Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani has mentioned that the studio's next game will not be Helldivers 3, on his way to answering a routine question about a social hub (thanks, GR+). This is not the first time that a potential sequel to the live service smash has been floated: back in July, Jorjani talked about how healthy Helldivers 2 is and added "HD3 is hopefully many years away."
A social hub is an oft-requested feature for Helldivers 2. The ship from which you launch missions is a kind of mini hub, and I think does the job well, but some players want a more fleshed-out area to mingle with their fellow defenders of democracy and show off all those fancy capes they've been buying: the example usually given is Destiny 2's Tower.
Jorjani was replying on Discord to a player asking for "a social hub space station (like the tower in Destiny.)" Don't hold your breath: "It's on the feature list for the next one," said Jorjani in response.
This was not-unreasonably taken as a reference to Helldivers 3, but Jorjani quickly clarified this wasn't what he was on about. "This was about our next game," said Jorjani, "not HD3."
OK, well that's enough for me to start getting hyped about Magicka getting the full-fat third-person treatment like Helldivers did. Given the massive success of Helldivers 2, some sort of sequel is probably inevitable, but it also feels way too early to be talking about it. Helldivers 2 only released in February 2024, had one of the best first years of any live service title I've seen, and is still going strong.
Arrowhead's former CEO and now creative director Johan Pilestedt did reference the idea at the end of last year, but in a more roundabout way whereby "we are growing Helldivers 2 into Helldivers 3." Given the breakneck pace of updates and the sheer amount of stuff Arrowhead has added to the game over roughly a year-and-a-half, you can kind of see his argument: one fan joked in response to Jorjani that they'd be playing Helldivers 3 in six years, but I'd say even that is optimistic.
