How Helldivers 2 Turned Starship Troopers Into a Game (Analysis)
Vložit
- čas přidán 28. 06. 2024
- An analysis of the ludicrously popular Helldivers 2, which takes more from Paul Verhoeven's seminal film Starship Troopers than you might expect.
Support the show on Patreon - / writingongames
Podcast - anchor.fm/writingongamescast
Second Channel - / @writingongamesextra9177
---
Review code provided by PlayStation.
In Helldivers 2, if you're able to get past the dreaded "servers at capacity" screen, you'll be treated to some of the goofiest fun you can have in an action game-one that seems to take a lot of visual and dialogue cues from Paul Verhoeven's seminal 1997 film Starship Troopers. That said, upon further inspection, what impressed me most about Helldivers 2 was how it was able to convey more than just visual influence-instead managing to channel the more satirical elements of Verhoeven's satire of propaganda, through its mechanics and systems. In this analysis, let's discuss how Helldivers 2 players are Doing Their Part.
0:00 - Intro
0:10 - Helldivers 2 is a pastiche of Starship Troopers
1:38 - Starship Troopers is about propaganda
5:10 - The mechanical storytelling of Helldivers 2
8:09 - The GENIUS of Helldivers 2's Stratagems
9:23 - Getting past the propaganda
11:06 - Helldivers 2 vs modern military games
12:15 - There are no heroes
14:00 - Outro
---
Text animation intro by Isaac Holland - / drazgames
#helldivers2 #starshiptroopers - Hry
I'm surprised you haven't talked about how Helldiver customization plays into that.
You can change your Helldiver's voice, but by default it is set to random. So each revive you essentially are playing a "different" character. Really sells the point how after all the bravado and talks of being galaxy's heroes, in reality Helldivers are essentially meant to be disposable cannon fodder.
And despite their bravado, excellent equipment, and elite status, they are very poorly trained (about as well trained as the average human civilian of today, strangely). This results in new recruits not actually knowing what to do on missions until they learn from vets or through trial and error, as well as lots of friendly fire incidents. It's amazing how well the meta aspect blends into the gung ho Helldiver culture. Makes me love the game all the more.
In the opening they even mention that the average age of a helldiver is 18.7 years
When you deploy from the title screen, you can see you character being defrosted from a long row of frozen helldivers. I assume that: a.) each superdestroyer carries its own battalion of frozen helldivers, ready to be deployed when the first one dies. b.) these are "blank" bodies to which the consciousness of the dead helldiver is transferred if they get killed before being redeployed.
Also that you don't need to extract to complete your mission, do the primaries and everyone's happy, with or without you
@@jjhh320 What gives you the idea that they're very poorly trained? They know how to operate all sorts of different firearms effectively, even cooperating to load heavy weapons like the Spear and Autocannon efficiently. They can operate Super Earth's terminals on missions which are likely simplified for gameplay purposes, they can operate walker mech vehicles, they can pilot the hellpods, and that's really not mentioning how they fight off thousands of enemies in groups of 4 at the most. With casualties being commonplace, there would be no retention of skills after trial and error like you speak of.
"I'm from Mavelon Creek and I say kill 'em all!"
One thing I've noticed is that both Super Earth and Mars have a 'super earth control %' gauge. Which leads me to think that one enemy faction or the other absolutely can wreck the homeworld at some point or another. It'll be interesting to see how they handle that.
It did happen in Helldivers I funny enough.
the question isnt how are they going to handle it its how are we going to handle it. arrowhead has said we are the driving force on how this all plays out. all they will do is add things or change somethings. depending on how we has a community are playing
There were a couple of full on failed defenses of Super Earth in the lifetime of Helldivers 1, which had a similar Galactic war, so I'd expect them to follow through with some kind Super Earth defense, and a campaign reset if we ever lost.
@@TheGallantDrake i dont think they should do a reset i think it might make the community be more focused on where to fight to take it back. i mean look at what losing the creek did its all over online people cant wait to take it back
@@davids2cents594I mean if we fail a lot of defense global orders then enemy can knock on super earth doors
its an ugly planet
a BUG planet
I'm doing my part
I'm doing my part
I’m doing my part
I'm doing my part too! 👶
*I DIDN'T DO FUCKING SHIT!*
Service guarantees citizenship!
This guy needs a good sit down with the democracy officer.
After purchasing the first game in 2015 and then snagging the second on launch day, I've always described both games to friends as "The best unlicensed Starship Troopers game you'll ever play." _Nobody_ has ever called it an inaccurate description after they played it.
