Helldivers 2 players struggle with the realization they should have seen a brutal Major Order coming

Players in Helldivers 2 felt like they had things easy when developer Arrowhead Game Studios gave them a Major Order to kill a ridiculous number of Terminds. Considering the community slaughtered 100 million in just 3 hours a few weeks ago, that’s hardly impressive, though.

However, this bug Major Order that simply required players to smash Helldiver bodies against the Terminid scum for hours on end should have been a hint of things to come. In the wake of a brand new Major Order, one that sees the Automatons extending extraction times with orbital cannons, players have figured out where they went wrong and why they should never give into that sense of security a Terminid objective brings ever again.

Bugs fuel the war against the bots

Killing so many Terminids generates a lot of oil. That oil is used to fuel Superdestroyers and ferry Helldivers around the galaxy. So when we got a new Major Order to take five planets from the bots after killing enough bugs to fuel a million Superdestroyers, it all finally clicked for players.

Over on the Helldivers 2 subreddit, players are now putting two and two together. User ArtZen_pl explains the obvious, “Bug order: kill bugs. Bot order: so yeah, you have to liberate 5 planets gl.” Leading on from this, user Artanis137 nails what everyone has now realized. “It is canon that we are killing these bugs to harvest the E710 they produce when they die. So most Major Orders on the Terminid Front are for gathering more E710 for Major Offensives on the both the Terminid and Automaton fronts. Hard to wage a war without fuel and resources.”

While bug oil has always been canon in the Helldivers universe, the link we’re all now seeing between orders to kill massive numbers of Terminids before tackling a huge Automaton Major Order is yet another way the dynamic story plays into the game’s systems. It all fleshes out the galaxy and makes it feel more tangible, even though it’s little more than flavor text and excuses to make you feel like you have a reason to fight the enemy factions.

What took players by surprise with these Major Orders is that they flip-flopped between incredibly easy and so mind-bendingly challenging that it requires coordination worldwide to complete. A Major Order in the middle now and then definitely wouldn’t hurt, but I think I we all know we’ll keep playing regardless of how impossible the odds seem.