Helldivers 2 players capture footage of mysterious assailants striking them down

Unlike its predecessor, Helldivers 2 does not have three whole races of villainous, anti-democratic enemies to contend against. Notably, the first game’s Illuminate aliens have been suspiciously absent from the galactic playground so far, though some players claim there’s something amiss in that regard.

More specifically, Helldivers 2‘s Super Earth has been doing quite well for itself as of late, with an all-new batch of killing implements having recently come out, and the ongoing efforts to disperse massive amounts of Termicide in select regions of the galaxy. Amidst these successes, some players have been getting killed in extremely suspicious ways, to the point that many now believe the Illuminate faction are behind these attacks.

These alleged assassinations have been the talk of the proverbial town for the past couple of days, with little more than unsubstantiated claims and low-quality screenshots to provide veracity for them. That’s all changed as of late, though, with Helldivers indervyne and Proximis posting videos of their fellow players getting splashed across the battlefield by strange blue energy projectiles.

Are Helldivers 2 players being killed by Illuminate snipers?

Sightings of strangely precise blue projectiles taking down Helldivers from really far away are getting more and more common as of late, and though we don’t have hard data to go on, it’s not hard to see why it’d be easy to blame the Illuminate for these killings. The Illuminate were an extremely high-tech Helldivers faction of aliens that relied mainly on stealth, teleportation, and blue laser-based weaponry to dish out punishment. The parallels with the recent wave of assassinations are hard to argue. On the other hand, some do think this is just swamp gas, as it were.

“This is clearly just an atmospheric discharge,” says Helldiver Jupiter67. “Draupnir is known for its inclement weather and lightning-baked surfaces. There are even transparent voltfish that resonate with electromagnetism as they drift through the air. Nothing to see here. Swamp gas, surely. Swamp gas.”

Some of the most common theories as to what on Super Earth is going on include ricochet takedowns from Autocannon and Anti-Materiel Rifle support weapons, environmental damage from the various elemental flowers and thingamabobs strewn across some levels, and swamp gas. Definitely not the slow encroachment from one of Super Earth’s most potent enemies.

On a similar note, the recent onset of planetary tremors is definitely not a sign that evolved Hive Lord Terminids are about to surface. Further, Helldivers have most assuredly not come across flying Terminid infesting certain settled systems.

On the off chance that things are, in fact, ramping up for Super Earth, and that Illuminate assassins are popping up to disperse Helldiver forces from the shadows, at we now have mechs to defend ourselves with. Chunky, defensive, powerful mechs.