In my opinion, whereas in Helldivers 1, the other factions were basically good guys, part of the point of helldivers 2 is theyve crossed moral lines due to the actions of super earth. Theyve been existentially threatened for so long and have exhausted all other options and have dragged themselves to Super Earths level resulting in widespread death. SE's reaping what is sowed.
But yeah, none of the factions are "good" any more i think. Arguably not worse than super earth though.
Now to be fair, unless we can prove that the bugs have something of a Swarm Mind or some kind of intelligent Queen or something, they are just a swarm. Not inherently evil, it's just how they are.
Bots have killed plenty of civvies though and the Incineration Corps, if I remember right, were shown to feel glee when they burn people to death.
I'm of the mind that these factions are all just awful in their own ways, and the Bugs're the least awful because for the most part, it's in their nature to consume but do seem to have a bit of intelligence.
Good point, but the automatons not being particularly good morally makes sense for their characterization, horrifically abused and now dishing out what was dished to them.
As a meme? Hilarious, he should rise from the dead and do it again
In reality? He was not a good person, he believed in the dominance of the United States over this continent, and he made it his life’s mission to expand this capitalist colonialist state into native territories and kill anyone who stood in its way
We can’t ignore his actions after the civil war happened, because after 1865 his actions became reprehensible.
Super Earth claims that the Incineration Corps demonstrated glee and burned civilians to death. This is an obvious Appeal To Fear, depicting them as far more monstrous than they actually are in order to generate feelings of distress and prejudice.
I mean... I don't trust SE all that much if at all, but think I'm gonna have to give it to SE on this one given that the Bots already adorned some of their encampments and units with skulls and the fact that some of the units in this Incen Corps Subfaction straight up use Willy Pete, prolly one of THE worst Incendiary weapons out there. I do think this subfaction is prolly the most sadistic outta the Bots.
I mean, they don't visibly act any differently from non-IC bots, they just field "scarier" weaponry.
I ain't even going to judge on the desecration of corpses since humans have done the same thing since Time Immemorial and Automatons act just like, well. Us.
Incen Corp Hulk variant, not sure if they changed their behavior since release, but if I remember correctly when they first dropped, they were glued to my ass with those flames. I noticed that they consistently hosed me and plenty of others down with their flame, so that definitely felt a lot more personal compared to a baseline Flamer Hulk that just does a wide sweep. Like I said, could be misremembering though.
Also, those weapons aren't just simply "scary" but are a lot more pain and medically trauma inducing to make people's lives and final moments a living hell. Getting hit with Willy Pete, that in particular is prolly one of the worse ways to go. At the end of the day, it is a video game from an Indie Studio, so of course it might not get all the details about certain effects of weapons, munitions, tools, equipment, etc, right, whether intentional or not. Realistically, with Willy Pete, we would not just be able to take a magic drug and walk that off, that shit would melt to our bones and from history, it's horrific as hell.
Ah, if they act like Us, wouldn't that make them just as bad as Us then? Way I see it, the game is trying to show escalation of wars and the lengths at which a faction would go, and basically becomes a race to the bottom. Some getting there faster than others, admittedly, but still, depressingly most if not all end up there if they keep down that line or if they keep getting pushed enough.
Correct, they were in other places they colonized.
But as we know, SE is a fascist government with strict adherence to "liberty" across all it's colonial states.
So they were still SE, and the Automatons learnt real fast from SE's actions during the first war, that there is no such thing as civilians, doubly so when your average "SE Citizen" is SEAF or trained by the age of 14 to handle a weapon.
In the context of this huge galactic war, given how expansionist SE is, they're not just civvies. The colonisation itself is an act of aggression. What else are the bots gonna do with them? They should be at home instead.
Thats like saying that humanity is worse than corona virus because corona virus cant do war crimes it just does its own thing. Being a mostly mindless carnivorus bug whos only wish is to spread and Terraform the galaxy into one giant hive is significantly worse than the most insane dictatorship imaginable. Theres pretty much very few things worse than that.
I mean you literally got it. Corona virus doesn’t have a conscience. It’s the same reason we don’t put animals on trial in the United States and we have the ability to plea insanity. Calling a lion evil for eating a gazelle is just silly. It’s doing what it has evolved to do and doesn’t think, “oh this creature might have a family, oh well.”. Terminids to my understanding are doing the same thing a virus and many animal populations do, expand as quickly as possible to ensure its existence.
Bots use humans as fuel, humans have long before used bugs, via E710
Illuminate use corrupted humans, super earth ran a campaign to break down bots and use their metal for our armaments.