@@g00gleisgayerthanaids56 I'll bet you're a ton of fun at parties.
The Termanids are territorial. When they first spot you, they will try to posture and scare you away, rather than attacking, if you don't attack first. This is key in high difficulty play, where you want to avoid contact with the enemy as much as possible. Charger bugs will also attack chargers from another bug territory.
I love how there is actually story if you look for it, especially if you know the lore of the first game. Like how after they subgugated the termanids in the first game, humans started farming them because they create a fuel like substance, and now they have escaped the farms
It's truly remarkable how consistent the game's messaging is. the Super Earth government is one hundred percent to blame for all of the current problems they are facing. The bugs producing what is effectively space oil is so clearly symbolic of over reliance on unsustainable or otherwise volatile resource consumption. The automatons are quite literally laborers fighting against exploitation for workers' rights.
If you want to know about the original story behind Helldivers there is a book by science fiction writer Robert A Heinlein that came out in 1959 called Starship Troopers. The game is copied right from the book and I've noticed all sorts of clues in the games relating to the book.
@@burnin8able when they eventually introduce the illuminate that'll be yet another problem super earth brought on themselves. they were a pacifist culture in helldivers 1 before they were invaded and "wiped out"
@@democraticrepublicofsprout7263 its an inspiration but Helldivers 2 is more inspired by the film adaptation that is a satire. Heinlein's novel is a straight up philosophical fiction that criticized society in his time and was quite honest about how it portrayed stuff instead of sugarcoating it with political narratives. My favorite part in the book is about how a military teacher mentions the Crusades not being special compared to any other conflict on Earth and cites materialist factors responsible for it rather than honeyed narratives such as faith and defending religion.
@@rebelblade7159 The only real similarities to the novel, at least for me is space bugs, and remotely their design. The Starship Trooper novel and the Helldiver setting seem almost opposite to me. I do need to watch the movie, as I see people both claim its satire and shows fascism, as well as others who claim that despite trying to the film creator actually failed in truly showing the Starship Trooper setting as bad at all.
"Mobile infantry made me the man i am today" swivels in chair, revealing he is a double amputee.
I like using that quote when I use the armor where you have a cybernetic arm and leg.
Triple Actually
He has perfectly working prosthetic but he is trying to warn possible recruits what might wait them. He wants only those who can deal with possiblity of being crippled or killed.
@@EN-mh4ogI dont think he was being sarcastic. he genuienly tried to inspire the young ones but that was the only job he could do due ot his disability creating the irony of scene and forshadowing that reality doesnt match propaganda, rather than playing sarcasm to warn the youngones from joining. But thats my opinion.
Triple amputee! One of his arms was prosthetic.
Fun fact, the earth in helldivers 2 isnt the original earth, everytime humanity lost a war in the first game, they'd pack up, leave and terraform another system to look exactly like earth and mars
Super Earth
Earth 64
Earth 5 PRO
HD2'S Super Earth 7800X3D with extra large cache
@@rockjianrockEarth Now With Funky Mode
Where did to see that? Awesome Fact!
Except it's still in the Sol system and it's still in the same solar system as Mars?
The losses of the first game aren't canon, dialogue from the crew on your destroyer makes it clear that we won all three wars;
- The Illuminate has their home world occupied, all of their military dismantled, and their super WMDs seized by the Regime.
- The Cyborgs had their home world occupied, and their population placed into reeducation camps and then sent to the mines to labor while Super Earth businesses rebuilt the Cyborgs infrastructure for Super Earth's use.
- The Terminids were captured and placed into captivity, and were being experimented on by Super Earth scientists, and all their hive worlds turned into Super Earth colonies.
We absolutely thrashed them the last go around, and haven't lost once in-lore.
The soundtrack also plays a part in showing this angle.
When you start a mission, the main, ultra-patriotic propaganda music blares as the 4 of you heroically dive towards the planet's surface. But once you hit the ground, the music fades away and is replaced with quiet, foreboding ambience. Then once you engage your first enemies a tense combat track kicks in, devoid of any heroism or glory.
I played the first one a decent bit, and remember at the time, the thing where game-mechanical respawns are narratively justified as distinctly not the same character, but just another body thrown into the meat grinder was the funniest shit I'd ever seen.
Now it's not as novel to me on its' own, but still gets a grin whenever I think about it. And the way you can play into it even further by randomizing a body type and voice with each reinforcement was a perfect iteration. No, now the funniest shit was the mere existence of a handheld tutorial corridor mission that still deployed live lethal-fire turrets and other actual dangers that can shut your career down before it starts if you don't pay proper attention. I lost like five soldiers to that and laughed to tears for each one.
