Third-person multiplayer online battle arena Smite is getting a shiny new standalone sequel: Smite 2 has been officially announced at the 2024 Smite World Championship. The sequel will retain the same core gameplay that Smite players know, but the gameplay itself is being rebuilt from A to Z for the next generation. Check out the announcement trailer above and the first preview video below.
In case you're not familiar, Smite is a MOBA game like League of Legends or Dota 2 – two teams of five players battle it out for control of a three-lane map, with each team growing stronger throughout the match until one of them manages to destroy their enemy's base. . Unlike other MOBAs, Smite is played from a third-person perspective, so you're in the thick of battle engaging powerful gods, rather than strategizing from a top-down overview. They are also designed to be console compatible, and can be easily played using a controller.
The original game was released in 2014 and ran on Unreal Engine 3, so Smite 2 – built using Unreal Engine 5 – represents a huge leap in technology. Travis Brown, General Manager at Titan Forge Games, describes Smite 2 as “an opportunity to step back, take all the lessons learned from 10 years of making Smite one of the most successful multiplayer games of all time, and do it all absolutely better.”
Along with visual upgrades, animations, and new effects for Smite's cast of playable avatars, Smite 2 will also include several gameplay improvements: new abilities for certain characters, a completely new backend and matchmaking system, new map features, and a new user interface.
Five new gods are also planned for Smite 2, starting with Hecate, the Greek goddess of magic, which will be available to play as part of the Smite 2 alpha playtest, planned for spring 2024.
As they rebuild Smite 2 from scratch, the development team at Titan Forge Games is also taking the opportunity to make some basic tweaks to the game, in an attempt to provide more strategic depth.
On Strike 1, gods use physical or magical power, and cannot use items that do not belong to their power type. Smite 2 will remove these restrictions, allowing all gods to build all items, and scaling individual abilities based on new Strength and Intelligence stats. Relics will be completely removed, and the item shop will be restructured to make it easier for players to dynamically adapt their builds during a match.
Creating a completely new version of the game after 10 years of constant updates is a huge task – there are 130 gods in Smite 1, and not all of them will be available to play in Smite 2 right away, although the developers plan to eventually bring all the gods into the sequel.
However, not all Smite content will be ported over to Smite 2. In-game skins released before Year 11 will not be carried over, as the team has stated that it is simply not possible to recreate the vast amount of content released over the past 10 years, though Even though there was an old system planned to reflect the veteran investment made smite players.
Fortunately, for those who prefer to stick with the original game, Smite 2 will not replace Smite 1. The original game will continue to operate as a standalone game, and will receive regular updates for the foreseeable future.
Smite 2 will release on PC, Steam Deck, Xbox Series
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