Helldivers 2 Is Getting Even Tougher In A Huge New Update

Helldivers 2 has changed a lot over the past five months, but that change has been largely incremental, taking place across a number of smaller, steadily released updates. It seemed like every other week, there was some new feature, enemy, or environment that was being debuted. Eventually, these releases slowed down, at least in part because they were causing numerous problems for the community. Now, Helldivers 2 is back with its first “major update” and it’s packing a lot of heat, including a higher difficulty, some new game modes, and the return of a favorite enemy.

Arrowhead Game Studios has announced that with the “Escalation of Freedom” update, which is coming August 6, things are going to get worse for players, in a fun way. That begins with the reintroduction of the Impaler, a Terminid enemy type that burrows in the ground and unleashes large, ferocious tentacles to fight players. According to Helldivers 2’s design director Miklas Malmborg, the Impalers are meant to “cut off your escape route” with their large tentacles, at which point you can reroute or stay and fight. Fans actually began theorizing that the Impalers were on their way to Helldivers 2 months ago, after a blog post mentioned tentacles a few times and seemed to show off at least one new weapon specifically meant to combat them.