Arrowhead initially planned to make Helldivers 2 in 3 years—instead it took 7 years, 11 months, and 26 days (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 5 months ago by Goronmon@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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[-] GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee 2 points 5 months ago

I'm not in software dev but 8 years seems a long time to make a game like this. I love the game and play it daily, but it's not that deep. It's has 5 maps and 20 guns and 2 kinds of enemies. That doesn't doesn't seem like an 8 year dev time.

[-] kromem@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The level of detail in Helldivers 2 is insane for the type of game and company size.

Deformable terrain and buildings, enemy animations when you shoot off different limbs and they keep moving towards you, your cape burns off more and more as you use your jetpack, etc.

Call of Duty has 3,000 devs working on their titles.

Arrowhead has around 100 employees total.

I very much believe this game took that long with a team that size, and it shows and is a large part of why it's been so successful.

[-] Schmeckinger@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

Also all of that in a engine that's deprecated for years.

[-] krdo@programming.dev 2 points 5 months ago

Likely a lot of time was spent iterating and experimenting with different ideas, testing out concepts, tweaking, etc. Haven't played the game but I do work as a software developer.

[-] Sanctus@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago

Pretty sure the maps have static meshes but their placement is randomized. So the maps may be similar with handmade pieces, but those pieces are randomly placed to generate the map.

You're leaving out Joel completely. They had to make that system for him to GM us, and I like how we choose what new weapons and stuff we unlock with our actions.