Hours After Liberating Malevelon Creek, Helldivers 2 Players Spot Enormous Cloaked Ships Over Automaton Worlds

ign.com:

Mere hours after liberating Malevelon Creek, Helldivers 2 players have a new threat to contend with: mysterious cloaked ships.

Players took to social media and forums to post screenshots showing what appear to be enormous ships in orbit around Automaton planets. Redditor infinity__cube appears to be the first Helldiver to have reported a sighting, but more images have emerged since. The evidence is irrefutable: the cloaked ships are there, but they appear to be lying in wait.

Yesterday, April 1, developer Arrowhead delivered a new Major Order to Helldivers 2 players, giving them a 24-hour window to finally take back Malevelon Creek, the Automaton map dubbed ‘Space Vietnam’ by fans. The planet was liberated in only about five hours.

Now, with a new Major Order in place to fend off the Automaton counterattack, the mysterious ships have popped up in the sky across Automaton planets.

Cloaked massive ships over Automaton worlds ?!! pic.twitter.com/k3yNlqfGRT

But what could they be? There are a number of theories, including a rather boring explanation that they are a visual bug associated with the existing Super-Destroyer ships. More exciting is the suggestion they are Illuminate ships. The Illuminate are a third alien faction most Helldivers 2 players believe are on their way to the game.

Perhaps they are evidence that the Automatons’ true might is looming over the horizon, ready to pounce now that the terrifying alien robots have been sufficiently angered. If that’s the case, perhaps these ships mark the arrival of new Automaton aerial gunships, which were signaled in flavor text from a recently completed Major Order. Players are already speculating that these aerial gunships, if genuine, will cause Helldivers even more problems by intermittently firing at the battlefield. That won’t be annoying at all.

pic.twitter.com/WopTFTQEdI

This is all part of Helldivers 2’s fascinating Galactic War, a meta narrative steered by Game Master Joel. Amid the push and pull of planets, new