The 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 Smite players are familiar with, but the game itself is being rebuilt from the ground up for the next generation. Check out the announcement trailer above and our first-look preview video below.
In case you’re unfamiliar, Smite is a MOBA like League of Legends or Dota 2 – two teams of five players battle for control of a three-lane map, each team growing stronger throughout the match until one is able to destroy their enemy’s base. Unlike other MOBAs, though, Smite is played from a third-person perspective, so you’re right in the heat of battle clashing with powerful gods, instead of strategizing from a top-down overview. It’s also designed to be console-friendly, and easily played using a controller.
The original game was released in 2014 and runs on Unreal Engine 3, so Smite 2 – built using Unreal Engine 5 – represents a significant leap in technology. Travis Brown, General Manager at Titan Forge Games, describes Smite 2 as a “chance to go back, take all the learnings from 10 years of making Smite into one of the most successful multiplayer games of all time, and do it all strictly better.”
Alongside visual upgrades and new animations and effects for Smite’s pantheon of playable Gods, Smite 2 will also include several gameplay improvements: new abilities for certain characters, a brand new backend and matchmaking system, new map features, and new UI.
5 new Gods are also planned for Smite 2, starting with Hecate, the Greek goddess of sorcery, who will be available to play as part of the Smite 2 alpha playtest, planned for Spring 2024.
Since they’re rebuilding Smite 2 from scratch, the development team at Titan Forge Games are also taking the opportunity to make some more fundamental adjustments to the game, in an effort to introduce more strategic depth.
In Smite 1, Gods use either Physical or Magical Power, and can’t use items that don’t belong to their power type. Smite 2 will eliminate these restrictions, allowing all Gods to build all items, and scaling individual abilities based on new Strength and Intelligence stats. Relics are being removed entirely, and the item store will be restructured to make it easier for players to dynamically adapt their builds during a match.
Creating a brand new version of the game after 10 years of continual updates is a huge undertaking – there are 130 Gods in Smite 1, and they won’t all be available to play in Smite 2 right away, though the developers plan to eventually bring every God over to the sequel.
Not all Smite content is going to make it over to Smite 2, however. In-game Skins released before Year 11 won’t carry over, as the team state it simply isn’t feasible to recreate the vast amount of content released over the past 10 years, although there is a Legacy system planned to reflect the investment veteran Smite players have made.
Fortunately, for those who’d prefer to stick with the original, Smite 2 won’t be replacing Smite 1. The original will still continue to run as a standalone game, and will receive regular updates for the foreseeable future.
Smite 2 will be released on PC, Steam Deck, Xbox Series X and S, and PlayStation 5 with full crossplay, and signups for the alpha playtest are live now.
