The Freedom Alliance has always been driven by one question: how can we create new, engaging community experiences to bring the playerbase together?

Arrowhead Game Studios built an incredibly rich world with Helldivers 2, and we’ve watched players across the community create their own stories within it. We wanted to take that further, to tell a bigger story that could bring the community together in a way that’s never been done before.

The original idea was simple, but compelling: what if players could hear voice-acted characters talking to them while they played? Imagine a commander briefing you as your Hellpod drops, SEAF soldiers calling out to you during a mission, or voices guiding you through an extraction. New stories, delivered in real time, layered right on top of the gameplay.

But there was a problem. Originally we envisioned it as a game mod – but because our community events are so prominent, and aimed at console players too, modifying the game is a line we can’t realistically cross. So we had to get creative.

“The idea became: what if we built an entire platform whose sole purpose is to deliver audio seamlessly alongside the game?” says Tyler. “Something you could run on your phone so you never have to tab out. You’d hear everything we wanted you to hear, but we’d never touch the game itself.”

That idea – a companion audio experience that sits alongside Helldivers 2, rather than inside it – became the foundation of Pelican Down. From that constraint, an experience was born.

The Freedom Alliance is a melting pot of incredibly talented people: artists, 3D animators, YouTubers, newscasters, voice actors, a chef, musicians, writers, lore fiends, and more, all constantly inspiring each other. That creative energy is what made Pelican Down possible.

Andrew from the Galactic War Data Archive built the early prototypes of the audio delivery system. Brian Perry, with his background in development and project management, helped iterate on the concept during those early stages and ensured smooth production throughout. Lead artist Micko was instrumental from day one, designing the look of the characters and giving the whole team a visual anchor for who these soldiers were and what drove them. Sam Saturai, a colleague of Micko’s, also provided guidance and feedback on the character designs. Using the character designs as a reference, Alucard Hellsing and Matthew Lance created the 3D models used in promotional materials, including the main poster, and Alucard developed the animations for both the teaser and main trailers. “It was awesome to do character art for the SEAF using Micko’s concept drawings, and even cooler to set up the turntable shot for the trailer,” says Alucard.

The lore team and writers collaborated on the story, cycling through multiple concepts before landing on the final direction. Composers Tyler Johnson and Trevor Sharnick built the full original soundtrack. Tyler handled all audio mixing, sound design, and final production. Voice actors from across the team brought the characters to life.

And when it came time to turn the prototype into a fully realized product, we brought on Nightshift Codes, a software development company that was instrumental in building the production platform. They took the early proof of concept and made it real, solving the complex technical challenges of synchronized audio streaming, multi-device playback, and seamless segment transitions.

The whole project took roughly six months from concept to launch. “Everyone was really excited from the start, everyone wanted to engage and bring their ideas and past works in,” Brian Perry recalled. “So the first step was the hardest: a lot of saying ‘no.’ Refining the scope with a broadsword so that we could get to defining with a scalpel, and arrive at a tight story for our first go round.”

Pelican Down is a web-based audio experience designed to run alongside Helldivers 2. Players open it on their PC, phone, or other device, and it delivers a fully voice-acted, scored, and sound-designed story that plays out while they complete missions in-game.

The platform never touches the game. It’s entirely separate – a companion experience that layers on top of gameplay.

The Mission Timing Solution

One of the biggest challenges was ensuring the story fits the unpredictable length of a Helldivers 2 mission. Some missions last five minutes; others can stretch to forty-five. If you want to tell a consistent story, you can’t have that kind of uncertainty. So we needed a reliable, consistent window.

Through testing, we discovered that Evacuate High Valued Asset missions on the Terminid front consistently fell within a ten-to-fifteen-minute range. That gave us a dependable story window. By designing the experience around that mission type, we could guarantee that every player would hear the full story segment within a single mission. And then, if we wanted to go longer, we could chain multiple missions together to tell a longer narrative. We could even use tricks like knowing that after a certain time, the player has probably launched a few rockets – so having the Pelican Down characters alluding to that, would add an additional layer of immersion.

Synchronized Playback

Helldivers 2 is a social game, and Pelican Down had to be too. The platform supports synchronized audio playback for groups of one to four players. The backend ensures that everyone, whether on PC, phone, or any other device, hears the same thing at the same time. Any player can control playback, advancing through segments or pausing as needed, and the experience stays in sync across the group.

Loop Points

The immersion is key, and if a mission runs longer than expected, you can’t have the music just stop. Using the tracks that he and Trevor Sharnick composed, Tyler built seamless loop points into the audio segments so that tracks continue cycling naturally until the player advances. The goal was for there never to be a moment of dead air, keeping the player immersed in the story.

