In a follow-up comment, Spitz offered an example of how the narrative may branch: “If we capture Tibit late and fail the Major Order but still end up capturing it, the GM is still going to work it into the story and have us focus somewhere else next week. Only thing the timer affects is the medal reward.”
The line that stands out to me is this, also dated March 31: “Capturing Tibit after the MO expires won’t get you the medal reward, but it’ll still make a difference in the upcoming narrative and future MOs.” This helps put the lens of Game Master Joe into perspective. He’s making a list and checking it twice, and he’s looking at more than just the current Major Order’s planets. Or as Spitz put it:
“Depending on what we’ve captured by then, it’ll determine what we focus on next. If we capture Tibit late and fail the Major Order but still end up capturing it, the GM is still going to work it into the story and have us focus somewhere else next week.”
More recently, Spitz clarified that this isn’t necessarily a linear chain of events with one-to-one causation. A previous defense-focused order skipped Tibit and focused on Malevelon Creek and Draupnir, for example, but Tibit has come up again now. Successes and failures that are multiple orders old, or off simmering in some fringe sector, may still be relevant. On April 1, Spitz added:
“I say something like ‘capturing Tibit after the MO ends will still affect the story going forward’ and then people immediately jump all over me when the next MO is Malevelon Creek and the dispatch says that Tibit’s production factories have moved.
“Of course they moved, you didn’t capture it in time, that doesn’t mean capturing it now isn’t going to prevent it from being in a future Major Order. The current operation is to eradicate the bots entirely, so whatever you liberate in the meantime will not have to be liberated later as part of a MO, it should be common sense.”
To the surprise of no one, as user discussion descended into senseless finger-pointing from folks mad about failing any orders, Spitz also said: “I’m just going to stop commenting on how the Galactic War system works in here because of how many people misunderstand or take it out of context and then get upset.” Which is a darn shame. Obviously the community manager isn’t going to up and disappear – indeed, they’re still very active in Discord discussions – but this is exactly the kind of behind-the-scenes perspective I’ve wanted since Helldivers 2 launched, and I’d love to hear more about how the devs react to player behavior.
Helldivers 2 is obviously gameplay-first, but its approach to storytelling is arguably the most novel thing about it. Maybe we’ll get a missive from Joel himself one of these days.
Helldivers 2 references one of Starship Trooper’s worst characters via its new leveling system.
Source: gamesradar.com
