shooter was designed to encourage players to work together, as "a good co-op game forces players to play together, but a great one makes players want to play together."

In an interview with the PlayStation Blog, Johan Pilestedt - the CEO & Creative Director at Arrowhead Studios - talked about Helldivers 2's development and, more specifically, the shooter's co-op aspects. "Since Helldivers is fundamentally a game where collaboration and cooperation is key, we struggled with this early on," Pilestedt said.

"The key thing that resolved this was the need for the 'watering hole' which encourages players to gather in certain locations," Pilestedt continues. "We created these locations dynamically by making the shared resupply stratagem, players dropping sample containers upon death, and through reinforcement Placement."

Sharing the studio's approach to co-op, the CEO adds: "I believe that a good co-op game forces players to play together, but a great one makes players want to play together." Pilestedt then says the team wants Helldivers 2 to feel like "when you are going into a dark basement" and you want a friend by your side. "We could only achieve this by creating the sensation that no single person can do this alone – even though some crazy people out there have done so!" the developer says.

In other Helldivers 2 news, the developer of another co-op shooter has been trying to get Arrowhead's attention. Over the weekend, the team behind Deep Rock Galactic has been streaming Arrowhead's game to ask about a co-op collaboration. This technique may have worked, as it seems someone reached out to the team during the stream - that is after missing the initial invitation via email.

On the topic of co-op, Helldivers 2 recaptures the co-op chaos of classic Halo games better than Halo itself.

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After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.