Smite 2 developer Titan Forge Games has released a deep dive video going into the process of porting over and enhancing Smite’s gods (playable characters) for its highly anticipated sequel.
In case you were unfamiliar, the free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) Smite is home to well over 100 playable characters, including historical deities like Anubis, Poseidon, and Fafnir. When Smite 2 was announced last month, it was confirmed that not all of these gods will be playable right away. However, as well as the new characters set to join the roster, players can also look forward to overhauls of existing ones, which will enhance the way they look and play.
“First we go and look at the character, see what things that we’ve wanted to change over time,” advanced game designer Daniel Cooper explained in the video. “We have years and years of different balancing discussions and community feedback about what people like about a character, about what people don’t like about a character, feature requests that they’ve wanted for a long time. So, we try and consolidate all of that together, so that we have like our major list of improvements that we feel like we can make very quickly.”
It was explained that the devs first port over characters as they appear in Smite 1 before creating a list of enhancements and improvements that they’d like to implement. “The gameplay team will go through and actually assess the technical needs,” senior gameplay programmer Josh Malmquist added.
Smite 2 is set to release on PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5, and is planned to enter closed alpha testing at some point this spring. Even when the sequel is released, however, there are no plans to shut down Smite 1. Executive producer Alex Cantatore previously told TechRadar Gaming that this decision has been made to ensure the devs were “really respecting our players and the time and the money and the attachment that they have” to the first game.
For more games like Smite, be sure to check out our recommendations for the best multiplayer PC games. You can find more free games to dive into on our list of the best free games.
