If you had a successful live service game on your hands right now, I can only imagine how careful you would be to make sure you didn’t screw it up. The best free games are falling down in droves like houses on the Norfolk coastline. This dangerous environment adds a risk burden to any major update, let alone a full sequel like SMITE 2.
Still, the trio of Alex Cantatore, Travis Browne and Daniel Cooper appear confident in the prospect. Speaking to me at the SMITE World Championship just one day after SMITE 2 was revealed, I was curious to see how SMITE 2’s ship would fare in comparison to SMITE’s first set sail. Battle through the rougher waters of pristine seas.
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“Smite was one of the first free-to-play games, right? There are a lot of them now!” Cantatore enthuses. “There are a lot of live service games, and there are a lot of games competing for people’s time and attention. As a sequel to SMITE, we’re not trying to find a new place in the world and compete with people who have never heard of it. people. First and foremost, we’re focused on making the best game possible for all the people who have loved SMITE over the years.
If you’ve seen SMITE 2 but aren’t too familiar with the game’s intricacies, SMITE 2 may look a lot like SMITE, but with a little more flair. That’s really the point; Cantatore and his colleagues didn’t reinvent Ixion’s burning wheel. explained that the most impactful changes come from quality-of-life improvements – both technically and in gameplay.
“In terms of the God gameplay that we created in SMITE, there are enhancements to your gameplay so that the abilities are improved from a quality of life perspective [is key]”, Brown explains, then gives an example. “Like the Wall of Ymir: if the player is fast enough in SMITE, they can put it behind them, but we know that if they can, the player will Always enjoyed doing this. If they close themselves off, it will only frustrate them.
“So staying true to SMITE means we want to make sure the feeling of playing as Ymir is the same, but embrace the quality of life changes. Let them leave the wall behind! We want to be consistent, not just It’s a God Kit that changes the entire game, just by improving the gameplay of SMITE 2.”
That’s not to say that the decision to stay true to SMITE’s MOBA philosophy has always been there. Quite the opposite! Brown said SMITE 2 was known internally as “Smite Next” because the team was keen to find “the next thing we can do to enhance the IP.”
While the trio joked that this meant the long-awaited SMITE Kart could (and probably still does) return, Brown explained that they were experimenting with Unreal Engine 5, which solidified their final decision.
Brown elaborated: “When we started using Unreal Engine 5 in late 2022, we quickly created a very interesting game mode using the SMITE IP, but it was not what we wanted. We did tweaked and created a new game mode in UE5 using Unreal Engine 5. We were amazed at how fast the development process sped up! So we went ahead and created SMITE in UE5 using 5 people from the development team, Working directly on the game. It took us about four people a few weeks to do that.”
It’s also worth noting that SMITE 2 isn’t Hi Rez’s only attempt to make a new game using the SMITE IP. DKO (or Divine Knockout) is a third-person Smite-like game where you use various Smite gods to skull-butt other players. It’s colorful and fun, but ultimately sinks into the water when it launches in December 2022.
“Even so, the SMITE 2 team firmly believes that DKO’s performance will not affect their decision to remain loyal to the MOBA action game that SMITE is known for. I don’t think this is too directly related to DKO’s performance,” explained Dacanta Torre. “Hi-Rez wanted DKO to do better, but unfortunately it failed to find an audience.
He continued: “We’ve always been gamers, and we’ve seen sequels that try to completely change the purpose of the game. Asheron’s Call – great game. Asheron’s Call 2 is very different. When you’re making a sequel Reinvent the whole thing.
“But we really looked at what was great about SMITE and decided not to touch on that. The combat still feels great, the team fight moments are amazing, the depth of the MOBA. But what surrounds it all? That’s what we put into it Where time and energy go”.
If you enjoyed this interview and are a SMITE fan yourself, why not check out our article on the best free games of 2024. You can also check out our interview published during the SMITE World Championship on why some of the rarest skins in the game aren’t in SMITE 2 (yet).
(This interview was conducted during the SMITE world tour. Travel to this event was handled by Hi Rez Studios).
