Ever since Arrowhead’s co-op shooter sensation Helldivers 2 dropped in February, toy soldier fans like us have been praying to their Emperor for a Warhammer 40k Helldivers 2 crossover to meld these two eerily similar sci-fi universes into their dream game. In fact, Wargamer can now reveal that the game was actually developed and almost released – but was cancelled days before launch at Games Workshop’s urgent request.
Intensive analysis of the Helldivers 2 source code, seen by Wargamer, uncovered a hidden section of the game’s directory containing around 350 text files, graphics textures, and audio files – plus jumbled references to over 400 others – all pertaining to an unreleased Warhammer 40k game mode titled ‘Militarum Offensive’.
The data mining research, shared with Wargamer by members of the Warhammer 40k videogame modding community Adeptus Modificatus, includes a reconstructed summary of the cancelled game mode’s features.
According to their findings, Militarum Offensive was essentially an “extensive re-skinning and partial conversion” of Helldivers 2’s online multiplayer missions and campaign map, which “converts all Terminid enemies into similarly sized and proportioned Tyranids“, and “replaces the core game’s unlockable armor, weapons, boosters, stratagems, and ship modules” with equivalents from the Astra Militarum, a popular human based Warhammer 40k faction.
Like the videogame’s titular Helldivers, the Astra Militarum – a.k.a. Imperial Guard – is largely made up of lightly armored human infantry soldiers, who are frequently deployed on highly dangerous missions against superior alien foes, motivated by ultra-nationalist propaganda.
Files analyzed by the modders suggest that only basic weapon and armor loadouts were included in the mode; there are texture, animation, and audio files for Lasguns, Flamers, and Meltaguns, and three armor models: flak armor, regular carapace armor, and Militarum Tempestus style improved carapace armor.
However, it seems some serious extra development work went into coding 40k lore-appropriate, Imperial Guard themed variations on the game’s trademark activated abilities – Stratagems.
According to the Adeptus Modificatus research, Militarum Offensive included stratagems to requisition a Scout Sentinel walker (reskinned from the Automaton enemies’ Scout Strider); a Shadowsword superheavy tank (a reskin of the Automatons’ Tanks); and even the option to call in Space Marine support from a Redemptor Dreadnought (adapted from the Automatons’ Hulks).
It’s not clear from the data collected exactly how the Militarum Offensive missions were intended to dovetail into the core game – but Wargamer sources confirm that the mode was fully functioning and playtested when Arrowhead was asked to remove it from the final release by Games Workshop’s licencing team on February 2, 2024 – just six days before Helldivers 2 launched on Steam.
“It was gutting,” one Arrowhead developer tells Wargamer under condition of anonymity. “I’d just put the finishing touches on the 3D models to convert Terminid Bile Spewers into Tyranid Tervigons when the email came through and the bosses told us to down tools.”
“Two of my colleagues had spent the day screaming ‘For the Emperor’ into microphones to record victory pose audios,” they add. “We were already working on plans to turn the Automatons into Necrons, too.”
The same dev tells us, rather conspiratorially, that the Militarum Assault mode had actually been quite easy to create. “Management keeps it hushed up, but Helldivers 2 was actually a Warhammer 40k game in the first place,” they say, admitting: “most of the main game’s dev work was actually in disguising all the obvious Tyranids, Necrons, and human imperialist propaganda as something other than Warhammer 40k stuff.”
“I mean come on, seriously – have you seen the enemies in our game? They couldn’t be more Warhammer 40k if they tried.
“Re-skinning them back was a breeze. It was just a crying shame we couldn’t share Militarum Assault with the world.”
Naturally, Wargamer contacted Games Workshop for more detail on why it axed such an appetizing licenced game before it even had a chance to grace our screens. In response, we received the following statement from GW owner, founder, CEO, CMO, company mascot, and winner of the All-Nottingham Most Handsome Smile Award 2003, James Workshop:
“Militarum Assault was a promising project about which we at Games Workshop were extremely excited. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to grant it final approval because it failed to meet our stringent lore guidelines. In particular, Arrowhead refused to give the Standard Issue 9-70 Entrenching Tool melee weapon a high enough armor penetration stat.
“It was always a vital red line for us that the Astra Militarum’s trusty shovel be better at smashing alien brains out than an orbital bombardment, and the developers weren’t willing to concede the point, so with regret I had to scuttle the project.”
“We’re still letting them add some secret Nurglings in as an easter egg, though, so watch out for that”.
Source: Wargamer
