Helldivers 2 Content Left On The Cutting Room Floor

For a $40 game, "Helldivers 2" sure has a lot of content. There's an endless supply of battles and a steady stream of weapons, gear, and stratagems for players to unlock. Plus, new Warbonds add bonus content to the game on a regular basis, and the ongoing Galactic War is constantly shifting and introducing new challenges. "Helldivers 2" is one of the few games that makes live service feel worthwhile, which is especially shocking considering it almost didn't pursue the live service model at all.

Arrowhead Game Studios is able to keep "Helldivers 2" so lively because the studio has a million ideas or more cooking at once. Thanks to various leaks, fans have caught glimpses of possible future additions. Arrowhead, meanwhile, has told "Helldivers" fans not to get our hopes up because plenty of the stray content that's been discovered in the game's code was cut long ago. The reason that everything in "Helldivers 2" feels so good to play is because only the best ideas make it in. When you take a deeper look at the features Arrowhead has admitted to removing, you'll be absolutely shocked by how high the studio's standards are.

Like any good live service game, "Helldivers 2" has an array of cosmetics that players can unlock for their soldiers. Aside from the occasional controversial item, no one is really complaining about all the game's cool armors, but there was a time during development when certain pieces of gear had more functionality.

PC Gamer reported on a conversation that Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt had with fans on the official "Helldivers" Discord server. Fans were asking if Arrowhead has plans for turning cosmetics like capes and helmets into legitimately useful pieces of gear, and Pilestedt said that the team had initially planned on further tying helmets into gameplay: "Each helmet was going to have a unique 'HUD' — so medics would be able to see health, recon would get enemy outlines etc." 

What happened? Well, the devs ran out of time. Pilestedt said the team cut the feature to focus on getting the game out on time. Maybe now that the game has become a huge success, the team will eventually find time to revisit its original plans.

Like many of the sci-fi properties that inspired it, "Helldivers 2" goes all-in on the action. Guns, bombs, lasers, and heavy weaponry get the spotlight, and the game is at its most enjoyable in the heat of a massive firefight. That said, there are a few stealth mechanics in the game that allow players to try a slightly quieter approach. When one fan showed off their own stealthy approach online, Pilestedt responded to their clip with a short message that raised more than a few eyebrows.

I know!!! I used to rock subsonic ammo and suppressor and do this quite a bit during play tests.

— Pilestedt (@Pilestedt) February 24, 2024

No one is surprised to learn that Pilestedt enjoys a good stealth run, but "subsonic ammo and suppressor[s]" aren't in the game at all. Arrowhead must have made the call to cut those items from the game at some point between Pilestedt's playtesting and the official release. Right now, the game only features some sneaky movement options and quiet punching to help carry you through a covert mission, so fans are thrilled at the idea of having more gear for their espionage kit. It's unclear why Arrowhead made this particular cut, so it's difficult to reliably speculate on whether or not those features will come back to the game.

The Helldivers are Super Earth's premiere soldiers, so their biggest concern is getting their boots on the ground and lobbing hot lead into the face of any enemy of democracy. It takes more than bullets to win a war, however. Someone in High Command should be paying attention to supply lines throughout the galaxy to ensure that the Helldivers always have the gear they need to win their battles. Right now those supply lines are just conceptual, but they could play a bigger role in the game. One fan account shared a concept video demonstrating how players might view and interact with supply lines from the comfort of their destroyers.

A Simple concept of what supply lines could look like in game

📹Thekrzysiek pic.twitter.com/Jfr1JW7Eh0

— Helldivers Alerts (@HelldiversAlert) March 31, 2024

In a reply to that short clip, Pilestedt explained, "It is surprisingly close to what we had in the game before. But we wanted to visualize all of the supply lines and it got way too cluttered." Because Arrowhead didn't want its final product to have a messy UI that distracted from the actual gameplay, it cut the feature, However, according to Pilestedt, "We are talking about making this more clear internally at the studio." 

It's true that "Helldivers 2" is a combat-focused game, not a 4x space simulator, but there are no doubt plenty of fans who wouldn't mind having more granular information about the state of the war. Maybe they'll get their chance at some point.