The next Helldivers 2 warbond brings suppressed weapons and stealth tech to turn your helldives into sneaking missions

Between the handheld heavy ordnance, the on-demand gunship bombing runs, and the orbital artillery bombardments, Helldivers operations tend to run very loud. The next Helldivers 2 warbond, however, offers a more subtle alternative to Super Earth's standard ballistic bombast.

Called Redacted Regiment, the warbond is stuffed with suppressed weaponry and diversionary deployables for Helldivers who've been hoping since launch for a better stealth mission toolkit. Kept you waiting, huh?

The warbond's main attractions are its silenced primary weapons. The R-72 Censor is a semi-auto precision rifle with an integrated suppressor for taking out enemies undetected at long range. For quietly clearing an area at closer quarters, there's also the AR-59 Suppressor, a silenced full-auto assault rifle.

Technically speaking, the Redacted Regiment weapons won't be Helldivers 2's first suppressed primaries: That honor goes to the M7S SMG that was added with the ODST crossover warbond. But these two guns will likely offer more mainstay usability than their submachine gun cousin—though I'd still expect some amount of tradeoff in armor penetration or ammo count to keep them from being the only choice.

The warbond will also add the P-35 Re-Educator secondary weapon, a dart-firing silenced pistol that injects a delirium-inducing chemical agent in both organic and robotic enemies. A new throwable, the TM-01 Lure Mine, will emit lights and sounds to attract enemies before detonating a proximity-triggered explosive.

For heavier foes that won't be dropped by a few suppressed rounds, you'll want to turn to the final bit of upcoming firepower: the B/MD C4 Pack stratagem, a backpack with six throwable C4 charges that adhere to enemies and environmental surfaces and can be detonated either individually or all at once.

Presumably, they'll also stick to your fellow Helldivers, but I imagine that's discouraged.

Of course, the warbond also adds a pair of suitably shadowy armor sets, one light and one medium, which both feature a new Reduced Signature passive that reduces both your noise level and range at which enemies will notice you. And a Concealed Insertion booster perk will add smokescreens to your Hellpod impacts for a bit of extra obfuscation. Plus, two capes. We can't forget the capes.

I've been looking for a reason to revisit Helldivers 2, and the ability to more easily run sneaking missions might be just the thing that gets me back in the Managed Democracy business. Being able to clear outposts without triggering the usual reinforcement wave seems like an excellent change of pace—assuming I can maintain the necessary degree of stealth, which is admittedly a pretty big if. But hey, orbital fire support has a way of cleaning up tactical missteps.

The Redacted Regiment warbond arrives on January 20.