Helldivers 2 Boss Says Realism Is Out, Player Fantasy Is In — And Arrowhead Swears It Will Still Be Helldivers

Helldivers 2 has always worn its chaos proudly. If you have ever watched a trooper get ragdolled by a giant bug and then stop for a hug mid-swarm, you already know this game is not chasing authenticity. Now Arrowhead Game Studios CEO Shams Jorjani has basically said the quiet part out loud.

Fun first, facts later

'Realism is not the goal.'

That line comes from a batch of fresh Discord messages where Jorjani laid out how the team thinks about the hit shooter. The plan is not to simulate a real battlefield; the plan is to make the player fantasy sing. Or as he put it elsewhere, there is a balance in keeping it 'real within the fantasy' — which explains a lot about the design choices. Friendly fire, for example, stays on for anything that hurts enemies, because it fits the rules of Helldivers and the whole slapstick-lethal vibe. But this is not a mil-sim, and fun wins the argument when the two collide.

The messy art of herding a big team

Here is the inside baseball part. Jorjani also admitted that keeping a large studio aimed in one direction is hard. Designers have their own instincts, and sometimes the game drifts. That is not a bad thing — the interesting stuff often comes from different creative brains banging into each other — but the end result still has to feel like Helldivers. Translation: go wild, but stay on brand.

So what does that actually mean for the game?

• Future updates can get weird as long as they obey Helldivers rules. Real-world science and logistics do not get a vote in Super Earth’s democracy; the internal logic of the game does.
• Expect more choices like universal friendly fire that serve the fantasy, even if they would make a military trainer blush.
• Arrowhead wants Helldivers 2 to be a 'forever game' in the RuneScape sense — something that keeps expanding and improving — and there are no plans for a sequel right now.

None of this is exactly shocking if you have been playing, but it is nice to hear the studio say it plainly. Helldivers 2 is about spectacle, teamwork, and the delightful disaster that happens when both collide. The goal is not to mimic reality — it is to make your co-op war stories worth telling.