Arrowhead continues to lean on the Joel case, with intrepid studio members entering the containment unit where the Helldivers 2 game master is kept to shoot footage of the strange and elusive creature.

In the video posted on X/Twitter, Arrowhead's "video team members" enter a glass-fronted closet labeled "J.O.E.L." and amid a row of monitors showing various Helldivers players in action, keyboards It captures images of a hooded figure, looking like a hacker stock photo, clattering away. The strange creature cackles under his breath as he examines a button that fires a mysterious blue beam at the successful player. Excited, Joel notices the employee on film and attacks him with his psychic powers. [Literally Joel, or Joel, is the game master who coordinates the galactic war storyline in Helldivers 2 by setting up branching arcs of story events for players to fight through and incorporating their successes and failures like a tabletop dungeon master.

We spoke with Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt in February about the mysterious Joel, who affirmed that collaborative storytelling of tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons was a major inspiration for Arrowhead

"It's the same format to play with millions of players, but it's harder to play with individual people. But with the same twist," Pilestedt said at the time.

But now, Joel, or J.O.E.L., seems to be becoming something else. Stronger, more powerful... Stranger. In other words, they are developing god-like metaphysical power and psionic abilities, just like those of us who run tabletop role-playing games every week. Try not to get in everyone's face, Joel.

In case you missed it, Helldivers 2 has a huge new update on the way: the Escalation of Freedom. It adds new enemies, new objectives, new difficulty levels, and vortekic protection.