Arrowhead’s Game Director Mikael Eriksson sat down for a 16-minute interview on the official Helldivers 2 channel, but it feels like a missed opportunity. The questions stay safe, avoid new details, and much of what’s said has already been covered in the HD2 Discord. Roughly two minutes cover the game’s performance after the last update, offering broad assurances rather than specifics, before the rest of the conversation drifts into fluff content. If you were looking for a clear plan, metrics, root causes, what’s been attempted, and what’s next, this interview doesn’t deliver.
Interview Summary
Eriksson acknowledges the recent update (Into the Unjust) shipped with “more issues than [they] were comfortable with” and says player feedback was justified. He frames “performance” as more than FPS (also crashes, jank, and game balancing) and confirms Arrowhead is pushing some content/feature updates back to prioritize stability and optimization. He adds that FPS gains (especially on consoles) are trickier and being worked on but shares no technical details or timelines. Beyond that, he reiterates Arrowhead’s “living universe” approach to surprises, says Warbonds are built around theme/fantasy rather than power creep, and thanks players for patience.
What was missing (and why comments are divided)
- No metrics (crash rates, FPS targets, or specific platform data).
- No concrete plan (what they’ve tried, what failed, what’s next).
- No timelines or milestones for performance fixes.
- No enemy/design deep dive (e.g., interactivity concerns, War Striders), despite community interest.
If you wanted answers to technical questions and a roadmap, this interview doesn’t deliver them. What it does provide is another admission of problems, a content-delay commitment to prioritize optimization, and a lot of fluff content.
Most of it had already been said on the HD2 Discord.
Most of the main points, recognition of issues, a future “going forward” stability-first approach, and the studio’s narrative philosophy, have already been covered in more detail on the HD2 Discord. For the finer details and changelog-level context, that’s still the best place to find deeper explanations besides Tech Blogs. Players seeking specific answers should hold off until the next Tech Blog instead of spending time watching this interview.