Another day, another unsanctioned early look at an unreleased Helldivers 2 stratagem. However, while there's a not-unrealistic chance that some earlier Helldivers 2 leaks came from inside the Arrowhead house, this first glimpse of an unannounced rocket launcher came from, well, inside the bigger house that's publishing the game. Sony did it, is what I'm saying, and seemingly without meaning to.
Sony delivered the apparent leak in an official marketing email, as spotted earlier this week by keen-eyed Helldivers on Reddit. A section of the email describes the recent in-game campaign that saw Helldivers choosing to liberate the planet Penta and unlock the shiny new RL-77 Airburst Rocket Launcher. The accompanying image shows a Helldiver toting a rocket launcher, but there's a slight issue: That's a rocket launcher alright, but it's not the RL-77.
Sony just leaked a new stratagem! from r/Helldivers
In fact, as far as any Helldiver's aware, it's not a rocket launcher that even exists. None of our current rocket launchers are rectangles, but this thing's a quad-barreled situation that looks a lot like the M202 FLASH, an incendiary rocket launcher that you might remember in Arnold's hands in Commando.
Coincidentally, Commando is the apparent namesake for the similarly quad-barreled MLS-4X Commando, a rocket launcher stratagem from the first Helldivers. Curious! While the MLS-4X didn't have the incendiary rounds of its real-world inspiration, I'm hoping a theoretical successor in Helldivers 2 will. A long-range incendiary launcher would be a fun niche to fill in the stratagem toolkit.
Did Sony simply get its .png files mixed up, or has Arrowhead reached the point of enlisting its publisher's PR wing in its psychological warfare of sneak stratagem previews? Hard to say. But considering mechs made the jump from Helldivers to Helldivers 2, there's a precedent in play for Helldivers hoping for their own Commando moment. If the Illuminate enemy faction eventually decides to make its own reappearance, the extra firepower wouldn't hurt.
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Lincoln Carpenter
Contributor
Lincoln spent his formative years in World of Warcraft, and hopes to someday recover from the experience. Having earned a Creative Writing degree by convincing professors to accept his papers about Dwarf Fortress, he leverages that expertise in his most important work: judging a video game’s lore purely on the quality of its proper nouns. With writing at Waypoint and Fanbyte, Lincoln started freelancing for PC Gamer in Fall of 2021, and will take any excuse to insist that games are storytelling toolkits—whether we’re shaping those stories for ourselves, or sharing them with others. Or to gush about Monster Hunter.
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