(Image credit: Arrowhead)
Long before Helldivers 2 took the world by storm, its vision was championed by a director relentless in his belief of a winning design strategy. Speaking at GDC, Helldivers 2 director Johan Pilestedt recounted an episode that defined his journey to success. This pivotal moment stemmed from a debate with CTO Anton Stenmark during the development of Magicka, the magical series that Arrowhead Studios brought to life before Helldivers.
Pilestedt shared, “I told him ‘if I shoot a big rock at a foe and it doesn’t kill it, we need to do something with the rock, you can’t just make it disappear. Can we make it bounce into the air or something?'” Although Stenmark responded with skepticism, suggesting it was just one physical projectile unlikely to hit its mark, Pilestedt persisted, believing even a rare occurrence could have merit, “But it might for one in 100 million, it’s fine.” Consequently, Stenmark implemented the feature into Magicka.
Two months later, the payoff was realized. Pilestedt narrated how during a test, the game’s play-testing manager fired a rock, only to have it return unexpectedly, causing chaos and laughter as the projectile struck back. “And would you believe it,” Pilestedt recalled, “the rock comes flying, lands on his head, cascade of blood – and I was like ‘this works. I think we’re gonna be rich someday.'” This realization was when he convinced his team that their “it could happen” approach was extraordinarily effective.
As time passed, Pilestedt’s foresight proved successful. Helldivers 2 now thrives on unplanned chaos where spontaneous events add to the excitement. Players experience moments like unsuspected grenades ping-ponging across battle zones, which bolsters the game’s replay value and shareability. Such design choices have made Helldivers 2 a runaway success for Arrowhead Studios. Even so, Pilestedt humorously described an incident when he advised players to delay purchasing till server issues eased, only to swiftly receive a call from PlayStation asking, “what the f*** I was smoking”.
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