'We have an actual person with the title of Game Master': A single Helldivers 2 dev named Joel is pulling the strings on its galactic war like an all-powerful D&D dungeon master, war will become 'more and more sophisticated over time'
Helldivers 2's galactic war is much more than a mission selector. In a short time, players have become invested in the status of their favorite planets and reacted to gains and losses in a sector's liberation. The simulated conflict playing out both in-game and on social media has become an unexpected focal point of the Helldivers 2 experience.
Unexpected to players, that is. To developer Arrowhead Game Studios, the war is a product of careful planning and storytelling by a specific behind-the-scenes individual pulling the strings: what Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt described to PC Gamer as Helldivers 2's «dungeon master.»
«We have an actual person with the job title of Game Master,» Pilestedt told PC Gamer in an interview today. His name is Joel, and he takes his job very seriously.
«We have a lot of systems built into the game where the Game Master has a lot of control over the play experience. It's something that we're continuously evolving based on what's happening in the game,» Pilestedt continued. «And as part of the roadmap, there are things that we want to keep secret because we want to surprise and delight.»
Pilestedt says Dungeons and Dragons has been a major inspiration for Arrowhead. The studio aims to replicate collaborative, reactive storytelling of tabletop gaming in Helldivers 2, acknowledging the differences between designing a campaign for a small party versus millions of players.
«It's the same format when you build that for millions of players, it's just that you can't get as personal with every individual. But you can still do the same twists and turns.»
Those twists, as explained by Arrowhead prior to Helldivers 2's release, can be as granular as giving a specific player access to a special strategem mid-mission to spice things up, but it also extends to larger narrativized events in the galactic war. We got our first taste of these events a week after launch, when the offensive campaign against the Terminids was interrupted by Automaton
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