Helldivers 2 “Urban Warfare” missions would struggle with the game’s design

Helldivers 2 players are understandably excited about possible urban-set missions coming in the future, but bringing these missions to life could be much more difficult than they think.

Ever since Helldivers 2 fans first caught a glimpse of the city-like setting of Cyberstan through in-game news videos, they have been clamoring for missions set in these kinds of environments.

The excitement is understandable, as these places look great in these videos and it would provide a great change of pace to break up the kind of environments that make up the current missions.

However, bringing a cityscape to Helldivers 2 could be incredibly challenging for the devs and, because of this, expectations may need to be tempered.

The way Helldivers 2 works is that each explorable planet has a specific set of characteristics that must be on display. However, each mission is unique in that locations, enemy placements, and layouts are all procedurally generated.

This works right now because missions are spread out and environments are open, meaning that there is wiggle room with how buildings can be generated and show up in-mission.

Everything changes when the setting is taken to a city, where things are more cramped, there is more going on, and buildings need to spawn close to each other without clipping.

Producing the right environment like this is much harder to program, and it forces the devs to completely change the way they’ve approached mission design, so far.

Devs would probably love to bring this to the game, but as a player on the Helldivers 2 subreddit points out, “… getting their terrain-gen to make a convincing urban environment is probably pretty difficult.”

The issue of enemy AI and Stratagems intermixing with this makes the whole thing much more complicated as well.

The enemy AI is fine, it does what it needs to do, but it also relies on getting from Point A to Point B without an obstacle in its way. When an obstacle does present itself, they will often get stuck on a rock or ledge.

Having them try to navigate a city would be a nightmare, and in its current state, the AI just isn’t there.

And with respect to Stratagems, some of which can be called in to level an area, what kind of effect will they have? Will the skyscrapers and buildings be destructible, or will they stay standing after the dust clears?

Considering how much the Helldivers 2 community loves the destruction of certain Stratagems, this could be a recipe for disappointment.

It’s not an impossible feat, and the devs can figure out how to make it work, but it feels like players need to temper their hype for these kinds of mission locations.

There is a very real possibility that if urban locales are brought to the game, they will not be what many people hope. Which isn’t a bad thing at all; the game is at its best when people can sit back and go along with what comes.