Helldivers 2’s New CEO Wants to Keep the Game’s Best Bug Yet

ign.com:

Helldivers 2 players have discovered a quite fantastic bug that prevents them from taking fall damage — and the new CEO of developer Arrowhead wants it to stay.

As surfaced by redditor Chunke-Funke-Monke, Helldivers 2 emoting actually reduces fall damage. It’s true: perform an emote while you’re falling from a height you'd typically die from and you'll reduce the damage you’d normally take and survive.

Why does this happen? The theory is that Helldivers 2 applies its physics model to fall damage as it does across the game. That is, the game works out which part of your body you’ve landed on and determines damage accordingly. It makes sense! A bang on the head is probably going to be fatal, but you might survive a bang on your butt… just.

Helldivers 2 doesn’t let you change your orientation as you fall through the air, but if you emote while doing so you force your character model to reposition into the emote pose, thus changing the part of you that hits the ground first. Genius!

This is genuinly useful in a game packed with explosions that often send your Helldiver hurtling across the map. And so, Helldivers 2 has a new meta: using emotes to prevent fall damage. Now that’s a twist Super Earth didn’t see coming.

You’d think Arrowhead would want to patch this one out (I doubt it’s intended gameplay), but new CEO Shams Jorjani, who recently replaced previous Arrowhead CEO and current chief creative officer Johan Pilestedt, tweeted to call for it to stay.

can we please, please keep this? @ArrowheadGS https://t.co/a57PMZ4JtT

While emote free-falling is meme worthy now, what might be better for Helldivers 2 long-term is a more realistic mechanic that lets players reduce fall damage in-universe. Perhaps there’s certain armor that would help, or gear that gives you a parachute or something similar. Yet another mechanic to potentially add to Arrowhead’s long list of upcoming Helldivers 2 content.

we'll add inflatable bouncy bags that deploy from under your arm pits or some shit if