The Story

There’s no shortage of fan-made Helldivers content out there – there are a lot of stories about the Helldivers. So we didn’t want to tell another story about them. We chose to tell a story from the perspective of SEAF soldiers; regular people, not super soldiers. To a SEAF soldier, a ballistic shield is a massive thing they can barely imagine lifting. To them, a Helldiver is essentially a superhero. What would that do to shape how the player perceives the world around them? To hear things from the perspective of someone who can reframe the world for you in that way?

Joink helped lead the writing process alongside a group of dedicated lore writers. “We started by creating the general idea, the characters, important story beats, and specific moments we wanted to include,” she says. “From there we narrowed down the scope and specified exactly what happens and when, before we moved onto writing the actual dialogue and actions. My main job was managing the other writers and being responsible for scope creep. We could always add more cool ideas later, but hammering out tangible writing first was more important.”

The premise of Pelican Down is: you, as a Helldiver, get patched into the communications of a nearby SEAF squad as they accomplish a fuel station repair. They need your help. And as you play, you hear their story unfold in real time.

“It was incredibly important to us to pull out the human element,” says Tyler. “The Freedom Alliance is about building connections among the community. So likewise, we want to build a genuine connection between the player and these characters. Everything had to feel earned, not just spectacle, but something real. We wanted the player to care about the people around them.”

The world of Helldivers 2 has its humor, and the team respects that. But the spirit of Pelican Down leans into genuine connections, the weight of people’s actions, and the bond between people fighting for each other… and digging deep when everything is on the line.

The Characters & Voices

The team provided the framework for each role: a squad leader, an explosives expert, a veteran, and a rookie. But within those roles, each voice actor was encouraged to make the character their own. They named the characters with things meaningful to them. They brought their own personalities into the performances. The result is characters that feel lived-in, because the people behind them are genuinely channeling parts of themselves.

Micko’s character art gave the entire team a shared vision for the members of SEAF Kilo Squad from the very beginning: what they looked like, what drove them, what they were fighting for. “I didn’t expect to lead the art design when we first started the project, but the opportunity showed and I decided to try leading, even though it was my first time leading such a big team of artists,” says Micko. “I had a lot of challenges when it came to designing the characters to fit the story and the voices, but after help from my friend Sam Saturai and the Freedom Alliance art team’s suggestions, we were able to strike a good balance at making them fit their roles in the story and fit the voices of the characters.”

Ben Belmont is Kilo 6, the leader of Kilo Squad. Stout, dependable, and courageous – the kind of leader who always wants to be there for his team. Ben Belmont is voiced by Rodrigo Borges, a voice actor with a deep portfolio of experiences, and Belmont’s characterization draws from Rodrigo’s powerful tone. “Playing Ben came somewhat naturally to me, as I’m an older brother to three younger siblings,” says Borges. “Playing a SEAF Squad Leader requires a different approach than playing a Helldiver. The veneer of invincibility is shoved aside, and replaced by a much more human and realistic emotional core. To Ben, his squadmates are his family, and while he’s not able to express his emotions fully, he knows that inability is key to keeping everyone focused after any losses that will undoubtedly occur. My approach started there, and built up based on the excellent writing I was provided.”

Mason Cullweather was the first character Micko designed, while the project was still early and the story was still taking shape. “It was rough to get a feel of making the character unique in look and feel while also unmistakably a SEAF trooper,” says Micko. “But as I finished designing him, it was a strong stepping stone in knowing how much and what elements I should be able to change for the other characters, and in setting the style everyone should look like.” Mason is proficient with explosives, and as a result, built himself a mechanical arm to replace one that he lost. He has a deep love for his wife and daughter, and can be flippant at times, but knows how to get to work when the situation calls for it. “Mason is exactly how I am,” says Studio Mercy, the voice behind Mason Cullweather. “He’s a cheeky individual who constantly tries to bring levity to any situation, but when push comes to shove, he knows exactly when to become silent and objective-driven. When I played him, I liked to imagine that for a few weeks I lived his life, like I had a family waiting for me at home, knowing I’d be coming back. But in the end, Mason knows that the ultimate sacrifice was what his team and the mission needed. In those final moments of recording, I almost genuinely teared up knowing that this person, who never existed at all, is about to put everything he knew and loved on the line.” The name Cullweather is a nod to Studio Mercy’s current Dungeons & Dragons character, Tonis Cullweather, and an amalgamation of his real name.

