Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Every Thursday GTA 6 O'clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts. Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon. Every Thursday The Setup Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Every Saturday The Watchlist Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Helldivers 2 players long ago christened the character from the game's intro cinematic as John Helldiver – the ultimate embodiment of freedom, democracy, and impossibly deep insincerity. Arrowhead has increasingly taken to this moniker, and a new interview with the game's director suggests that the name is pretty much canon now. "I think one of the strengths of Helldivers is that it is very easy to understand the fantasy and get into it quickly," game director Mikael Eriksson tells IGN. "You can watch the opening cinematic with our John Helldiver character – named by the community – you can watch that and you can get it immediately. Then you can just participate in the fantasy and have fun." Arrowhead has been calling the character by the name players assigned him sporadically over the years. The first instance I could find dates back to the October 2024 01.001.104 patch notes, which included an elaborate A-Team-flavored reference to the icon: "If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can enlist… John Helldiver." Helldivers 2 writer had 7 days to find face of the franchise John Helldiver, the "most insincere" man in the galaxy Arrowhead creative lead agrees with Helldivers 2 players, calls the game "a never-ending ping pong between 'it's so over' and 'we're so back,'" but says "we're trying to get better with each update" Helldivers 2's Cyborgs are real, and they'd kindly like you to "defect" from Super Earth More recently, in a video breaking down the creation of the intro cinematic and the decision to cast veteran voice actor Craig Lee Thomas in the role, former lead writer Russ Nickel suggests he knew the character would be an icon, even if he didn't yet have a name. "'This is gonna be John Helldiver,'" Nickel recalls thinking, though he admits that "I didn't know that would be his name at the time." Still he realized that "'We can't just get someone who's good. We need to get the funniest person we can possibly find.'" The notion of players granting an official name to a nameless character would be weird in just about any other context, but that's how Helldivers 2 has rolled all along. Tabletop RPGs, where players collaborate with a game master to tell a collaborative story, have always been cited as a huge influence on the game's story, and Eriksson expands on that idea a bit in the new interview. "Our primary inspiration for the Galactic War is tabletop role-playing games," he says. "And in tabletop role-playing games – for anyone who's played this – they know that there's a story that you can follow. This story is basically set, and the Game Master tells this story, but the players engage with the story in different ways and they create memories together, really powerful memories together that they share." I think anybody who's spent time in a TTRPG campaign can relate to that moment when a dumb joke at the table slowly transforms into an important part of the story. Sometimes, the table decides that your character's uncle is a medieval Stone Cold Steve Austin, and it sticks. Other times, players decide that a guy is named "John Helldiver." So if you're ready to see ol' John Helldiver open up a can of whoopass on those invading Cyborgs, gimme a forsooth! Check out our full guide to everything in the Helldivers 2 Siege Breakers Warbond.