While the outlines of Helldivers 2’s Galactic War are fairly clear, and the major orders give players a through-line to follow in the unfolding narrative, much of the game’s world-building is left to hints and lore snippets that players piece-together themselves. Some of this is quite serious and consequential stuff, such as whether the Automatons may be trying to communicate, or the Illuminate are behind Super Earth in the first place.
Other elements of the world… well, let’s just cut to the chase. Pretty much every hero of liberty has the hots for the unknown female pilot of Eagle-1, no doubt helped by the fact that she delivers 500KG payloads to any xeno-infested planetary surface on demand. This gets a little too in-depth at times, such as a line of text about expanded weapons bays in the cockpit leading to theorising over whether she was an amputee (officially it’s a no), or the constant shipping of the Eagle-1 and Pelican-1 pilots, and yes there’s plenty of horny art.
But it does all come from a relatively sweet place. These poor Helldivers, out there against impossible odds, love their heavily armed friend with the soothing voice. It’s deeply comforting to be in some bug-infested volcanic nightmare and hear “Liberty returns, locked and loaded.” So it was that, after a mission last night, I returned to my Destroyer (the Fist of Selfless Service), covered as usual in bug guts and streaked with blood, before an in-universe advert began playing.
It is for Eagle Sweat, “the scent of victory” and “Eau de Liberte”, which masks your Helldiver’s natural odour from Terminids and enhances your survival chances. Well, maybe. “Based on a survey of one Helldiver squad, results showed a 50% survival rate with minimal limb loss.”
[We interrupt your feed for a message from a partner]Get the scent of victory. Eagle Sweat smells of liberty AND helps to mask your natural body odour from Terminids!**Based on a survey of one Helldiver squad, results showed a 50% survival rate with minimal limb loss. pic.twitter.com/pNRuhP1gzgMay 20, 2024
“Like any good patriot I immediately give the screen my undivided attention when I hear the sensuous words slide through my ears: ‘Eagle Sweat’,” said Helldiver TheSandwichGhost. “I had heard many raunchy jokes from my fellow Helldivers between missions, a large portion of them involving our beautiful and deadly Eagle pilots. Had command somehow decided to lean into the joke and make a drink based on the sweat of our lovely Eagle pilots? Was this the beginning of a whole new drink line based on the sweat of Super Earth heroes?
“Needless to say I was a little disappointed to find it was perfume.”
“I am still doing my duty as a Helldiver and buying three cases, but I feel that this was a missed chance at capturing the market of Helldivers who know the loving warmth of an eagle pilot’s 500kg bomb as it vaporizes the enemies of humanity.”
One thing I did happen across while preparing this article is a fan-made trailer for Eagle Sweat from around two months ago that is remarkably similar, with several of the visuals and OTT claims lifted directly from it. I reached out to the maker of this ad to ask whether they’d been contact by Arrowhead and were involved in the making of the official version, and will update with any response.
Eagle Sweat is probably just a gag, but it’s worth considering Arrowhead is teasing a future in-game item too. The perfume itself closely resembles a grenade, and Eagle Sweat’s ability to mask your scent from Terminids would be pretty useful.
Outside of personal grooming products, the biggest Helldivers news recently has been Sony’s catastrophic attempt to enforce the use of PSN accounts in-game, which ended up in a massive review-bombing campaign and a U-turn. The scars from that one still linger though, elsewhere, things have also got weirdly wholesome, with the community en masse adopting a new battlecry: “im frend.”