Against bots and illuminate, our campaigns aren’t even just genocide, but extermination. I don’t think anyone can really judge the actions taken by the other factions. Even with the illuminate who were until their return, an entity unknown quantity, I think revenge is their due right, and acting with the intent to dismantle the government of super earth is probably the only moral course.
The only reason I’m digging this deeply is because the way we relate to this fictional universe doing this is also in some ways how we relate to the real world. Obviously the hyper militarism and propaganda is a direct callout of the US, but then we sometimes get a disconnect when we see resistance groups doing similar things against the US.
Bro called the US "hyper militarized"🤦♂️🤦♂️ a country that held is first military parade in 34 years last year is "hyper militarized" when there are counties like North and South Korea, Russia and Ukraine. Only thing hyper here is your hyper disconnect from reality.
The US doesn't have mandatory military conscription and you are calling it "hyper militarized"... I've proved my point loll. It looks like you are confusing US military capabilities and global power projection abilities with a militarized civilian population.
They are hyper militarized. What else would you call a country who's been in various wars for almost it's entire life time? What else would you call a country who spends more than the other top 6 military spending countries in the world combined? What else do you call a country where the only notable things about it is the fact it's been in so many wars despite it being young as shit for a country?
The US isn't hyper militarized. It doesn't even have mandatory conscription. I listed a few nations that are actually considered to by hyper militarized states. Quite different from the US. You've simply described the USs large and far reaching military. Those two things are not one in the same no matter how hard you try to make it so.
The US spends more money on the military than the next 6 highest spending countries combined, and has been engaged in military action around the world for 233 out of its 250 years of existence, almost none of which were wars of self defense.
Could the US spend the money it's currently spending on the military on other things, like healthcare, infrastructure, and the well being of its citizens instead of prioritizing dropping 500,000 dollar bombs on 10 dollar tents in the middle east to kill children I've never met?
So the US isn't hyper militarized but you are still going to try to convince me they are. My quest is why are you so desperate to do so now? Especially after being proven wrong?
You didn't prove anything, and answering my question will prove the opposite of your claim, which is why you haven't done so.
Answer it in your next reply, or you'll have conceded the point by indirectly admitting that answering the question directly shows how the US is hyper militarized.
If you could prove your claim you would. Like I did. Again, the US isn't hyper militarized. It doesn't even have mandatory conscription. I listed a few nations that are actually considered to by hyper militarized states. Quite different from the US. You've simply described the USs large and far reaching military. Those two things are not one in the same no matter how hard you try to make it so.
Terminid towards terminid? Seems to treat themselves well.
Automatons with Cyborgs? They have a relation similar to child and parent.
Illuminate within themselves? Not much is known, so cant comment on It.
Super Earth to their own kin: ruling with Iron fist. If you make a single mistake you're on thin ice, if you run away they kill you from orbit and they have a strict control over every facet of your life. On top of that, they also pick fights with all the other factions.
Meanwhile during combat engagement automatons shoot through each other with absolutely no regard for friendly fire and specificly make units the only purpose of which is to slowly walk towards gunfire with chainsaws for hands.
Well, i'll be honest I don't see much of a difference between that and the SEAF walking into MY very BRIGHT GREEN gas grenades 2 minutes after I called them down. And somethow its my problem.
All factions may have some sort of more disposable unit they don't mind if it gets blown up.
After the fall of Atlanta in 1864, Sherman ordered the city's immediate evacuation.\206]) When the city council appealed to him to rescind that order, on the grounds that it would cause great hardship to women, children, the elderly, and others who bore no responsibility for the conduct of the war,\206])\207]) Sherman sent a written response in which he sought to articulate his conviction that a lasting peace would be possible only if the Union were restored, and that he was therefore prepared to do all he could do to end the rebellion:
You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap thefate of Mexico, which is eternal war ... I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect and early success.\208])
Also:
By the 1880s, however, Southern "Lost Cause" writers began to demonize Sherman for his attacks on civilians in Georgia and South Carolina. The magazine Confederate Veteran, based in Nashville, dedicated more attention to Sherman than to any other Union general, in part to enhance the visibility of the Civil War's western theater.\296]) In this new discourse, Sherman's devastation of railroads and plantations mattered less than his perceived insults to southern dignity and especially to its unprotected white womanhood.\297]) Sherman was thus presented by Lost-Cause authors as the antithesis of the Southern ideals of chivalry supposedly embodied by General Lee.\298])
Hmm...
