Last week, Arrowhead Game Studios announced it was getting serious (again) about finally fixing Helldivers 2's long-standing technical issues with an update focused on stability, latency reduction, and the implementation of upscaling features. The developer has made good on that promise today with a big new patch.
"As the fight for Managed Democracy rages on, Super Earth's finest engineers have been hard at work making every drop into hostile territory smoother," the studio writes in its latest blog post. "Together with our friends at Nixxes Software, we've deployed an update with improvements across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. From upscaling technologies and latency-reduction features to various optimizations and stability fixes, this patch is built to help you stay on target when the battlefield gets chaotic."
The new patch implements various upscaling features depending on how souped up your ole personal computer is, alongside VRR support on PS5 and PS5 Pro and VRS implementation for supported machines. In the dev's words, VRS smooths performance by "reducing shading rates on certain areas of the image," which then lightens the load on GPUs.
There are a number of other tech-related improvements and solutions elsewhere in the patch notes - all console versions have increased resolutions when playing in performance mode, for example, so you should check out the full list of changes for yourself.
Arrowhead's dropped a number of bug fixes, too. One fix sorts out an issue where divers couldn't "manually climb small obstacles and ledges without auto-climb." Other fixes note that performance and image quality have been upped across all platforms more generally.
The developer previously said this big update was only the "opening salvo" in its ongoing efforts to buff Helldivers 2's creaky skeleton. Another tech-focused update is planned to come later this summer, and the studio's also keeping an eye on how this new patch goes down.
Despite High Command's best efforts to quell dissent, fans have been complaining about Helldivers 2's performance woes for more than a year now. Perhaps recruiting PlayStation's PC porting house will properly do the trick this time.
The next Helldivers 2 Legendary Warbond is Warhammer 40,000, which is kind of perfect