David Romero is the grizzled veteran and the only member of Kilo Squad who fought on Malevelon Creek. Brash and battle-hardened, but he carries a soft spot for the youngest member of the squad, Henry, and wants to look out for the rookie. Romero is voiced by Ulti, and the name David Romero is a tribute to two of Ulti’s biggest inspirations: David Gilmour and John Romero. Ulti brings a stout, gravelly quality that gives the character real grit. “He has that kind of voice that tells you to get your shit together and step in line. He brought that grizzled edge to Romero perfectly,” says Tyler. The role was born from a happy accident. “One night my voice was strangely coarse, which inspired me to improv some script for an angry survivor that was worn down by the war, tired, but unable to completely give in to nihilism,” says Ulti. “It was received well enough that the team thought I fit the bill.”

As a heavily seasoned veteran of Helldivers 2 with many hundreds of hours, Ulti found the character aligning with how he already approached the game. “I’ve seen a lot of players come and go, a lot of in-game deaths. I feel like as an experienced player and someone that really loves this game and community, I have a minor obligation to give lower-level players an enhanced experience. Combine that with all my time as an Arma 3 team lead dealing with my own merry band of misfits, and getting into character was not too hard.”

This was Ulti’s first real voice acting performance, and a long-time dream. He would wait until nighttime when his voice would naturally take on a rougher edge, record his lines, then refine his delivery after hearing how the rest of the cast performed. “Hearing how everyone else acted helped me refine and improve how I delivered David’s dialogue, which in turn boosted my own confidence in the role.”

Henry “Wiseguy” Cooper is voiced by Poeto, one of the Freedom Alliance’s resident lore writers. Cooper is fresh out of training: he’s anxious and inexperienced, but determined to make an impact. Henry doesn’t have a good sense of what the battlefield is really like yet, but he’s trying to make it through, and as the story unfolds, he learns to find his way. Poeto had some prior voice acting experience with his own Helldiver character, Commander Poe Tato, but found Henry to be a different challenge entirely. “He’s not a Helldiver, and he’s not a veteran, so I couldn’t lean on what I knew,” he says. “I tried to capture the inexperience and naivete a rookie like him would probably display, as well as the fear and anxiety for when things go south. Funnily enough, my main point of reference was a player character in a DnD group of mine, an equally cheerful man by the name of Balake.” And for anyone curious about the purple scarf on Henry’s belt: he’s from Calypso. “It’s my little nod to my own Helldivers group where purple is our big thing.”

Matthaios “Oso” Atlas is a Helldiver assigned to provide overwatch over Kilo Squad’s operational area. Oso is tough and gruff, but fiercely loyal, the kind of person who will always stand for his friends, even if it means breaking the rules to do what’s right. His character faces a pivotal moment in the story, one that requires him to bend the rules for the people he cares about, and Oso brings both the toughness and the heart to make that moment land. “That moment demonstrated that sometimes, you have to shoulder burdens, punch through expectations, and do things you’re not supposed to in order to do what’s right and protect those you care about,” says Oso. “Those are strong core tenets that I believe in on a personal level, and to have them realized through Pelican Down is an immensely honorable opportunity. It was an honor and a privilege to be able to appear as a sort of Freedom Alliance cameo for the story of Pelican Down. It was even further privilege to be given the role with such an impactful moment in the story.”

Cade is a minor character voiced by Joink, who led much of the early writing. This was Joink’s first voice acting role. “I was pretty nervous. I’m self-conscious about my voice and the quality of my equipment,” she says. The character’s name and personality are an homage to Cayde-6 from Destiny. “He’s just such a personification of ‘slick.’ I wanted an overzealous gunslinger, so it felt natural.” She recorded all her lines in one night, then spent the following days re-recording select takes to dial in the exact feel she wanted.

Lundquist was voiced by Izzy, a smaller role, but one that left a mark. “It’s been so gratifying, and I discovered a love for VO work through it!” she says.

Commander is the voice that guides players through the entire Pelican Down experience. Voiced by PhantomXT, the talented creator behind The Galactic War YouTube series, Commander’s in-universe role is that to lead joint operations between the SEAF and the Helldivers, serving as the player’s link between their squad and Kilo Squad.

PhantomXT is the first voice players hear when they start Pelican Down, walking them through how it all works, then seamlessly transitioning into character: “You can just call me Commander. I lead joint operations between the SEAF and the Helldivers.” Between missions, Commander debriefs the player on what just happened, updates the tactical situation, and briefs them on what’s coming next. This briefing style comes naturally to PhantomXT from his YouTube work, and it keeps players immersed even in the spaces between gameplay. The experience never breaks. You sit down, start it up, and you’re guided through roughly an hour of content without a single jarring moment.