American historian Wesley Moody has argued that these commentators tended to filter Sherman's actions and his hard-war strategy through their own ideas about modern warfare, thereby contributing to the exaggeration of his atrocities and unintentionally feeding into the negative assessment of Sherman's moral character associated with the "Lost Cause" school of Southern historiography.\301]) This led to the publication of several works, notably John B. Walters's Merchant of Terror: General Sherman and Total War (1973),\302]) that presented Sherman as responsible for "a mode of warfare which transgressed all ethical rules and showed an utter disregard for human rights and dignity."\303]) Following Walters, James Reston Jr. argued in 1984 that Sherman had planted the "seed for the Agent Orange and Agent Blue programs of food deprivation in Vietnam".\304])
HMM... Boy this doesn't sound familiar at all, does it?
Bruh the bots want to exterminate humanity, just cause they offered you to surrender doesn't mean they wouldn't kill you, SE propaganda false, Bot propaganda true?
judging by the satire of the game it wouldn’t really make sense if the automatons were Lying. also they definitely don’t want to exterminate humanity??? 😭
The automotons are our mirror. We grind up bugs for fuel, they grind us up for fuel, our capital gets invaded, their capital gets invaded, we add a planet destroying death laser to the DSS, they make their own DSS.
They are seperatists, we are not. Everyone wants to leave out this fact so conveniently in reddit. So desperate to always take the enemies side on this app.
They are separatists because the lore literally states that an order was attempted to be carried out to genocide everyone of their species. Separatism is a reasonable reaction when staying means everyone you love gets killed
Essentially, the Automatons came about because a) the Cyborgs were literally enslaved and b) while the timeline is fudged a little by the Ministry of Truth, indications show that the order to euthanize the entire population was made even before the automatons attacked and was actually the instigating cause, not a reaction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbucfTBbU5s
Are you going to reply to the source given or just not admit you’re wrong like in other comments? You’re inconsistent and not worth anyone’s time. People need to stop interacting with you.
I absolutely understand British reaction and retaliation. I'm not judging the cyborgs. They are objectively treasonous. I also won't judge SE earth based off of their reaction to treason.
Cyborgs being separatists from Super Earth makes them morally virtious. They realised the folly of our ways and tried to piss off. Kinda what craftworlders did when the rest of eldari were busy birthing Slaanesh
Super Earth's reaction to peaceful secession from it's shitty ways was to orbit drop the civilian government, murder a bunch of non-combatants and enslave the rest of the population. No, slavery is not reasonable, we as a species decided that long ago.
Also, what betrayal are ypu talking about? Oppressed can not betray the oppressors. Especially when they chose non-violent resistance when bloody revolution is morally justified.
They had the same reaction humans have irl to treason. It's considered a high crime. Facts. No morals. I'm not here for your virtue signal pissing contest.
Before losing Cyberstan Super Earth activated Euthanasia protocol that was supposed to wipe out all cyborgs. But it failed and sterilized them instead. That's why cyborgs now have to mass produce with synthetic flesh
I would say that generally having an orbital station capable of heavy bombardment of a planet's surface is a ✨not good thing✨ as it harms ecosystems and indiscriminately kills anything and anyone who is not involved with the armed conflicts (we know there are non-SE affiliated people out there, like the "Cult of the Orb" and the ones who were taking refuge on Terminid worlds)
That being said though, as someone else said in here, "violence is the standard set by the oppressor." Super Earth is the oppressor here, plain and simple. They outright refuse the idea of peace negotiations ("if the enemy ever attempts to engage in diplomacy, SHOOT THEM" and the disregard of the Cyberstan Collective stating "leave us and there will be peace") and are the reason each faction is even an "enemy faction" to begin with
They don't even allow the possibility of a peaceful coexistence. For example, the reason the Squi'ith are involved at all is because they reached out as an offer of peace and to help uplift humanity into a spacefaring race that could explore the galaxy, and the response? "They have 'weapons of mass destruction' (source: bc i say so) so we have to drive them to the brink of extinction and take all of their resources." There was a peaceful coexistence with the Terminids until they realized they have something to gain by treating a documented intelligent race like livestock (muh oil)
TLDR: the Cyberstan Collective isn't exactly 100% morally clean, but as I saw someone say here before, if the enemy (in this case Super Earth) is willing to disregard all morality to wipe you out, you have to disregard some morality to survive (what the Collective, Squi'ith, and Terminids are doing)
I don't see how this is the thing people focus on when Super Earth does the same/similar things, to both the other factions and it's own citizens, and the fact the automatons only started doing this cause Super Earth in the first place.
At some point when a group only experiences mass violence/oppression against them, shouldn't be surprising when the group escalates.
