Sony Interactive Entertainment and Arrowhead Game Studios have announced that the Helldivers 2 Escalation Of Freedom update will launch on 6 August 2024.

The game’s “biggest update yet” will add new enemies, mission objectives, difficulty levels, and more.

Escalation of Freedom is unleashing some new threats to our liberty that will take some serious strategizing from the Helldivers to take down. Back by popular demand: the Impaler! This big guy from the original Helldivers creates some new challenges. No longer can you run from the bugs when the Impaler is around–big, imposing, and destructive, it demands to be dealt with.

Also new among the Terminid ranks is the Spore Charger. As if the regular old Charger wasn’t scary enough, the Spore Charger is shrouded in fog to obscure its location until it’s right up on you, Helldiver.

The last addition I want to highlight about the Escalation of Freedom update is that we’re making changes to mitigate the problem of grief kicking in Helldivers 2. While it’s our hope that players engage with the game in good faith and sportsmanship, we do recognize that some players are using the team kicking to grief others.

To help improve this we have implemented a system where if a player is kicked, they will spawn into a new session as the host with all of the team’s loot from their previous session. All items can now be picked up by the player before extraction. The squad doing the kicking will see a message in the chat widget that a player has been kicked, yet their loot remains unchanged.

With these changes, all players have the opportunity to leave with all loot collected on mission, with no one Helldiver losing out. We’re committed to making changes that will improve the player experience and encourage healthy, cooperative gameplay.

Along with this, we’re also releasing other quality of life upgrades with Escalation of Freedom, including major fixes to the social menu to make diving with your friends easier.

Developed by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by PlayStation, Helldivers 2 is a third-person squad-based shooter that sees the elite forces of the Helldivers battling to win an intergalactic struggle to rid the galaxy of the rising alien threats. From a 3rd person perspective, players use a variety of weapons (pistols, machine guns, flamethrowers) and stratagems (turrets, airstrikes, etc.) to shoot and kill the alien threats. Players can also aim down the sights for a more accurate 1st person-camera view.

Combat is accompanied by frequent sprays of blood and dismemberment as players exterminate the alien forces or players and squad mates are hit by environmental explosions or friendly fire. Enemy encampments and battlefield environments depict bloodstains and dismembered corpses.

In the meantime, check out our review of Helldivers 2 by heading over here.

Check out the trailer below: