Helldivers 2 Game Master Joel claps back with a tough new major order: liberate 5 planets in 3 days to secure our "economic future" (2024)

The finest democracy spreaders in Helldivers 2 have all but been dancing in the streets on the heels of a big win that saw six planets liberated, two defended, and two sectors captured, and game master Joel has turned up right on cue to put them straight back to work. A new major order has arrived, and it's a doozy. Players have 72 hours to liberate both Fori Prime and Zagon Prime, and they'll get 35 medals if they pull it off.

"With the TCS securing our citizens' lives," the missive from high command begins, "now we can secure their economic future, by culling the Terminid population and harvesting the E-710 they provide."

Liberating two planets may not sound like much, and both are thankfully filled with bugs rather than the often more annoying Automatons, but Fori Prime and Zagon Prime aren't exactly waiting on a silver platter. We're going to have to chew through multiple planets to get to them, and if I'm not mistaken, we only just lost one of them – Estanu.

To reach Fori Prime, the Helldivers 2 community will have to leapfrog off either Estanu or Crimsica. Estanu is the current frontrunner since it's about 41% liberated at the time of writing. Zagon Prime is more daunting. We'll first have to take Hellmire, currently just 0.014% liberated, and then move onto either Oshaune or Nivel 43, and then we can finally assault Zagon Prime.

Joel isn't outright putting the boot in here – this is, technically, doable – but developer Arrowhead clearly isn't messing around either. The response from players has been unnervingly serious, and a far cry from the usual flippant chants. Thankfully, some people still have the energy to role-play as the enemy on Reddit, so not all hope is lost. We're gonna have to democracy the hell out of this one, folks.

With 20 milliseconds to go, brave Helldivers 2 player clutches 45 Samples "outnumbered, surrounded, leg broken, out of stims" after a clown fiesta extract.