Helldivers 2 kept its most exciting feature secret until launch: human dungeon masters 'responding in real time' and messing with players

Helldivers 2 launched on Steam today and unfortunately seems to have got off to a bit of a shaky start network-wise: the reviews are currently «mixed,» and the mood music is that people are enjoying the game but deeply frustrated by connection issues. The studio admits it's in «crisis mode» and at the time of writing has just pushed out the first hotfix.

Launch woes aside, Helldivers 2 hasn't been especially on my radar—but a new PlayStation Access interview with the game's deputy director Sagar Beroshi made me realise this is a game with big ideas, and none more exciting than its take on in-game dungeon masters.

Developer Arrowhead has kept one aspect of multiplayer relatively low-key, but it sounds both amazing in theory and something we'll have to watch unfold. The core idea is that, at the studio there are going to be humans watching how the game is being played and responding, in some cases in real time, to affect the experience for players.

Beroshi compares it to a dungeon or games master in tabletop gaming. «It's very hard to achieve exactly what you get at a table but we wanted flavours of that in this game,» says Beroshi. «This is not a minor part of our game: this is a significant feature we've designed that is by the way quite different from the first game.»

So at the heart of this is «a suite of tools and a suite of real life human beings, not just AI bots, that are observing the gameplay as it's happening and responding in real time.» Asked if they're observing the play, watching and deciding what to do, Beroshi says «that's right» and goes on to give an example from the preview session they've just played where a particularly juicy bomb became available to one member of the team.

«One of our team members was observing your playstyle and debated what to do and was like 'I'm gonna drop them this extra strategy',» says Beroshi. «You were playing with us at the same time as you were playing with each other, all against the bad guys.»

The idea is not just