The random body and voice thing is the default setting! The tutorial area is clearly a rundown automated "training" facility and when you get on your ship you visibly come out of an endless magazine of frozen Helldivers and are greeted by a bored official who tell you ship is yours in the manner of someone who has doing this exact thing every day for months. For a game that is so incredibly over the top most of the time there are a huge amount of subtle things going on as well!
I also love that the corpses are persistent so if you die in one place several times you end up climbing over a pile of your former compatriots to get to the objective. It’s so good.
@@MNewton that part I think is HUGE in developing the dystopian propaganda vision they're going for in the game. supposedly YOU are fully "in command" of that super destroyer, when in reality it seems like it is all in-universe ego boosting set dressing. "yeah, we know the helldivers are cannon fodder meant to be jammed by the dozen into the meat grinder, but we can at least make their last moments feel like they're big shots. Just don't thaw out more than one at a time. they might live long enough to start asking questions."
On the bright side, the server problem is largely fixed now that they've upped the max CCU to ~700,000
Pour one out for the actual Starship Troopers games, I guess, getting completely buried in the dirt
Beautiful work as always, speaks to how talented the guys at Arrowhead are, most of the things that this game does so well they had done already or had the foundation down, nearly ten years ago in HD1. I never thought it'd ever see a sequel and I've never been so happy to be so wrong.
'Servers at capacity' has not been an issue for over a week now. RECRUITMENT CAPS INCREASED. DIVE IN SOLDIERS.
Starship troopers was a good film back in the day, in fact movies back then were brilliant I remember watching loads of movies because my dad just got Sky installed and we had cinema. And ST came on I think around 1998 and I watched it on their new released films would come on Sky a year or so later and Blade came on near Christmas. But as soon I saw HD2 trailer killing the bugs I instantly thought of this movie
But servers are not at 800,000 and I haven't had an issue for a week now and they've added auto kick of lack of play.
But in ST they didn't get as much air support as you can in HD2 that's for dam sure
I haven't had this much fun since Bad Company 2 online
Excellent work as always! Thank you for continuing to do an exceptional job!
Great video Hamish. Your content always makes me interested in playing a game I might not have otherwise come across, so thank you!
There is also Starship Troopers game, right?
There's several but they all make the mistake of taking themselves too seriously
I really love how spot on they got the tone and satire in this game. It's very rare a game GETS IT like this. And I'd even argue it goes a step further than Starship Troopers- The Automatons are genius as an inversion of the human race in this setting. There's a subtext of it in the film, where the Mobile Infantry just use brute force human waves, making them not too different to the bugs. But the Automatons in Helldivers 2 are chillingly humanlike, just subject to the opposite extreme type of tyranny (there are subtle hints that many of them are actually human brains and even former Helldivers, placed in a robotic shell, and forced to fight you against their will), in an ironic mirror image of the Federation.
Starship troopers is one of my childhood favorites and this is the closest we ever got to a legit starship troopers game that makes you feel like you;re in the movie. so happy it finally happened : D
*this video has been flagged as unpatriotic and will be removed after review*
"GO GO GO GO. GET OUT OF HERE NOW!" 📹
Ah, Starship Troopers is a fascinating case. As I understand the situation, Heinlein wrote *the book* as an overtly political examination of and proposal for a society based on responsibility and character building while retaining a small state, and quotes prominent Classical Liberals at the start of each chapter.
Voting and running for public office is reserved for those who have put the interests of the group over their own through their Service, which need not be military (it's stated that even a blind, wheelchair-bound amputee can still qualify for some form of service), but is mostly shown as military service in the book, as Heinlein was a military man writing a book about war. Those who choose not to go through with Service (Civilians, rather than Citizens) are the majority of the population, still enjoy most constitutional rights, and by all means are quite successful, with the protagonist's father being a wealthy businessman who calls Service essentially one big virtue signal.
In the book, this is a form of standardized, virtuous meritocracy where proving yourself to be of strong will and good character (while avoiding being self-serving) shows you are worthy of wielding political force, and all characters in authority are shown to meet this standard.
In the book, soldiers are one-man-armies courtesy of their powered armour, putting them into stark contrast with the Arachnids, who expend individual bug lives like Terrans expend ammunition.
The Arachnids are framed as examples of perfect collectivism: Utterly stripped of individualism aside from their capabilities as decided by biology. Worker bugs work, soldier bugs fight, brain bugs strategise. They are aggressive and genocidal in their expansion without thought, as they do not understand the wiping of Buenos Aires and its 8 million inhabitants off the map outside of the context of one amorphous species against another - all being justified and based around the needs of the group.