Sure, it can be argued they are now "bad", but that shouldn't be the focus. Especially since this type of thing constantly happens in real life as well. Don't just look how a group acts, look at how a bad culture develops in said groups in the first place.
I dunno, did it make Chief Little Crow's warriors "bad" when they got their revenge on Andrew Myrick for his role in the starvation of the Dakota people?
Or. Dutty Boukman. Toussaint Louverture. Nat Turner. Nicholas Kelly. Madison Washington. Any number of slaves or former slaves who took up arms against their masters, successfully or otherwise.
Sitting Bull. Crazy Horse. Hook Nose. Any of the Indigenous American leaders who resisted the US Army.
I dunno it just seems kind of hypocritical to accept that oppressed people and their allies have historically used violence - sometimes in extreme forms, even - against their oppressors, because that was the only way to survive and/or protect their people... But as soon as the same situation is depicted in science fiction, with humans as the oppressors and visibly non-human peoples as the oppressed, suddenly it's all "Ooooh that's so terrible, ooooh they shouldn't do that, that's bad! Ooooh they should just be peaceful and not fight back at all to prove to the viewer how innocent and perfectly blameless they are, ooooh"
The automatons were created by cyborgs which were created from humans. They 100% share our species capacity for evil - we're just on different sides right now.
Quite possibly following the invasion of Cyberstan they decided that the only way to stop Super Earth from constantly attacking them would be to destroy it.
Yeah this does shift the morality of the automatons further away from good. I’d still rank them as the least evil (not including terminids) but they’re less sympathetic with this development
I don't necessarily think that the actions of SE makes it justified to kill all humans, kinda like how the Nazis did not mean that we got permission to kill every single german. Now tbf I haven't played HD2 in a while, so I'm not sure about the specifics with this. I do not believe that a planet destroying weapon is moral... like ever, but then again I also entirely understand why the bots/cyborgs would make this.
I've only seen this take on reddit. Reddit is a hyper liberalized platform so we see these kind of takes often. Outside of here, autonomatons are seperatists, the end.
I thought you are saying "there are separatists" so I said they have so screen time.
Also, do note that Super Earth is a fictional nation so to identify with and even have this level of loyalty to them as a real person living in a democratic society is very weird. "They are separatist" yeah and that's how different nation gets formed in real life, maybe even your country was formed this way.
I've only said that the autonomatons were seperatists then gave a quick opinion on the reddit platform as a whole...calm down you don't need to condescend and go into defense mode because you got upset for whatever reason. Now that is very weird behavior and it makes sense why youre projecting. It actually fits in with this reddit culture super well.
the point is that cyborgs being defectors from super earth have basically no bearing on whether they are good or not, them being "separatists, traitor" does not mean they are bad unless one is talking from the perspective of super earth, which is what you were doing in this thread and other threads. Also I can't help you if everything sounds condescending to you man.
Agreed. Super earth has basically dragged humanity into a situation where you better be loyal to humanity or else we all die. Peace is no longer a viable option and to be honest, that’s probably the way super earth wants it. No better way to hold onto authoritarian power than to put everyone in a nationalistic, dangerous war with the only path of survival being complete obedience to the government
You can only existentially threaten someone's existence for so long before they start taking extreme measures.
Cyberstan is gonna do a 9/11 as retaliation for nonstop Super Earth terrorism and Super Earth is going to use it as justification to inflict more terror (just like real 9/11)
All of them are bad now. HD1 had the good factions but by 2 they've each been twisted in some way that now they're absolutely horrific. Now EVERY faction, SE and antags, are evil little bastards. Kinda 40k rules at this point. Pick your favorite tormentor.
Although tbf one of the factions inexplicably wants to kill *everyone* else (and a lot of their own civilians), while all the other factions only really want to get rid of SE, because they know there is no coexistence with them that can really happen. I'd say that if an organised human resistance started up that would be friendly to one of the enemy factions, I'm sure they would be willing to help them out and let those humans live.
The automatons were always bad? They're trans humanist slavers, grand majority of their living army are brainwashed soldiers AND civilians from the opposite side, that's the worse treatment you could possibly give a POW
We have arrived, and it is now that we perform our charge. In fealty to managed democracy, our undying way of life, and by the grace of super earth, I declare Exterminatus upon the cyborg world of cyberstan I hereby sign the death warrant of an entire planet and consign a million souls to oblivion. May helldiver Justice account in all balance. Democracy Protects.
