There's been a rumor circulating in the Helldivers 2 community that saluting during the Raise the Flag missions actually makes the flag erect faster. Well, the game's creative director just confirmed it's true. When I shared the video showing the technique with my squadmates they laughed at me. Who's laughing now, Rick?
During the Raise the Flag missions, you have to get to a location, call down the flag of Super Earth, and defend it with your life against the hordes of enemies until it stands proud and tall. It can be an agonizingly slow wait, especially on the highest difficulties where huge foes threaten you every second, so of course we'd do anything to speed it up.
It may sound silly that using the salute emote would make it rise faster, because it sort of implies the flag can sense your patriotism, but it turns out it actually works. In a recent Reddit post, former Arrowhead CEO and current creative director of Helldivers 2 Johan Pilestedt writes: "No it's true. Everyone at the studio did it, so one of the coders added it as an 'Easter egg.'"
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Comment from r/Helldivers
It's exactly the kind of thing I expect from Helldivers 2. After all, the crashed pods open when you salute. You don't even have to properly interact with them, you can just do the salute emote and they'll pop open for you, so of course it makes the flag raise faster, too.
The only issue is anyone who's emoting won't be shooting, but that's a small price to pay in glorious the pursuit of spreading managed democracy across the galaxy.
This is a fun little Easter egg, and certainly better news than Pilestedt seemingly forgetting his own game is dripping with anti-fascist satire and saying developers should "Make good games, don't make a contemporary political statement." I'm not sure if there is a more contemporary political statement a game could make than "fascism is bad."
Helldivers 2 is also being turned into a movie, which is interesting because the game is clearly heavily inspired by Starship Troopers, another anti-fascist satire that was also misunderstood when it came out.
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