Their success in fighting the Terran Federation represents Heinlein's anti-communist fears surrounding the seductive leftist virtue of equality at all costs and top-down technocratic ruling, which is admonished earlier in the book as a failed experiment for humanity that is rising again as the Arachnids, and is trying to destroy humanity yet again.
Verhoeven, by contrast, is more of a leftist traumitized by the militarism of the Nazis during WWII, and was so bored by Heinlein's book that he delegated actually reading it to someone else while making *the film.*
Where Heinlein focused on the military and the benefits of Service as it was what he knew as a Sailor who enjoyed the camaraderie of the Navy, Verhoeven focused on the military as a corrupting force that made the Terran Federation entirely about WAR. And we all know what that's good for.
People are whipped into patriotic frenzies by propaganda reels, willingly pulling people from their communities to serve a rolling war machine that's ultimately does not care for any individual cog in the vast machine. Gone is the power armour of the book - the original movie has squishy troopers with only helmets, load bearing vests and rifles massed against the Arachnids.
Ironically for a film that focuses so much on propaganda, the broken chronology of the movie almost implies that it was the Terrans who struck the bugs first, but the bug-launched meteor hitting Buenos Aires is still the incident that starts the war.
Nevertheless, the bugs are still not portrayed all that sympathetically - rather, the bugs represent entropy against the uncaring militarism of the Federation. He who fights monsters will become no better than the monsters he slays, and there's always a bigger monster. In celebrating the capture and torture of the brain bug, - another sentient individual just like themselves, - the Terrans lose their humanity to bloodlust and fervor. The only winning move is to not play at all.
Funnily, though, Helldivers neatly sidesteps this issue by essentially making Super Earth a watered down Imperium of Man.
"Yes, we may be far from the most virtuous society to ever live, but we have our reasons, and our enemies are just as cruel as us, - if not more, - so fight for your own side, because there is no right side."
I'm not willing to make this comment any longer than it currently is, so I won't delve into the scraps of meaning HD2 has integrated into it, but what it has is ultimately there in service of a fun game, and boy is it a fun game, so praise Super Earth ig
I mean, you're not wrong, but Heinlein himself also wrote in his own political climate and his own biases got into the book too. Just want to point out that fascism isn't always intentional.
You know what I like? There is no real indication that it was really bugs that send that asteroid. Sure it came for the direction of bug space, but comets can move long distances on their own. Space is vast, so I doubt that one asteroid can be launched so precise from that far away (just remember that map from the beginning of the movie, earth and klendathu are light years away). And the last detail is that all the footage they had from Buenos Aires doesn’t look like asteroid hit, it looks more like a war zone. There is no crater, there is no asteroid shown on the news, which is weird, that footage would be more motivating.
Thank you for theses points, I didn't feel such a strong anti-communist vibe, and rather the despair of fighting an uphill battle, as the arachnids should have been just another of the numerous species against which the humanity descend with overwhelming power. At the start.
A small fact that is generally forgotten, but Heinlein stated almost at the start that the service-requiring citizenship is not better nor worst than other forms of governments. In the vein of Churchill, the teacher stated that they keep it only because it still work, but accept that it isn't inherently better nor eternaly usefull
@@TheGallantDrake or present
@TheGallantDrake facism is definitely overused and does not fit the book or even the movie, to be honest. You can be too militaristic and still not facist. There is way to much freedom of choice, free market, and freedom of speech shown for a facist society.
One thing that's unintentionally adding (or maybe not unintentional) to the message is the fact that people farming in the game at the cost of other stuff is working in the "enemies" favour by handing planets to them because they're contributing losses.
Really drives home the short term individual gain/long term group loss attitude of late stage capitalism.
nah, they said farming does niether harm nor good.
The loss meter is just a timer, losses don't matter atm.
Although if the required amount of wins scale with total population everyone farming instead of completeing operations might still end up making it impossible, if the automaton evac missions didn't already make 80% of dif 7+ ops fail.
Tragedy of the commons. Also there's a bunch of numb nuts who think they can off other divers to steal their samples. Not knowing it's shared across the team
If you talk about "How Helldivers 2 Turned Starship Troopers into a Game", you should at least mention the ACTUAL Starship Troopers games.
The guys that made the actual starship troopers game reading this title - :'(
Thanks for the vid
Fantastic script here!
We need to get better at teaching media literacy.
