During both its stratospheric highs and its recent wobbles, Helldivers 2 has been dangling the carrot of a third enemy faction in front of players for a while. I definitely expected the Illuminate to be here by now, but they’re currently nowhere to be found. However, in the midst of Arrowhead Game Studios’ 60-day plan to get Helldivers 2 back on track, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it tease for the Illuminate appeared on the space shooter’s galactic map.
While the Terminids and the Automatons make for worthy adversaries in Helldivers 2, there is a real hunger to fight a new enemy race. Past hints and datamines have pretty much established that the Illuminate – a race of highly-intelligent aliens that were present in the original Helldivers – will be the third group to join the co-op game. This new tease really bolsters the case that the Illuminate are not too far away, but it’s not totally clear if Arrowhead even meant to do it.
As was highlighted by Forbes, for a few moments players saw a brand new third faction being represented on the Helldivers 2 map. While Terminid-infested zones are highlighted in yellow, and Automaton areas are red, screenshots on Reddit show that five sectors were filled in with purple. Almost as soon as these purple sectors appeared, they were taken down by Arrowhead.
When trying to look at those sectors, a message now appears in game which, in classic Helldivers tone, describes this as a “service outage in the Major Order Communication Display” which was caused by “organic tissue degradation on electronic equipment” following the death of “Technician #R2342.” It’s unclear if this cover up is part of an intentional in-game tease or if the purple sectors were genuinely shown accidentally and this is a quick-thinking way to explain the mishap.
Over on X, a screenshot from a Helldivers 2 companion app also appears to show this purple faction specifically inhabiting a currently out of reach planet called Haka. As well as being highlighted in purple, the Illuminate logo appears on a separate pop-up showing its status. This post has been picked up by Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani who has quoted it with the words: “Fake news.” Again, given Helldivers typical tone for brushing ‘accidents’ under the rug and its patriotic propaganda, it’s likely that he doesn’t actually mean that this is fake.
We know that this week’s planned patch for Helldivers 2 was delayed and that new information on what Arrowhead has been working on would arrive tomorrow, September 5, so maybe this is why the biggest tease for the Illuminate yet has appeared. While its 60-day recovery plan mostly focuses on its in-game systems, making updates smoother and less buggy, and its approach to weapon balancing, maybe there is some major content being cooked up during this time as well. Arrowhead is clearly happy to hunker down for the next few weeks and come back with a bang, and alongside some meaningful gameplay changes, what better way to reinvigorate Helldivers 2 than with the enemy race its players have been pining for.
Until the Illuminate makes its seemingly-inevitable debut, here are some other excellent space games you can enjoy. Our list of the best multiplayer games will also come in handy if you want to bring your pals along for the ride.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or grab our PCGN deals tracker to net yourself some bargains.