Helldivers 2 has players excited about the chance of a rogue fourth faction after Super Earth declares a 'War on Dissidence'

A squad of helldivers in Helldivers 2 bravely defend Super Earth from the Illuminate menace. — (Image credit: Arrowhead Games)

Helldivers 2's latest Major Order has players in a bit of a tizzy, because it's putting the latent paranoia of Super Earth and High Command front-and-centre of its very own War on Terror. Super Earth has declared a new "War on Dissidence," after declaring that "the expanded Center for Citizen Surveillance and Safety has found dissident activity on every Super Earth planet, save Super Earth itself."

Arrowhead's writers always do a great job of selling such purges, and the signs of dissidence are no exception:

"The indicators are clear: extended breaks; prolonged eye contact with authority figures; use of slang; avoiding eye contact with authority figures. These acts of disloyalty endanger all citizens—as tragically proved by recent attacks.

New major order, super earth has officially declared war on dissidents from r/Helldivers

The obvious gags aside, the newly discovered presence of dissidents has players wondering whether the game is moving towards a fourth faction, and even possibly adding a PvP element (Helldivers 2 has friendly fire, but no PvP mode). The setup would seem to be obvious: some sort of rogue Helldivers faction, possibly controlled by the Illuminate, that goes around screwing up the real Helldivers.

That also contains the delicious possibility that Helldivers may all think they're on the right side of the fight, even when they're doing the bidding of evil commie space aliens. This is of course just speculation, but this is also how Helldivers 2 tends to tease things, and the game hasn't had a truly major addition since the Illuminate themselves. Should the Helldivers manage to liberate Afoyay Bay, we'll presumably get a much better idea of where this is all going.

Elsewhere in the game, Helldivers 2 players recently exercised their democratic rights by choosing to re-name a destroyed-then-rebuilt city called York Supreme as New York Supreme. Unfortunately, however, they chose this nonsense over the far superior choice of "Bernard." Maybe High Command is right: round up everyone who voted for New York Supreme!

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Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."

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