The way so many people fall for the hyperbolic fictional propaganda really does make me worry about their capacity to handle it in real life
I think that's why it's important to consume media that uses it, so you can then discuss the ideas jn a fictional context. I think it's useful to help train one's mind to be better prepared against real propaganda.
No one is immune to propaganda
With education in practically any country serving chiefly to create an obedient and (at least nominally) patriotic workforce rather than fostering critical thinking this won't change anytime soon
Some of the helldiver lore references really make me feel like they are mocking my country sometimes. Getting a day off from a holiday and so not having to ise overtime to complete their tasks…
Great vid, just suprised you didn't mention and compare Helldivers 2 to the recent Starship troopers game. Would have been a no-brainer to contrast the two or look at how similar they are.
Also, no mention of Automatons. Those bastards killed my friends and put their remains on pikes. Those sick machines! People should know about their atrocities. I bet you more will fight for managed democracy if they knew what was happening here.
this video is kind of ironic if you consider Starship Troopers has released its own game about a year ago
"Starship Troopers Extinction" was basically copied 1:1 for Helldivers 2, including the Galactic War mode and such
We know it is satire. We just pretend to further the joke
Just watch out for the people who don't know and aren't joking. Because they are out there.
yup, there are people who are having fun defending super earth, and there are fascists
@@FakeSchrodingersCat I see UNPATRIOTIC people ......
Helldivers 1 did the same and I may even prefer the gameplay of it! One of the greats
To quote a certain song: War has never been so much fun
Rock and Stone Brother!
Rock and Stone!
subscribed during the ad read at the start simply for the accent.
Good. Now I'll play Spec Ops: The Line to balance the scales.
I'm doing my part!
For me Helldiver is Starship centuries after the war against the arachnids
"We lost Malevelon Creek, luckily Super Earth High Command was gracious enough to give us reinforcements, 15.000 helldivers unfortunately those reinforcements were from Eastern side of the galaxy, the so called badass bug killers."
"We did managed to retake 9% of the Creek, but only 213 of our badass bug killers survived."
This comment is 3x funnier because in America, 15.000 is 15 and 0 thousandths and not 15 thousand.
9:23
the local Democracy Officer would like to have a word with you...
Best game I've played in a long time
Do you want to know more?
Campy, comprehensive, co-op. ✅
I'm a dev, so I just imagines these are bugs in my code
There's a Democracy Officer here to see you.
Starship Troopers was aimed to be a satire of a fascist military society, but it was based on a novel that wasn't fascist, and now we have a parody of it in Helldivers 2
Is it worth playing the first game at all now that the sequel is out?
I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW MORE
I thought this was a Starship Trooper game too when I first saw the trailer.
Did this many really say quadruped lizard like aliens when talking about the bugs? Everything else was great though.
Would you like to know more?
waiting for the infinite wealth video
and also the liberation percentage like good job you complete a 5 star mission that will increase our control of the planet by 0,0000074℅ to drive home how little we matter
Fun fact: Starship Troopers is already a game... I mean, a current one. It's call Starship Troopers Extermination and it's been in EA for about 10 months already.
Yet, no one has even heard of it, but a game "inspired" by the IP most popular game in the west right now😆
Are you doing your part?
There are starship trooper video games one last year and one in 2005 but helldivers does the formula better
As an Xbox player, I am not yet doing my part.
Something I think many people miss with Helldivers (due to only knowing HD2) is how much the game is attacking the early 2000s US. The three factions had three separate justifications all of which mirror some aspect of the Invasion of Iraq: Cyborgs were invaded as retaliation for terrorism, Illuminate was invaded over WMDs, and the bugs for oil. Helldivers as a franchise is about 2000s USA by way of Starship Troopers pastiche.
I don't think many people are missing that, even with the Iraq war over HD2 is still full of all the stereotypical satirical American military cliches, and it is not subtle in it's use of them.
I did not consider it being of a previous time period. The references to abusive worker practices hit uncomfortably close to home in 2024…
The funny part about SST?
It's a hyper-libertarian power fantasy that a director mistook as a facist power fantasy (He only read, maybe, two chapters) and made something truly iconic anyway.
Someone said to me that starship troopers show us how a society should function... 😂
I mean, how should it function when facing a threat that seeks the utter enslavement or genocide of humanity?
@@Michael-ex8lk you didnt see the movie did you?
@@Michael-ex8lk Not like that. Since the society it shows closely resembles the ones that have most often been the source of the enslavement and genocides in human history.
@@g00gleisgayerthanaids56 no i did not.
