Helldivers 2 doesn't really have "stealth gameplay" - "it's just that everything just has to make sense"

rockpapershotgun.com:

I've written a bit about playing Helldivers 2 as a solo diver, noting that Arrowhead's frenetic shooter holds up surprisingly well when you rudely insist on treating it like an open world stealth sim, a la Metal Gear Solid V. The developers have weighed in on this front, commenting that strictly speaking, Helldivers 2 doesn't support stealth at all. It's just designed in an "agnostic", systems-first way and this in itself makes stealth a possibility. It's also a quiet attempt to capture something of the intricacy of a full-blown military simulator, while still being a very "arcadey" game at heart, which owes a little to Arrowhead's own collective time in the military.

All that's from OperatorDrewski's recent let's play interview with Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt and head of product testing Patrik Lasota. Here's the relevant chunk about stealth (the chat is unattributed, but I think this is Pilestedt talking):

It's not really that we have stealth gameplay, it's just that everything just has to make sense. All of the enemies they have hearing, sight, they also have like an approximation of smell within a close radius. It's just like if you're in proximity to some of the units that are very sensorily aware, like the Stalker, they will detect you no matter if they can see you.

Yes, that's right, the game simulates smelling, so be sure to do your laundry regularly, Super Terrans, lest your noxious underpants lure the arachnid menace to Lady Libertea's door. If I were feeling ungenerous I might say that "smell" here is just a fancy way of saying "some enemies magically notice you at close range", but even if that's the case, it's perhaps a system they can expand. For instance, they could give Stalkers the ability to follow scent trails, and by extension, perhaps they could introduce a Stratagem that drops stink bombs to mislead patrols. As General Brasch might put it, the stench of deception is also the aroma of victory!

There's some follow-up chat on how much