Is ‘Helldivers 2’ Really ‘Space Vietnam’? Not Really

“Helldivers 2” is a breakout hit, and players barely need to clear the loading screens to see why.

The third-person shooter, developed by Arrowhead Game Studios, opens with a recruitment video that feels straight out of “Starship Troopers,” with a suburban dad returning home to his beautiful family just in time to see them attacked by terminids, alien bugs that ravage mankind’s colonies among the stars. To prevent more crises, the dad joins the Helldivers, an elite group of shock troopers who launch themselves from orbit into the hottest fights in the star system. The only thing missing is the question, “Would you like to know more?”

Players take out bug and robot bases, ambush patrols, call down artillery from orbit and then extract from hot landing zones as the hordes attempt to stop them. They can pilot mechs, search abandoned military bases and escort citizens out of overwhelming robot and insect assaults. All of this is done in the name of security for Super Earth, its managed democracy, and the citizens who call it home.

The game is a bit campy, and it’s highly derivative of other sci-fi concepts, such as “Terminator,” but it’s also crazy fun. The game launched Feb. 8, and the servers were almost immediately overwhelmed with players. And in the weeks since, this author has watched more and more of his Steam friends enlist in the Helldivers: Soon, there will be no Super Earth citizens left, just Helldivers.

“Helldivers 2” Gameplay

“Helldivers 2” players pick a planet to defend or liberate, launch to the surface, and then run around in mostly third-person combat. Each diver can bring four “stratagems” with them, major upgrades such as the ability to call in orbital artillery or support weapons. Players input a quick code to activate the stratagem and then throw it like a grenade to target the effects. Many stratagems have a limited quantity, and all of them have cooldown times.

Once players have achieved enough objectives, they can call in extraction. Missions have a soft time limit: After a set number of minutes, the space destroyer that provides the stratagems leaves orbit, leaving the Helldivers to fight on their own.

“Helldivers 2” has a bit of a learning curve, but it’s fun, frantic and worth the time invested in developing a strategy with fellow players. Running around planets’ surfaces and launching intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), annihilating terminids or destroying robot “automaton” bases is extremely fun and satisfying. And yes, a whole section of the game feels like you’re fighting Terminators in Vietnam.

But the game gets frustrating fast if you’re playing on your own or with randos who don’t communicate well. Pro tip: You really want to make friends fast and queue as a group. The game has huge weapon effects, such as an orbital bombardment with 380 mm cannons, and friendly fire is always turned on, so aggressive communication is necessary to make headway against the enemy hordes.

“Suicidal” and “impossible” missions are fairly simple with a competent group of four players that communicate well. But “challenging” and “hard” missions, which are supposed to be much easier, can trip up a group that split up or doesn’t coordinate its attacks. And If you find yourself stuck planetside with just an emergency shuttle left to pull you out, you’ll quickly learn who your friends are: Once the first Helldiver enters the shuttle, a 20-second timer ticks down to launch. If your friend takes safety while you’re still 21 seconds away, it sucks to be you. You’ll be left watching the Pelican take off without you as the angry hordes overwhelm your diver.

One of the odd facets of “Helldivers 2” comes from what parts feel almost realistic and what parts don’t. Obviously, none of the story feels real. But a miniature version of the Army’s Battle Drill 1A, Squad React to Contact, actually works in the game. If a player or sentry acts as a base of fire and keeps the enemy focused on them while another flanks, the flanking element can get enfilade fire (attacking from the side of a formation) and make quick work of the enemy. With only four players, you’re barely a fire team, but still, some squad tactics work in the game.

But then the player will have to call in an artillery strike by throwing a ball as hard as they can and trying to get it to land in the enemy base. So Helldivers’ orbital artillery range is literally the same as their hand-grenade range.

Is “Helldivers 2” Really “Space Vietnam”?

So, about the “Space Vietnam” thing: To a subset of users, one section of the game feels like what they have dubbed “Space Vietnam” or “Robot Vietnam,” their squads dropping into heavily wooded areas of dense foliage to battle wave after wave of robotic enemies. In particular, the jungle planet of Malevelon Creek has become something of a rallying cry among die-hard players, and memes and tags have cropped up on Reddit, YouTube, Twitch and elsewhere dubbing human assaults on the planet as “Space Vietnam.”

The analogy makes sense, but on a wholly superficial level. If Malevelon Creek was envisioned as some sort of “Space Vietnam,” it was clearly created by someone who learned everything they know about the military from science fiction movies and games.