U know.. it's also just a fun shooter mechancially, more polished and with deeper mechanics than 90% on the market (not disagreeing with your points as a Verhoven fan) - that's important (even looking at the official ST game) as no amount of humor or polical satire would make people play it otheriwse.
Amen
This is mentioned, even in a different concept. The very missing guardrails are what set Helldivers apart. You're John Helldive, here with a peashooter, a head full of propaganda and a LOT of air support (that's chaotic as hell to use on several gameplay levels). As such your messy, expendable, oft short lived life as one of Super Earth's finest is so, SO refreshing compared to the modern shooter.
If I had a nickel for every time someone mentions the server issues I'd be rich
Fun Fact: I'm complaining about people complaining
Do people not remember the first Helldivers? People talk about this game like the first never happened.
I mention in the video I never played it.
The peak player count is almost two orders of magnitude above the previous game. Helldivers 1 was great but it was a lot smaller.
The vast majority of Helldivers 2 players never touched, or were even aware of Helldivers 1.
@@yellowbeard1 oh it's much more. Helldivers 1 did not even reach 20 000 concurrent players, meanwhile, Helldivers 2, yeah...
I think it's really worth noting too how much the change in perspective affects the game's tone and players' immersion in the setting. HD1 had many of the same design and story elements, obviously. However, switching to a more personal third/first person perspective not only serves to add depth to the actual act of exploring and fighting the hordes, but makes the moments of by-the-skin-of-your-teeth success and explosive, hilarious failure far more exciting and memorable. It definitely adds to the sequel's broader appeal, and I think it really helps to accentuate and improve the strong gameplay and worldbuilding that was already there in its predecessor.
i absolutely love how its currently the closest thing to warhammer 40k ive ever played
Criticizing the server capacity is anti-democratic, and highly subversive of you! Please, proceed to re-education.
Starship trooper has their own game thank you.
The real inspiration for hell divers 2 that i dont see any one talk about when it comes to video game is Earth Defence Force . Infact i would go a bit further and say hell diver 2 is Earth Defence Force made for western sensibility.
Fifi NoNo!?
Lol 9:07 nice touch, ⬆️⬆️ ⬇️⬇️ ⬅️➡️ ⬅️➡️
Starship troopers was brutal.. this unfortunately looks tame.
if starship troopers was the kind of propaganda movie that its world would produce then HD2 is the kind of propaganda game that would exist in the world of super earth
Probably not, authoritarians don't often understand subtlety, if HD2 was a super earth propaganda game. It would play more as a power fantasy you would really be a super soldier able to go against impossible hordes with the best equipment and beat them all in a stand up fight.
In fact the game is downright subversive if looked at critically. You are underequipped, have to buy/prove basic upgrades and sent against hordes of enemies constantly vastly outnumbered, with artificial cooldowns on air support and resupply.
So, helldivers 2 is like a AAA EDF game?
Well AA and you are not in any way a defensive force, but other then that, sort of. Also not quite as camp.
I really need to watch the movie. Because man, compared to the novel/book, it really sound like a very butchered version of the setting. The setting of starship trooper, actually seem nearly utopian to me. With bugs being the only big downside to living as a human. The amount of things that normal civilians are limited in, seem to be very few. And mostly for good reasons. The legal system seems far less restrictive, in the sense that I do not believe there are nearly as many laws. At least that was my impression.
Even for the military side of the story, I did not feel war was even the focus of that. It was training, building character. Realizing the responsibility one has. To ensure that you value being able to vote, hopefully leading you to really take the matter seriously. Not just vote whatever your family do, not just vote whatever you feel like at the voting booth. But actually digging into what you vote for and all that.
They simply had no idea at first just how dangerous the bugs really where. It was not that the government wanted to lie and trick people into the military knowing the danger. Heck, as the main guy joins, the military people seems unhappy about the amount of people who want to do service. They discouraged signing up. They did a hard weeding out of those who where not fit to be a soldier.
Why? Not only for others wellbeing but because the Starship Trooper society truly value individual people. They do not happily send people into grindstones. Every soldier is a sad loss to them. If at all possible, you do not leave a fellow man behind.
I also seem to remember that they talked about there being a very high kill to death rate among soldiers fighting. And my impression is that, before the point when the war against the bugs truly started, although people died in the battles against the bugs. It was not like, sure common. Their fighters also did not just drop in paper gear. They had truly incredible mech like armours. Going rather far in the hope to keep each and every soldier alive.