One early tester from a focus group of Helldivers 2 content creators described it as “a theme park in the best possible way,” and we think this perfectly encapsulates the experience that players can have within Pelican Down.

The Pelican Down soundtrack was composed by Tyler Johnson and Trevor Sharnick, a fellow composer on the Freedom Alliance team. Inspired by film scores from an early age, Trevor cultivated a passion for translating emotion and atmosphere into music, composing original pieces that enhance both his own storytelling and the imaginative worlds of close collaborators. Tyler has been composing music at a hobby scale for around 15 years, but during the last two years of work with the Freedom Alliance, has scaled up his composition and sound design to provide a professional sound for the team’s productions.

From the start, Trevor and Tyler established two principles: the music had to make an emotional impact on the player, and it had to feel like it belonged in the Helldivers 2 universe.

“We knew the music couldn’t sound too different from the Helldivers soundtrack,” says Tyler. “So we used tricks like complementary key signatures. The Helldivers theme is in D minor, and our Freedom Alliance theme, ‘Last Stand,’ is also written in D minor, with a heavy emphasis on the fifth (A) for a stout, resolute sound. Writing some of our tracks in D lets us seamlessly weave in allusions to the Helldivers motif – just the first few notes in select spots – so it feels native to the world while being entirely original.”

The sonic palette mirrors the game’s score: vibrant strings, energetic percussion, and smart use of synthesizers, which feature heavily in Helldivers 2’s music, making for a sincere nod to the work by Wilbert Roget II and Ross Tregenza.

Trevor and Tyler brought complementary strengths. Trevor excels at painting atmospheric canvases – the tension of sitting on your Super Destroyer, the uncertainty before a drop or when the situation gets worse. Tyler focused on the emotionally hard-hitting pieces: the climactic and devastating moments. Their creative process was highly iterative, with ideas constantly exchanged and refined as they pushed each other toward stronger compositions.

Key Tracks

“Sunrise Over Super Earth” serves as the story’s opening, though it was the final track Trevor completed, rewritten more times than any other piece he contributed. The goal was an atmospheric, hopeful overture, something that feels like the stillness before deployment. “I wanted it to capture that calm breath before the drop,” says Trevor. The piece features brief accented variations of both the Helldivers main theme and “Last Stand,” interwoven by a lone legato cello.

“Claw of Eternity” accompanies Commander’s introduction as the squad stands on the brink of its first deployment. A heroic cello line leads the piece, strong but weighted, supported by piano before unfolding into sweeping orchestral swells tinged with tragedy. At its core is a recurring motif that echoes throughout the score: the ticking of a clock. “Functionally, it drives the tempo with mechanical precision,” says Trevor. “Narratively, it symbolizes the urgency of the team’s mission. Time is seldom on their side.”

“In A Bad Way” marks the moment the mission unravels. What starts as high tension rapidly escalates into full-blown panic, mirroring the squad’s cohesion fracturing under pressure. Rhythmic momentum accelerates, harmonic clarity dissolves, and the orchestration layers start colliding rather than aligning. “This is the sound of control slipping,” says Trevor. “Of commands overlapping. Of a plan collapsing in real time.”

This was entirely Trevor’s track, and Tyler was hooked the first time he heard it. “It needed a little something in the intro, so I added a handful of elements to color it in, one element per two bars, like a distorted airy flute sound, a piano with a ping-pong delay, and then a buzzy synth or two, just to bring a little more tension,” says Tyler. But the heart of the track is its second section, where the sparse tension gives way to two string lines, violin and cello, carrying a beautiful countermelody. “It’s melancholic, yet urgent. It sounds like it’s time to give it your all even though you’re in a bad situation, and yet you still know something is looming,” says Tyler. “That second section is my favorite piece out of our whole soundtrack. Trevor was incredible on this project.”

“Last Stand” (The Freedom Alliance Theme) – The climactic centerpiece of the soundtrack. This is a massive fanfare with powerful brass, a driving snare percussion, and a full male & female chorus for added drama. It plays at the pivotal moment of the story, when everyone has given everything they’ve got. “We don’t just play the theme because you dropped in and you’re a hero,” says Tyler. “You only hear it when everyone has really earned it in the story.”

“Belay That Order” is also written in D minor to maintain seamless musical continuity with “Last Stand” and the broader Helldivers motif. Whereas “Last Stand” is triumphant, “Belay That Order” has an energy that drives you forward, like a sense that you really need to get to the mission. Tyler built the track around a strong marching cadence for snares and gran cassa, paired with a cello line that leans heavily on staccatos with a downward portamento at the end of each phrase. “That portamento just sounds really good – it gives the music this urgent, aggressive quality,” he says.

