As you may or may not be aware by now,Helldivers 2plays host to a pretty hefty number of guns. Big guns, small guns, laser guns… The funny thing is that they all share various attachments and doodads, so is there a customization system hiding somewhere in the background?
The answer to that question should be obvious to anyone who’s ever taken a second glance at about two-thirds of Helldivers 2’s armory: yes. Gear standardization doesn’t only make sense from an in-universe Super Earth point of view in this game, after all. It’s a perfectly sensible decision to run the same kind of optics on virtually all of your gear from a development viewpoint, too, as it shortens dev time and introduces interoperability for all the guns you create. Heck, we do it in the real world, too, with STANAGs and standardized railing systems.
Weapon customization is a crucial aspect of modern shooters. It adds an extra layer of personalization and allows players to fine-tune their gear however they see fit. It should be no surprise at all that Arrowhead Games had, at the very least, considered adding it toHelldivers 2at some point in time. The bit that may come as a surprise, though, is that Arrowhead appears to have half-implemented it already.
To begin with, Arrowhead CCO Johan Pilestedt himself mentionedsubsonic ammunition and suppressorsearly after the game came out. A statement that was subsequently lionized in the leak/datamine community with amassive list of weapon attachmentsalready present in the game. Not long ago, a different dataminer even posted a simple Liberator getting kitted out with various sights, barrel attachments, grips, magazines, skins, and so on, thoughthe postgot taken down. Datamining is like that sometimes. Crucially, it’s all in there, fully supported byHelldivers 2as it currently stands.
None of this is surprising or a secret if you’ve kept an ear close to the ground, but the curious bit is that you don’t even need to look outside of the game to get a sense of howHelldivers 2‘s weapons actually work. Many of them are the same baseline gun with different thingamabobs attached. Same as it is inDestiny 2!
Of course, all the different Liberators are obvious examples of this, but all the SG pump-action shotguns are built on the same platform, and the same can be said about the Breaker shotguns as well. This goes beyond standardized weapon classes, to boot: the Eruptor bolt-action rifle is just a customized JAR-5 Dominator. The list goes on and on.
I’m not criticizing Arrowhead’s choice to handleHelldivers 2‘s weapons this way. I’m thrilled with it beacuse there’s evidently a backend weapon customization framework that the team may choose to share with the community at some point in time—hopefully soon, because it would add a huge amount of variability to the experience. Customization is always a good thing, andArrowhead has proven that it’s got the moxieto handle some pretty wild crossover content. What’s a new scope compared to something like that?
Obviously, then,Helldivers 2has everything it needs to support the usual suspects: a framework for weapon mods (specifically, ammo types, aiming modules, grips, magazines, stocks, optics, and barrel assemblies that we’ve seen so far) to fit onto most guns’ basic railing systems. Skins, too, are clearly implemented, but this is where we come to the first problem withHelldivers 2‘s potential guncrafting feature. Specifically, if you may switch everything from optics to ammo loads on any given gun, what is left in place to differentiate between, say, a basic Liberator Carbine and a Concussive Liberator? Because the latterisjust a skinned-up Liberator Carbine with a drum mag, explosive ammo, and a few other bits and bobs.
This may be one of the main reasons why Arrowhead may be reticent to release weapon customization inHelldivers 2. ManyPremium Warbondshave simply featured revamped, customized variants of base weapons, and allowing players to tweak and tune attachments however they wish would make it impossible for Arrowhead to keep doing that in the backend.
Regardless of that, I do think Arrowhead is going to give us gun attachments, skins, and all the other related greeblies sooner or later. It is one of the lastmissing aspects of the originalHelldiversin the sequel, after all, and that has a been a pretty good signifier of what’s to come.