I will admit I need to re-read the novel again. However the impression I got was that it and Helldivers are on total opposite poles. I know that the one movie at least had a director or whatever who wanted to push a certain message. However I have a rather mixed impression from what people are saying about the movie, whenever he even managed to do portray Starship Trooper's system as bad or not even when trying.
theres a starship troopers game tho
Yes.
@@WritingOnGames There's 3
"Managed Democracy" is also not a democracy, it's a type of totalitarianism
This review is way to in-depth for a game like this. Bang bang freedom, that’s all you need to hear
JUMPING!
tired of people acting like this game is just brainless shooting and nothing more
"Staggeringly difficult to miss"
Conservative Chuds: Let me introduce myself
Every leftist ever: "Fascism is anyone besides us having power"
'Impossible to miss satire of fascism...' Yeah, they missed it.
Or just play Extermination.
Still waiting for Helldivers fans to discover Earth Defense Force.
I really need to get into that franchise.
they won't be impressed
@@WritingOnGames I think you'd probably enjoy it, from what I've seen it can get quite zany
It's similiar in tone but that's about it. Different kind of story, different kind of humor, DRASTICALLY different gameplay.
Mate HD1 was back in 2015 i played many EDFs between then and now... Helldivers, even the first is overall better. EDF is still fun in its own ways
You're starting to sound like a bug sympathizer
I get that the director wanted to make SST a satire of fascism, and it's debated everywhere on wether or not the book is about a fascist government or some other sort of nationalist political ideology.
Point being, the movie was intended to be a satire of fascism. But where's the satire of fascism specifically? I know what the director wanted and what he says the film is, but at best it's satire of military propaganda, not fascism. Besides that, based on the actions of the movie, the federation was justified in every action against the bugs. (Buenos Aries was not a false flag, and it's one of the most baseless fan theories I've seen)
I already reported you to the ministry of truth
No shit, Captain Obvious.
If you want to know more about Helldivers please read the Robert A Heinlein book called Starship Troopers. It was the original inspiration of the movie but I think the game does a significantly better job replicating the original story and you can find so much more about the story of the game in there
Why does this title seem like it forgot there was literally a Starship Troopers game that just came out last year.
Because it wasn't good
Perhaps because "How Helldivers 2 Made a Game Out of Starship Troopers (but there have also been starship troopers games made in the past the vary in quality)" isn't quite as snappy
I don't think it implied that, but HD2 wouldn't be the first time an unrelated product executed on an idea that the licensed product did not. Also, HD1 is extremely similar except top down, and that came out before the Starship Troopers game.
@@WritingOnGames That's a fair point, but I'm feeling "How Helldivers 2 Perfects Starship Troopers" might also fit!
@@UltimaKeyMastercool
This game is interesting because its been so successful, which admittedly is great and all. But it seems like so many people are acting like Starship Troopers, and even the first Helldivers dont exist. There's this weird hush hush-ness about what its built on that I can't quite place.
I think the helldivers 1 silence is because it just wasn't nearly as popular. Starship Troopers, on the other hand, has been trending lately.
Not sure what you mean. Everyone is talking about it being starship troopers with players quoting lines from the movie all the time. Heck the actor of Johnny had a friendly exchange with the game director on twitter.
Right from the start you made yourself known as a traitor to super earth
It's really more Warhammer 40k with a Verhoevens Starship Troopers paintjob. Starship troopers is a libertarian utopia, while WH40k is mortality salience manifest. Helldivers is all about that WH40k mortality salience, down to the point where every reinforcement is actually a different helldiver getting thrown into the grinder. Where the universe is full of unfathomable horrors that only want to destroy all of humanity to the last. That's not Starship Troopers, that's WH40k.
As much you're correct on the propaganda end of things, but I can't say I agree with the anti-war idea. With how utterly merciless the enemies/environments are, how easily the Helldivers can get geeked, and the propaganda on top of it; I feel the game does a better job showing the price of survival. It shows how aggressive the enemies of Super Earth need to be to survive against humanity, as a well as revealing the grim reality of what has to happen to keep humanity save from not one but two species wide threats. From what I can tell, Super Earth has absolute control of humanity, directing them via force, bureaucracy and propaganda. Revealing to humanity just how dangerous the galaxy is (in part because of its own hand) could result in a major blow to species as a whole via the morale drop. On top of that, maintaining the logistical lines necessary to fight a galaxy size war requires an absurd control over all populations within Super Earth's borders. If worlds start stepping out of line aren't silenced/subjugated immediately, it could result in a cascade of worlds rebelling by virtue of human nature, resulting in easy pickings for the galactic threats they face.