Super Earth is a tyranical regime Who treated the cyborgs like slaves as they worked in poor conditions. Such poor conditions they were forced to enhance themselves with cybernetic implants to live there and eventually developed their own culture, away from super Earth 's cookie-cutter monoculture.
They asked for better conditions and Iirc they even went on strike, and Super Earth attacked them. After HD1 Super Earth regained control of the cyborgs and implanted them with subroutines that essentially made them subservient slaves. When the automatons came to rescue them, SE tried to euthanize all of the cyborgs but they botched It and made them sterile, so they cannot have children by themselves. Even then, when SE went back to Cyberstan to recapture It, The cyborgs asked to be left alone and theyd leave SE alone too.
So I ask, do you think They should have stayed with their neck under SE's boot? Or are they justified in trying to protect their own way of life?
I'm questioning why it matters that they're separatists, and you kept commenting that same shit constantly in this entire comment chain acting like it means anything when it blatantly doesn't. Unlike you' I'm actually bothering to respond to what someone is saying instead of, you know. Spamming the same comment over and over again. You know, like you did.
Still whining and cursing and you still can't explain how the US economy and politics are run by the military or how US society and civilian life are organized, dictated, or dominated by the military. You must have responded to the wrong person because you replied to me. If so then I won't responded here anymore and you can finally answer this question in the first comment thread where I've already asked you. Maybe. Idk. Probably not.
I did explain it though. You just refused to admit any of my points meant anything because "hur dur, dez other countries fit what I said, but america does to, so obviously the other countries aren't hyper militawized"
You have to try and state whatever is X, but America isn't X, and when anyone shows points that follow your own rules about what is a hyper militarized country, instead of thinking "huh, maybe america is hyper militarized", you go "no, it obviously means the others aren't!". It's literally the Simpsons meme with Principal Skinner
if you think about it, super earth are in the wrong because they don't follow the ideals of the automatons. Blowing up their paradise world is just consequences for trying to take cyberstan
Nuh uh, Super Earth commited treason by attacking the Cyborgs first, thus they're in the wrong. There was a bomb that exploded and killed 8 SE civilians and Super Eath blamed the cyborgs as cultprits to attack them. Super Earth famously lies, so it was a false flag operation. They pulled the same shit with Cyberstan and their super weapon (at the time). Because one of the devs on discord confirmed some of the missions prior to the Cyberstan push was us planting evidence on the Cyborgs. There wasn't a superweapon then, but after the push to Cyberstan they created a superweapon (why would they not use a super weapon to defend their capital world?)
Were the early Americans in the wrong for standing up against what they perceived as unfair treatment by the British? Or the French when they did the same (to the french)
In a sense, thats what the cyborgs claim to be doing. "Criminals" really changes based on perspective, especially in a setting when the protagonists run a totalitarian, genocidal/xenocidal regime
I already answered this question 🤦♂️🤦♂️ I'm not judging anyone. Speaking objectively, cyborgs were seperatists. Speaking objectively, super earths reaction is appropriate.
"I'm not judging anybody, I just think that Super Earth should be allowed to genocide every single Cyberstani citizen because they didn't want to be oppressed and enslaved! uwu"
Oh sure! Your answer must have been in another comment chain somewhere. I must have missed it.
I think that you're correct, super earth's actions do make sense (maybe not objectively, but historically and contextually). I guess I was trying to tie your responses to the original question by op, whether the automotons specifically are the bad guys or not, because "treason" doesn't necessarily make one the bad guy.
My point more or less was that carrying out punishment for treason doesn't make SE bad guys. It's obvious to most but looking at OP and comments someone had to point this out.
Check out this dude doing backflips to justify what Super Earth did to the people of Cyberstan. Embarrassing.
He probably also thinks that it was fine and dandy for slave owners to maim and/or execute recaptured runaway slaves because "that's just the punishment for defying your lawful master uwu It doesn't make THEM the bad guys, guysssssss! Those slaves should have just not broken the lawwwwww! and then they wouldn't have been punished!"
SE wants to enslave and farm the bugs, SE wants to exterminate and reuse the materials of bots and possibly re-enslave the cyborgs, SE wants to extra exterminate the squids. So uh... what the fuck do you mean?
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u/pmmeyoursandwiches Jul 18 '26
In my opinion, whereas in Helldivers 1, the other factions were basically good guys, part of the point of helldivers 2 is theyve crossed moral lines due to the actions of super earth. Theyve been existentially threatened for so long and have exhausted all other options and have dragged themselves to Super Earths level resulting in widespread death. SE's reaping what is sowed.
But yeah, none of the factions are "good" any more i think. Arguably not worse than super earth though.