Helldivers 2 made a splash at The Game Awards, both winning the awards for Best Multiplayer Game and Best Ongoing Game and dropping a new trailer for the Omens of Tyranny update, which introduces a new enemy faction and a sweet new ride for the soldiers of Super Earth. The continued success of Helldivers 2, even after a bout of community backlash from requirements, proves that players have been waiting for this type of game for a long time; the type of game that puts soldiers in space, fighting enemy alien factions in a multi-front war with a type of infection taking over their comrades.

If that game sounds familiar, it’s because the newest trailer for Helldivers 2 strikes an eerily similar tone to the Halo series. In fact, it seems that Helldivers 2 is everything that Halo should’ve been, especially after the games seemingly ran out of steam in the post-Bungie era. Creating a chaotic game for space-faring soldiers to fight hordes of aliens is exactly what Halo needs for its future.

Why The Helldivers 2 Trailer Is So Great

New Enemies, Vehicles, And Missions

Helldivers 2 is a great game that’s receiving a lot of love and attention from its developers, even with some announced at The Game Awards, introduces the Illuminate, partially comprised of hordes of mind-controlled citizens, and a new vehicle called the FRV, or the Fast Recon Vehicle. The trailer is full of classic Super Earth messaging, especially regarding the practically zombified citizens, who are now called the Voteless.

What the newest update promises is more chaos and even more ways to get killed by the enemies of Super Earth. The FRV looks both like a monster truck and a Warthog, with its suped-up suspension and the mounted guns on the back. While the FRV already draws instant parallels to Halo’s iconic Warthog, the addition of the Illuminate faction only makes the Halo comparison that much stronger. An advanced alien race that brings along with it a body horror plague is exactly like the Covenant and the Flood, which is pure early Halo.

Helldivers 2 Looks Better Than Halo Already

Chaotic Gameplay Needs To Make A Comeback

What makes Helldivers 2 so fun is that the Helldivers are entirely expendable. Dying in ridiculous ways or even persevering against overwhelmingly bad odds is what makes every mission exciting. That feeling is something that the Halo series has lost, especially with games like Halo: Infinite, which have adequate multiplayer of Spartans shooting at each other in small spaces. Always playing as Spartan versus other Spartans has become stale, and co-op shooters need to mix things up.

Halo needs a game like Helldivers 2, where players are much more expendable and are against all the odds of the universe. A game that features ODST rather than Spartans would help, especially if the game was set back during the era where the Covenant and the Flood were at their highest threat levels. The same basic premise of a small group of soldiers fighting against waves of powerful enemies would make for a very good Halo game.

Essentially, the Halo series needs to make another ODST focused game and take inspiration from the chaotic fun of Helldivers 2. One problem is that the tones of the two series, one seriously focused on fighting for the survival of humanity and the other mocking fascist government-style war propaganda, are radically different. However, on-the-ground combat could be essentially the same, and it would be better for Halo as a series to embrace a more chaotic tone for players to enjoy. Injecting some chaos and levity could be exactly what Halo needs to overcome a slightly stale era for the series.

Source: PlayStation/YouTube