The helldivers themselves are a good example of this idea of control. The logistical might of Super Earth means they can drop a few, mostly green and deluded soldiers onto a battlefield and still achieve a strategic victory over their enemies. That the enemies need the numbers they do to compare kind proves just how effective the Helldiver program is. Having most of the Helldivers die in the process just means you could minimize those who might let the brutal truth of the galaxy getting out. For those that survive, well - each Super Destroy comes with its own agent of the Ministry of Truth. Ultimately its an efficient, apathetic system designed to maximize effective combat efforts against a galaxy that wants to eat us. All the same, if the galaxy wants to eat my species, it only makes sense that humanity would celebrate war because its a good way to keep us alive.
Summarized, Helldivers 2 doesn't feel anti-war, rather it feels more pro apathetic pragmatism vs a hostile universe.
I've never actually seen anyone talk about how Starship troopers is a satire of fascism beyond the fact that one of the characters (litterally) wears the same kind of coat that they wore.
If you want a real Starshiptroopers experience, play Starshiptroopers Extermination. 16 players against hundreds of bugs. Bugs can kill you in 1-2 hits, they run faster and you'll run out of ammo just to kill one. More intense than this game that only has 4 players and a handful of bugs per wave. Compared to Extermination, that spawns up to a hundred bugs per wave.
Extermination sucks ass compared to Helldivers tbh, EDF is where it's at for hundreds of bugs
@@nataliecameron have you played Extermination?
Pfft! More like counter strike x fortnite, that game sucks so bad even the visuals is like from an old gen, people would have hyped about that game if it really is that good lol
@@vhlaaat6415 of course HD2 is more popular, it's a Sony game. Meanwhile Extermination is just an indie game but actually has better gameplay concept.
@@megakillowning HD2 is also an indie game developed by arrowhead, it was only published by sony. Better concept? It was the same with all other generic fps game tbh that's why it sucks so bad.
The movies honestly were crap but it was nice to see… it was a crappy interpretation off the books… it was made mocking the propaganda view point being that the directors were focused on being anti war snarky attitude towards the book during the production of the movie. The regional directors of the starship troopers movies read about the equivalency of roughly around. I wanna say 1/8 of the book, then completely scrapped the idea of reading the entire book before directing the movie it had someone else read the book for him, so he basically had a college student from Ohio State University, read the book and then tell the Director how the story goes. To put things short, there’s a lot of fallacies that the movie portrays that were in the book. Even the game has bad interpretations Billies, then it’s focuses in hyper focuses on a very small aspect of the entire storyline of starship troopers. In reality, starship troopers will be an amazingly hard game to develop so this was a good refreshment from that. The only thing that they got wrong in the game would be the politics. They would say for liberty and not for democracy. The global politics of the starship trooper universe wasn’t that of a democracy, but a Unitarian republic that grant your freedoms for your services. In the book, you could honestly see examples of people getting military service just by being, waiters Butlers cooks or even flight attendants. You would only have to serve for two years, and it will be given full citizenship to have all the rights to vote in to be a part of the government system.
Or is starship troopers helldivers 🤔
If you’ve ever read the book it’s very close to it.
Your definition of propaganda is much more narrow than it needs to be. Propaganda is fundamentally about putting ideas in people's minds such that they embrace those ideas. One thing that most people fail to understand about it is that propaganda need not be false or duplicitous. If I want to make you believe something which I myself believe and have good reasons for believing, then the propaganda I might make in order to convince you could be 100% truthful and based entirely in good faith. Alternatively, maybe I think the target audience for my propaganda would be less motivated by the reasons that convinced me, or maybe I just think it would take a lot of work to convey my beliefs effectively. If I were less interested in good faith, I might lie when crafting my propaganda, or I might omit information that would make it harder for people to believe me. In both cases, the thing I made is still propaganda. From the perspective of the propagandist, the result is what is important (an idea is put into your head), not the contents message itself (the idea is true or false). You can think of it as a synthesis of an idea and the manner in which that idea is communicated, or "propagated" from my mind to yours. Really the only way its different from a normal argument (or just rhetoric, depending) is that the very media by which it is conveyed will be arranged to most effectively communicate the idea.
I commented this because at the very beginning of the video you stated "Propaganda, by its very nature, is designed to distort reality..." I hope you can see why I commented. The propagandist's goal isn't to distort reality, it's to push you towards viewing the world in the way they want you to. Put more cynically, it's to manipulate your thoughts. That can sometimes be better achieved with the truth than with a lie. That's all