Helldivers 2 boss would "love to do a take" on Star Wars, Predator and Warhammer 40,000

Along with basically every sci-fi universe of note

The dominion of hated Super Earth threatens to expand afresh as Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt toys openly with the prospect of Helldivers 2 cross-over games, beginning with tabletop wargame Trench Crusade and extending to, well, take your pick. Arrowhead's appetite for other licenses appears insatiable. It's the kind of sheer expansionism you'd expect from Earth's loathsome regime, whose "managed democracy" propaganda continues to enthrall thousands of hapless disposable imperialists. Pilestedt even wants to make a Fifth Element game! Milla Jovovich is spinning in her grave. Milla Jovovich isn't dead, you say? Well, that's good news at least.

Pilestedt pitched the Trench Crusade crossover last week in a Xitter reply. The debonair vultures of Videogamer subsequently swooped in and did an article about it, which Pilestedt has also replied to. "Yeah, but these are just musings," he qualified, noting that stirring too many or the wrong kind of third-party license into the Helldivers world might "dilute the IP".

While this might read like an attempt to stave off further reporting, Piletstedt simply couldn't help sharing "an extended list of IPs that I really would love to do a take on", which the jolly jackals of PCGamer have seized in their slavering jaws. And now, we're writing it up too. What kind of creature is Rock Paper Shotgun in this particular Attenborough scenario? We are bugs, of course. We are a horde of alien insects, emerging triumphantly from our burrows to chew upon the carcass of this story. Without further ado, here's Pilestedt's list.

- Aliens

- Starship Troopers

- Terminator

- Predator

- Star Wars

- Fifth Element

- Blade Runner

- Warhammer 40k

- Trench Crusade

- Mutant Chronicles

- Dropzone Commander

You could argue that there are already bits and pieces of those in Helldivers 2 as it stands. Starship Troopers is, of course, the book-and-movie franchise Helldivers takes inspiration from. The game's satirical forever-war fiction is basically 40K but without the crenelations and waxen seals. The Terminator, Alien and Predator loom large in the design of Helldivers enemy factions. Still, I see a few untapped possibilities here that might take Helldivers in fascinating directions. Here's a brief list.

- Do a Terminator expansion where one of your team-mates could be a Terminator in a skinsuit. Most of my team-mates are trying to kill me anyway.

- If you're going to add xenomorphs, make it so they can abduct Helldivers and cocoon them, giving colleagues a window of time in which to rescue them before they're facehugged

- If you're going to do Warhammer 40K, don't just add Space Marines. Give us the option of turning ourselves into Dreadnoughts when we die. Also, endow each map with an ambient level of warp activity, with demons emerging if you commit too much heresy (e.g. by drop-podding your comrades)

- As for Starship Troopers, let us talk to the bugs using telepathy. It's what Edge would want, and it actually happens at the end of the Verhoeven film. Spoilers, I guess!!!!!