Helldivers 2 is turning major orders into galactic war campaigns this month

Arrowhead has laid out a sweeping set of changes coming to Helldivers 2, covering everything from the galactic war down to individual ship progression. Some of it arrives later this month — the rest is further out but already in development.

The headline change is galactic war campaigns, which game director Mikael Erikson describes as an evolution of the current major orders. These run for one to three weeks and are designed to make the stakes legible at every stage. Erikson is candid about the current system's shortcomings: "It's never been clear if the actions of the community lead to different outcomes, or if it's just smoke and mirrors." Longer campaigns also come with better rewards, ranging from "gameplay altering effects to cool items" — a step up from the medals most players can barely spend. At the planetary level, Arrowhead is introducing planet warfronts, a dynamic frontline system that reshuffles mission distribution based on where the fighting actually is. Players will be able to run defensive missions in Super Earth territory, fight directly on the front line, or push into enemy-held ground for high-risk behind-the-lines operations. Arrowhead says the idea has been on the table for a while but needed more mission variety before it could work.

On the player side, personal orders are being replaced by a personal campaign progression system, reducing the chance that squadmates end up chasing conflicting objectives. The bigger structural change is to Super Destroyers — Arrowhead is reworking the ship module system and building entirely new ship types. The first new ship is already in production from the studio's newly formed ship team, with Erikson promising that "each new ship will have their own unique progression paths, specializations and customizations." Other items on the list include raising the level cap to 300, improved enemy and player traversal, and economy fixes.

All of this follows a rough patch for Arrowhead, with the community pushing back hard after recent updates. The galactic war campaigns are the nearest item on the timeline, due this month, while the rest of the roadmap doesn't have firm dates yet.