The wait is finally over, Helldivers 2 folks! The Illuminate are here after all that speculation, having arrived as part of a big new update to the game – Omens of Tyranny. It certainly got everyone’s attention, leading the game to immediately hit its highest Steam player number in about six months.

Yep, as it turns out, Arrowhead cheekily updating a Helldivers 2 depot dubbed “gameplay_illuminates” last month – something which naturally triggered a heap of speculation and SteamDB watching – was worth paying attention to after all. God, it feels like ages ago that we were all just staring into the Meridia black hole waiting for the big bads from the original Helldivers to come crawling out.

Now, though, they’re here, with Arrowhead having commemorating the occasion by deploying a special emergency major order that’s seeing players battle for the planet Calypso. You know it’s an important order, because the tweet about was in all caps.

Plenty of folks have responded to it as well – according to SteamDB, Helldivers 2 hit a player number peak of 133,324 on the platform last night. That looks like it’s the biggest number Steam-wise recorded since late April this year, when the game was hovering around the 139,000 mark, before dipping below that as we got into May – a month that kicked off with that PlayStation network account linking backlash which led to the game being review-bombed.

Now, it’s important to note that while the PSN linking hoo-ha probably didn’t help, around that time the game was already in the midst of the natural gradual decrease in player count online games like this often experience after their initial flurry of popularity immediately following release. So, it’s not like Helldivers 2 has had a real player count crisis in the months between then and now, things had mostly just settled into a rhythm where a decent amount of hardcore players (generally between 70,000 and 25,000) were sticking with it, while others took a break while they waited to be drawn back in by big, exciting updates like this one.

Anyway, what can you expect when you join this influx of returning and new soldiers on the front? Well, as detailed in the Omens of Tyranny update’s PlayStation blog and the trailer above, the Illuminate are “advanced, highly-intelligent beings wielding powerful technology that appears to average citizens like a kind of dark magic”.

The super citizens they’re mind controlling are dubbed “The Voteless”, because Helldivers 2’s definitely satire if you didn’t know, and it’ll be your job to help suss out the “dark purpose” behind this brainwashing. To help you do that, the update also introduces the Fast Recon Vehicle or FRV – Helldivers 2’s first driveable car – which you’ll be able to unlock through major orders and should help you plough through the hordes of enemies in the new urban areas you’ll be battling in.

How glad are you that the Illuminate have finally made their entrance in Helldivers 2? Let us know below!