First, the average warfighter in “Helldivers 2” is far more complex and self-contained than real-world operations in Vietnam. You, as one of up to four players, have a space destroyer and a ground attack spacecraft assigned to serve you as ordered. You pick your own missions. You have flying and stationary robot assistants. You can carry an “anti-material rifle” (.50-caliber sniper rifle), assault rifle and automatic pistol at the same time. And you can fix any injury, including amputations, with your stim packs.

Compare that with Vietnam-era U.S. service members. Some were drafted and forced overseas. The ones assigned to fight through the brush often went weeks at a time living out of their rucksack. If they couldn’t carry it, they couldn’t have it. Machine gunners had to lug around “the pig” M60, a 23.5-pound weapon. Men got separated from their units just dozens of feet away, thanks to enemy fire so fierce and targeted that it sawed down trees. Elephant grass hid ambushes of a few Vietnamese or of hundreds. In combat on the rivers, the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard found ambushes of their own, with enemy boats or on-shore mortar teams boxing them into fierce combat.

Then there’s the issue of contact with the adversary, in “Helldivers 2” envisioned as wave after wave of furious murderbots. But during the Vietnam War, America’s enemies famously hid among the villagers; U.S. troops could search bodies after a firefight and find the barber who’d given them a close shave the day before. Firefights in the jungle were so fierce and tight that part of the argument for the adoption of the M16 was that accuracy at range didn’t matter when the enemy was hidden by foliage and troops had to “spray and pray” into the jungle to neutralize them (hence the often-repeated figure that U.S. troops would expend an average of 50,000 rounds per kill during the conflict).

To wit: Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara may be best remembered by grunts for ordering that ammo be issued according to what was used in an average engagement, effectively rationing it. In “Helldivers 2,” your player can call down an unlimited number of heavy weapons platforms. The combat analogies between the two do not hold up under any real scrutiny.

But the most important difference between the real conflict in Vietnam and the battle for Malevelon Creek in “Helldivers 2” is the moral ambiguity. The Super Earth government is a “managed democracy” with heavily fascist overtones. But so far, even when I make my character carefully read all the little bits of lore scattered on gameplay maps (a tough chore since you’re only planetside during missions when the other players are relying on you to do your job), there are few hints that anything you’re doing is morally problematic.

The hints are there. The game rarely mentions “democracy” without the adjective “managed” in front of it. You’re sent on missions to rescue “Class A” citizens. Tips on loading screens suggest reporting anyone who isn’t patriotic enough to “your local democracy officer.”

American involvement in Vietnam was much more morally fraught, though. It was part of the policy of containment: a decision to prevent the spread of communism and the repressive governments often associated with it by helping local governments violently suppress communist movements within or near their borders. That policy brought the U.S. into conflict with the Viet Minh, originally a nationalist, anti-colonial movement started in 1935 to oust French colonizers that took on a decidedly communist character after 1941.

The much more technologically advanced French and U.S. forces fought the First and Second Indochina Wars -- the latter of which we know in the U.S. as the Vietnam War -- against the Viet Minh and Viet Cong from 1954 to 1975, wars that resulted in an estimated 1.4 million dead and missing Vietnamese on the nationalist and communist side, nearly 135,000 dead French soldiers and allies, and more than 300,000 dead American soldiers and allies.

An entire generation in the U.S was traumatized by the experience, as were generations of Vietnamese that fought in or survived during the conflict, as well as generations that have lived under a brutal communist dictatorship.

Hopefully, if we ever get a real “Space Vietnam” game, it will actually wrestle with the moral ambiguities of spending hundreds of thousands of lives to kill millions, and with the plight of survivors in their attempt to build a stable government after generations of conflict. Because “Helldivers 2” ain’t that. And it’s not supposed to be. “Helldivers 2” creators seem to have focused on a now-neglected corner of the gaming market: fun, co-op games that players can hop into and out of for a bit of recreation. It’s a “popcorn” game, some light fare to entertain players.

Some of the seemingly odd decisions, such as making players throw stratagems to target artillery, make sense when a throw falls short and creates a meme-worthy moment of Helldivers getting destroyed by their own weapons. On the popular YouTube channel Outside Xtra, one player killed his buddy with his very first shot in the game, thanks to always-on friendly fire. And turrets, potent stratagems on defense, frequently slaughter players in often hilarious ways.

Don’t get me wrong: “Helldivers 2” is riotous fun, and there’s a reason why millions of players have gladly joined the Super Earth imperium as it fights to spread managed democracy across the stars. But supposed connections between the game and the Vietnam War and accompanying conflicts are barely skin deep.

“Helldivers 2” is available on Playstation and Windows.

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