Fortnite is doing a Helldivers 2—well, I guess it’s doing a Starship Troopers, if you wanted to get pedantic about it—but the fact remains that its new season, dubbed “Shock ‘n’ Awesome”, is very familiar. Eerily so. It’s hard to put a finger on why, though.
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Oh right, it’s the bugs. As seen in the video above, Shock ‘n’ Awesome has a distinctly Helldivers 2 feel, and the similarities don’t stop there. Per an official blog, in addition to players being able to stomp some bugs, they’ll also be able to find “O.X.R. Drop Pod[s] packed full of loot”. There’s also the “Hammerhead Choppa”, which is distinctly similar to Helldivers 2’s pelican.
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As spotted by VGC, Arrowhead’s developers are wildly aware. “Feels very democratic,” writes CEO Shams Jorjani on the game’s Discord server (before immediately squashing hope of a Umamusume crossover, saying “that’s a long shot, son”). Community manager Katherine Baskin is a little spicier, though, writing: “hmmm… it’s giving ‘we have Helldivers at home'”.
She later added, regarding the question as to whether Fortnite’s homework-copying might impact Helldivers 2’s Xbox sales: “I’m not worried. Fortnite is Fortnite, Helldivers is Helldivers. If the kings of video game drip think our drip is cool enough to… inspire them… then that’s super cool. But our games couldn’t be more different from one another. There’s room for us all at the king’s table.”
And listen—in fairness, Helldivers 2 is deeply and directly inspired by Starship Troopers. It’s a direct homage. So it’s not as though Arrowhead’s got much reason to be genuinely upset, here.
On the other hand, would Fortnite be making a Starship Troopers pastiche season if Helldivers 2 hadn’t unexpectedly taken the live service world by storm? Something in me says they absolutely wouldn’t be. At the very least, it doesn’t seem like Arrowhead’s been approached for a crossover or anything—chucking a Helldiver skin into the ‘oops, all crossovers’ game seems like the polite thing to do, surely?
Actually, maybe I don’t want to see Hatsune Miku doing the Super Earth salute.
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