Behind the scenes: The Hive Lord

The Origin of the Hive Lord

Hello there! It is I, Niklas Malmborg, Design Director for Helldivers 2.

Let’s talk about our old friend: the Hive Lord! And we can start with what he was back in the first game.** **

During the development of the original HELLDIVERS, we really liked the idea of a bossfight that was massive and fit the faction. The Terminids are a subterranean species, so a giant tunneling creature fits and has a certain nerdy allure to it for unrelated reasons.

Being an important but so far not overly revealed part of the Terminid societal structure, it comes with a purpose to the Hive Worlds and it might be related to the tunnels the Helldivers “carefully” venture in to. Suggesting such a thing as a structure to Terminids society or even suggesting they have a society is a punishable offence of course. 

The first HELLDIVERS serves as a source of content that players can look forward to because they know it’s a canon part of the universe (like the Bastion, Lumberer, Trident etc). We won't necessarily bring back everything from the first game, but we want to bring back a lot and the Hive Lord was near the top of the list.

Due to technical limitations in the first game we made it as large as we could, but there was an urge to make it bigger and more majestic. Still, the resulting monster hit the emotional targets we were aiming for and players understood the potential scale of the Terminids.

How we Heralded it in HELLDIVERS 2

In HELLDIVERS 2, players have been able to see the bones of the Hive Lord as a beast of the past. We wanted those bones to serve as a promise to eventually show you the beast in its full glory and to be a motivator for us internally of what the game should eventually introduce.

So how did we approach it?

We started with making a list - of everything that the Hive Lord needs to be and have in order to be the biggest, baddest Terminid life form (so far). This is what we decided: 

(some of the text is not perfect sentences, its copy pasted from the working documents)

1. MASSIVE

An impressive scale and cinematic appearance to instill awe and fear.

2. ELUSIVE

Only appears on certain planets, and only sometimes. 

**3. BURROWER **

Underground traversal, deforming terrain as it moves and erupts, arcing and diving like a dolphin.

**4. GRATUITOUS VIOLENCE **

Simple movement, attack, and death. It’s head/top visible while navigating half-submerged in terrain. A simple-yet-massive acid spray to destroy players. 

5. HARD TO KILL

It has a massive health pool that's reflected physically on its body/segments to show players how much damage they've done.

**6. BAIT **

Players can influence Hive Lord behavior using both discreet and explicit tactics. Hive Lord has readable roaming behavior and provides opportunity for bait mastery. 

(Yeah, it detects disturbances of the earth, so you can bait it with explosions, barrages etc. Or it can find you if you’re too noisy in combat. Have fun!)

With our list completed, we prioritized our work and knew that, if we hit all the points, we would have made a truly monstrous Terminid. 

Here are a few of our images of the development and some more specific notes:

Animation:

In the animation files we ended up using Motionbuilder and a Human IK rig for the Hive Lord, meaning his whole body is made up of a human neck, with the head at the end and the rest of the body at the base. In the source files there are therefore tiny tiny human arm and leg joints around the base of the character that never gets exported. 

Sound: 

The sound team also used a chair dragging against the floor as part of building the iconic sound the Hive Lord makes as it erupts. 

Performance and Rendering: 

We had to develop a lot of new tech to make sure this very large enemy didn't impair performance and memory for players so it functions in segments compared to normal enemies where we render and treat them only as one piece!

Movement:

Previously, all of our enemies used a navigation mesh that dictates where they can move, what type of movement is allowed, and where. The Hive Lord is so massive that we needed to make one specifically for him! It also has different logic, like not moving on rocky terrain, and creates its own map of disturbances (from vehicles, explosions, etc.) to choose where to navigate to.

It doesn’t have a bossfight mission? But it had one in HELLDIVERS!

In HELLDIVERS the Hive Lord could only be found in a separate mission focused only on killing the boss. Why isn't it like this in HELLDIVERS 2?

One thing we actually thought didn't work well in the first game was the bossfights. After you played them a handful of times they became very predictable and repetitive - and that didn’t feel right for HELLDIVERS 2 or for the Hive Lord.

Instead, we thought of the Hive Lord like a force of nature, almost invincible. It roams around the map, churning up the land, stalking players, and creating an anticipatory atmosphere. Players get the chance to *try *to beat the big scary monster, but are not forced to. It’s possible for players to take on this ridiculously powerful boss enemy, but it's no easy task.

I hope you enjoyed this little dive into the development of the Hive Lord, that's it for this week! I* *will be back in the future to talk about more exciting development stories!