The newest Helldivers 2 mission has a twist: less murder, not more

polygon.com:

In Helldivers 2, the player base eagerly awaits Major Orders, military commands from Super Earth. The entire community then bands together to complete these goals. Since February, the leadership of Super Earth has asked us to do lots of wild things, like open up a black hole or storm Automaton space to cleanse the galaxy of murder robots. But one recent Major Order is quite unusual, as it actively discourages murder.

Developer Arrowhead Game Studios are dangling the Anti-Tank Mine upgrade in front of players, a Strategem that has evaded Helldivers again and again. The only catch? Players have to not hit a certain kill count.

Major Orders can award new toys called Stratagems, which are tactical tools such as weapons, backpacks, resupplies, or orbital bombardments for use in-game. But so far Anti-Tank Mines have remained elusive.

In point of fact, this is player’s fourth shot at unlocking Anti-Tank Mines. The first Major Order that offered them as a potential reward yielded Airburst Rocket Launchers instead, which players chose en masse due to its strength against pernicious Automaton ships. A second Major Order asked players to turn a certain amount of Automatons into scrap to earn the mines; the community failed that Order.

Next, players were asked to choose between the Anti-Tank Mines and a hospital full of very sick children in the appropriately named Operation Trolley Problem. The Helldivers community showed its mettle by choosing to save the children. This was incredibly wholesome, but it did mean they had to go without those powerful explosive delights.

Enter the newest Major Order, Operation Vengeful Cleansing. High Command has ordered an Efficacy Review. To whit, if players can kill a certain number of enemies as a collective, then clearly we’re doing just fine and don’t need those mines. If we can’t kill those enemies, then Super Earth will finally distribute those mines to Helldivers in the virtual field. It’s a fairly high target to hit — over 1.5 billio