Go Big or Don’t Exist: Arrowhead Explains Helldivers 2’s Hive Lords
Helldivers 2’s biggest nightmare has a name: Hive Lords—towering juggernauts with 150,000 HP that turn solo runs into suicide missions and force squads into precision, ammo-draining sieges. Their arrival is a spectacle; surviving them takes time, coordination, and a wall of fire.
Helldivers 2 did not play it safe with Hive Lords. Arrowhead built a boss that is comically huge, wildly stubborn, and absolutely not meant to be handled by a lone hero. It is the game yelling: bring friends, bring ammo, and expect chaos.
Why Hive Lords are such a problem (by design)
- They are the biggest enemies in the game and the toughest to kill, with a reported 150,000 HP.
- You are not supposed to solo them. It takes a full squad, coordination, and time.
- The entrance is a showstopper, perfectly on-brand for Helldivers 2's loud, capital-D Democracy vibe.
Arrowhead's all-or-nothing call
Design Director Niklas Malmborg talked about Hive Lords during a recent developer Q&A Arrowhead cheekily labeled a 'Democratic Conversation' — a session meant to address player complaints and share new details. The short version: there was not much debate about what this monster should be. The team agreed early that Hive Lords had to be enormous, extreme, and unforgettable.
"If we can't get it this big and this crazy then we shouldn't do it."
That was the line in the sand. Performance, stability, and engine concerns came up immediately — because of course they did — but rather than shrink the idea, Arrowhead decided to solve the tech. They went all-in on the original vision and worked backward from there. That choice did bite them at launch when performance slipped, which made players mad, but the team never scaled the Hive Lord concept down.
What that says about the studio
Helldivers 2 lives on risky, memorable moments, and Hive Lords are a thesis statement for Arrowhead's approach. The studio prioritizes how it feels to play first, then figures out the engineering headaches to support it. That can backfire — and has — but when it lands, it delivers the kind of set piece you remember. The tremor when one arrives, the tower of meat and armor in front of you, and the relief when your squad finally drops it — that is the whole point. These things are not just big enemies; they are long-haul teamwork exams where planning, panic, and persistence all collide.
By committing to the spectacle, Arrowhead leans into Helldivers 2's identity: loud, heroic, and absolutely not subtle. Anything smaller would have felt like a half-measure.
How do you feel about the Hive Lords' size and difficulty? Love the insanity or wish Arrowhead had dialed it back?