While developer Arrowhead Game Studios had begun teasing a Halo 3: ODST crossover for Helldivers 2 earlier this week thanks to its Bring the Boom trailer, new hints have started indicating that the collaboration is seemingly happening sooner rather than later. As caught by GamesRadar, the same trailer that was uploaded to the official Xbox YouTube channel has plenty of comments getting excited about the Halo 3: ODST music showing up. One such comment also has the official Xbox account responding with excitement as well.
A comment on the video exclaiming “HOLY S*** HALO ODST 1:15 LETS GO ODSTS ARE DEPLPYING [sic]” had several replies, including one by Xbox itself that said “Yeah, buddy!” Again, while this is far from official confirmation, there have also been other hints about this collaboration. The official Discord server for Helldivers also featured one such reference; the Galactic Warning System bot recently shared an “unknown signal” recording, which was then deciphered by players to be a reference to the AI Vergil from Halo 3: ODST.
The implication that a Halo 3: ODST collaboration is coming to Helldivers 2 is due to the presence of a musical sting in the latest trailer. Towards the end, a couple of notes from the classic Halo title’s soundtrack play, which is then followed by the landing of a drop pod. While Helldivers 2 also features drop pods for every time a player lands in a mission, it could also be considered a reference to Halo 3: ODST, where ODST stands for Orbital Drop Shock Troopers.
Halo 3: ODST was a standalone spin-off title released back in 2009. Making use of the Halo 3 engine, the game focused on the smaller story of the defense of New Mombasa by the UNSC marines and the local police against the Covenant forces. The title takes place around the same time that Halo protagonist Master Chief hitched a ride with the Covenant flagship to an unknown location, while war has broken out on Earth itself. Players take on the role of an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper that was separated from their squad by a failed drop.
If a Halo 3: ODST crossover event in Helldivers 2 were to happen, it will likely coincide with the co-op shooter’s Xbox Series X/S launch on August 26. Earlier this month, Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani had spoken about how players should thank PlayStation for the ultimate decision to bring Helldivers 2 to Xbox.
“It was all PlayStation,” wrote Jorjani on the official Discord server in response to another player praising the studio for working on an Xbox Series X/S port of Helldivers 2. “Send them your thanks! We were all in support of course.” In a later comment, Jorjani also said that it was incredibly cool of PlayStation to make the decision, referring to it as “one of the coolest things they’ve done. They’re killing it.”
Helldivers 2 is available for pre-order on Xbox Series X/S, and is priced at $39.99 for the standard edition, and $59.99 for the Super Citizen Edition.