Helldivers 2 Major Order turns planet into black hole as rumours of returning Illuminate faction intensify

Honestly, I turn my back on shooter-of-note Helldivers 2 for (checks calendar)... one, maybe two weeks, and you all go and transform a planet into a black hole. "You" being the players who completed the metagame's last Major Order and successfully pumped the Terminid supercolony of Meridia full of an experimental "Dark Fluid" - which Super-Earth, incidentally, pinched from the Illuminate faction during the First Galactic War, aka Helldivers 1.

Now, Meridia has imploded and become a radiant, wailing, purple-fringed disc of pure nothingness, with triumphant players rudely ejected from orbit via emergency hyperspace jump, but subsequently allowed to return and gaze into the dark heart of their victory. Great work, Inferno-plungers. I'm sure the consequences of this will be neither cosmic nor horrible.

"The Supercolony has been destroyed," reads a Super-Earth broadcast in the wake of Meridia's liberation from the everyday laws of physics. "In its place, a beautiful black hole remains, drawing in every Terminid spore within several billion kilometres. Interstellar spore levels have already sharply decreased in every system. The destruction of Meridia came not a moment too soon ... Containment is now once again possible."

As we know, Super-Earth broadcasts are sometimes so Super in their patriotism that they are forgiveably... expansive with the truth, in much the same way that airstriking a whole valley is a perfectly acceptable way of smashing that one Automaton you can't seem to headshot. But it's credible that we'll have fewer bug monsters to fight in the near-future, because look, Super-Earth has spawned itself a planet-sized hoover. On the other hand, we might have to deal with the sudden arrival of a fleet of highly advanced cthulhoid aliens. Swings and roundabouts, eh!

The Illuminate are already much-tipped to return in Helldivers 2. There's a big gap on the Galactic Map ready and waiting for them, and let's face it, no developer worth their salt is going to add a visitable black hole to a game only to leave it sitting there like a lawn ornament. Mark my words, young divers. Something is going to come out of that hole, and I'm pretty sure it won't be all your leftover junk from Baldur's Gate 3.

Thanks to plucky RPS spin-off site PCGamer for joining the dots.