The time signature is 7/4, a deliberate choice to add a sense of unease. “With 7/4 you can’t settle into it. It feels like the job isn’t done, like you can’t really find rest, compared to music in 4/4 that feels more stable, comfortable.” From there, he layered in the rest of the composition to build energy and power – strong staccato brass, additional lines for double bass and violin to fill out the low and high ends, and more.

“One More Postcard” plays during one of the most difficult moments in the story. It’s sparse and slow, built around a melancholy piano drenched in reverb. The main melody is a more minor-keyed version of the Freedom Alliance theme motif. Later in the song, a somber solo cello line is added, for more emotional punch. The end of the main phrases calls back to the first few notes of the Helldiver theme motif, as an additional nod to tie this track into the world. Where “Last Stand” is a wall of sound, this track is almost painfully quiet, making it hit harder when it comes on.

If Pelican Down is going to work, the player can never be pulled out of the experience. They need to feel like they’re hearing real SEAF soldiers in a real place, not voice actors in a recording booth. Every layer of the sound design serves that illusion.

Building the Soundscape

The team assembled an extensive library of sound effects, some sourced from Helldivers 2 itself, others from external libraries, to build a believable world around the voice performances. Connor D. joined the project later in development and helped source sound effects of weapons firing from the game itself. “Despite the difference in timezones and availability, the excitement and dedication to the project was contagious,” he says. “Throughout the entire process I was constantly wishing that I could simply do more to help, however small.” The sound FX used in Pelican Down involved computer interfaces, boots on dirt (walking slow, walking fast, and running), the metallic unsheathing of a knife being drawn, weapons raised to ready position, close and distant explosions, the skittering sounds of Terminids, the roar of a Hellpod launch, and more.

Music Arrangement

For a fifteen-minute mission, you can’t just loop one song; the music has to follow the story’s emotional arc. Tyler took the album versions of every track he and Trevor composed and rearranged them into flowing mission segments. A Trevor piece might set the atmospheric tone at the start, transition into a more hectic segment of the song as tension builds, then cut to one of Tyler’s tracks for a gut-punch moment before easing back down. All of it blending seamlessly within the mission window, and matching the emotional beats of the story.

The Mix

Tyler handled the audio mixing, listening back to the full experience hundreds of times to get the details just right.

Voice recordings were processed for clarity and consistency: compression, crossfades between clips, multi-band dynamics, and other surgical adjustments to make sure every line sounded the way it needed to. It was critical to make all the voice actors’ recordings sound like they were coming from the same part of the battlefield, rather than from recordings taken all around the world like they were in real life!

Making the voice work audible was just as important as making it sound good. You can’t just place voice audio on top of music and expect it to work. Tools of the trade like sidechain compression and sidechain input masking were dialed in to duck the music and sound effects just enough to give the voice work room to breathe. Stacked together, the two techniques ensured the voices and music always played nicely together, neither fighting for the listener’s attention or introducing muddiness into the mix, even when there might be a lot going on in a scene.

Timing was critical. The exact placement of every foley effect, the pacing of dialogue between characters, the rhythm of a conversation, all of it was carefully placed to sell the illusion that these are real people in a real moment together.

“There’s a moment when a Hellpod launches,” says Tyler. “I EQ’d it to boost the low end, around 100 to 400 hertz, and dropped everything above. Then compression, saturation, and panning it across the stereo field so it sounds like it’s hurtling across the atmosphere above you. On headphones, while you’re playing the game, it really comes alive.”

Hundreds of decisions like that, each one deliberate, add up to an experience that feels alive.

“Watching it morph from a ‘hey, wouldn’t it be cool if…?’ into a tangible work of art was magical,” says Joink. “This project has been a unique experience and an absolute joy working with everyone involved,” says Micko.

“I’m a really level person, it takes a lot to get a physical response out of me,” says Brian Perry. “Sitting down and listening to my first full playthrough was honest-to-god shivers down the spine. I’d spent so much time watching all the fiddly bits being worked on, it was like listening to people each playing an instrument, impressive in a vacuum. But then it all came together, and it was a symphony.”

“It has to feel real,” says Tyler. “We have to give the player a reason to say, I want to come together and experience this with the community. That’s what the Freedom Alliance is about. Raising the bar for what you can experience while playing Helldivers 2.”

“Alliance Order 7 (Welcome to Hell) was us first united. AO8 (Pelican Down) was our skills being better coordinated and prepared. AO9 will be like nothing anyone has seen before,” says Alucard Hellsing. “Every day I’m excited to work with this team, and see what else our collective talent can produce for this amazing game.”