Helldivers 2 is about being the 'evil guys in the galaxy,' says Johan Pilestedt: 'Would you be able to survive a galactic war without plot armor to protect you?'

The notion that we ought to read Helldivers 2's galactic war as a straightforward story about humanity's noble defense against alien bugs and robots is too oblivious to warrant serious debate—Super Earth has a Ministry of Truth!—but in the endless churn of social media discourse, the interpretation has been posed.

In a talk at game development conference Nordic Game in Sweden this week, Arrowhead Games chief creative officer Johan Pilestedt put the studio's intentions plainly. The "original hypothesis" for Helldivers 2...