In case you’ve acquired a profitable reside service sport in your fingers lately, I can solely think about how cautious you would be to verify to not mess it up. The greatest free-to-play video games are crumbling en masse like homes on the Norfolk shoreline. This perilous surroundings provides a burden of threat to any important replace, not to mention a full on sequel like Smite 2.
Nonetheless, the trio of Alex Cantatore, Travis Brown, and Daniel Cooper seem assured with the prospect. Talking to me on the Smite World Championships solely a day following the Smite 2 reveal, I used to be curious how the Smite 2 ship will fare in far choppier waters than the virgin F2P sea the place Smite first set sail.
“Smite was one of many first free-to-play video games, proper? Now there are rather a lot on the market!” Cantatore passionately states. “There are a variety of reside service video games, and plenty of preventing for folks’s time and a focus. Being the sequel to Smite, we’re not looking for a brand new place on the planet and communicate to folks that by no means heard of it essentially. At the beginning, we’re targeted on tips on how to make the very best sport for all of the individuals who have liked Smite over time.
In case you’ve watched the Smite 2 reveal your self, however aren’t too accustomed to the intricacies of how the sport is performed, Smite 2 might very nicely simply appear like Smite, however shinier. That is, certainly, the purpose; fairly than re-invent Ixion’s burning wheel, Cantatore and co. clarify that probably the most impactful adjustments come through high quality of life enhancements – each technologically and in gameplay.
“So far as the god gameplay that we created in Smite, making enhancements to your gameplay in order that a capability is simply going to be improved from a quality-of-life standpoint [is key],” Brown explains, earlier than following up with an instance. “Just like the Ymir wall: gamers may place that behind them in the event that they have been quick sufficient in Smite, however we all know gamers would love to do this on a regular basis if they may. That’s simply irritating for them in the event that they wall themselves off.
“So staying true to Smite 1 means we need to be sure it feels the identical to play as Ymir, however quality-of-life adjustments are embraced. Allow them to place the wall behind them! We need to keep constant and never simply change complete god kits, simply enhance the gameplay in Smite 2”.
That is to not say this decsion to remain true to the Smite MOBA mindset was all the time there. Fairly the alternative! Smite 2 was as soon as known as ‘Smite Subsequent’ internally, because the staff was eager to search out “the subsequent factor we may do to boost the IP”, based on Brown.
Whereas the trio joked that this meant a long-awaited return of Smite Kart may have been (and should still be) on the playing cards, brown explains that it was experimenting with Unreal Engine 5 that solidified their final choice.
Brown elaborates: “After we began to make use of Unreal Engine 5 on the finish of 2022, we rapidly created a sport mode utilizing the Smite IP that was very attention-grabbing, however it wasn’t what we have been on the lookout for. We pivoted, and utilizing Unreal Engine 5 created a brand new sport mode in a day. We have been stunned at how our improvement course of had accelerated! So we went forward and created Smite in UE5 utilizing 5 folks from the dev staff, working squarely on the sport. It took us like 4 weeks to do this.”
Additionally it is value noting that Smite 2 isn’t Hello Rez’s sole try at making a brand new sport utilizing the Smite IP. DKO – or Divine knockout – was a Third-person Smash-like the place you could possibly use a wide range of Smite gods to bash heads towards different gamers. It was vibrant, entertaining, and in the end lifeless within the water when it launched in December 2022.
“Even so, the Smite 2 staff are agency that the efficiency of DKO did not affect their choice to remain true to the motion MOBA style Smite is understood for. I don’t assume it was too straight associated to DKO’s efficiency,” explains Cantatore. “Hello-Rez was hopeful that DKO would carry out higher than it did, however sadly it kinda failed to search out an viewers.
He continues: “We’ve been players without end, and we’ve seen sequels that attempt to drastically change what the sport is attempting to be. Asheron’s Name – nice sport. Asheron’s Name 2 could be very totally different. There’s positively the temptation whenever you’re making a sequel to reinvent the entire thing.
“However we actually checked out what makes Smite nice, and determined to not contact that. The fight nonetheless feels nice, moments of staff preventing are wonderful, the depth of a MOBA. However every little thing round that? That’s the place we put our effort and time.”
In case you loved that interview, and are considerably of a Smite enjoyer your self, why not try our article on the greatest free-to-play video games to take pleasure in in 2024. You too can try an interview we revealed again in the course of the Smite World Championships on why among the sport’s rarest skins aren’t coming to Smite 2 (for now).
(This interview was carried out on the Smite World Tour. Journey to this occasion was dealt with by Hello Rez Studios).