Helldivers 2 players have been hearing whispers of a new faction called the Illuminate for awhile now with leaks, datamines, and in-game teasers pointing to their arrival. As of this week, Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Game Studios may have just given players their best tease yet to indicate that the Illuminate’s descent onto the game may be imminent. The Illuminate faction briefly showed up on the Galactic War map this week with several different sectors shown completely independent from the Terminid and Automaton-controlled areas of space, but just as soon as the Illuminate appeared, they were taken off the map.
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The appearance and the removal of the Illuminate was so quick that many Helldivers 2 players probably missed it entirely, but thankfully, there were those who screenshotted the apparent teaser to show that it did in fact happen. One of those players who goes by NJRhailFire on Reddit shared the image below in the Helldivers subreddit to show the purple faction towards the bottom of the map.
On the sectors for both the Terminid and Automaton areas, we see that the names of both factions are on those sectors to indicate who they’re controlled by. The purple faction on the map doesn’t say anything about the Illuminate, but based on past teases and the history with the faction that players of the original Helldivers game will already be familiar with, there’s really nothing else it could be besides the Illuminate.
A “System Outage Update” message was also shared in-game which some players believe may be referencing the incident. Arrowhead frequently combines in-game messages with universe lore and teasers to preview what’s coming next, though it’s unclear if this message is about the Illuminate cameo or something else.
“Some Helldivers may have noticed a recent service outage in the Major Order Communication Display,” the message said. “The issue has since been resolved.”
Despite being billed as the biggest Helldivers 2 update so far, the most recent patch associated with the Escalation of Freedom content was not received well at all. It was received so poorly, in fact, that Arrowhead implemented a 60-day plan to address players’ complaints.
A blog post is coming tomorrow from Arrowhead to share a status update on progress made towards that plan, so we’ll see then if it tries to slip in a sly Illuminate tease ahead of the faction’s full reveal.
