Titan Forge on getting bigger, bolder and better

I was recently able to attend the official announcement of Smite 2 at the Smite World Championships in Arlington. Here I noticed that Smite and Smite 2 are very similar from a gameplay perspective. After watching Smite gameplay on the big screen during the esports event and getting a quick taste of Smite 2, I actually found it hard to see any major gameplay differences. Aside from the graphical upgrade, the changes in Smite 2 are harder to spot for someone less familiar with the game. That’s why I asked Titan Forge Games developers Travis Brown, Alex Cantatore and Daniel Cooper, among others, to explain how Smite 2 will be different.

“Obviously, the graphics from Unreal Engine 5 are probably the biggest, most noticeable thing.” admitted executive producer Alex Cantatore. “But aside from the graphical improvements and the lighting improvements that are there, the back-end side is much more technically capable for us. We can do a lot more with animations, we can do a lot more with skill creation. And on the gameplay side, we’re looking at changing the way some of the core stats work. So strength and intellect and all the items built on all the gods is a big opening of what characters can and cannot do.”

I played a game with the Norse god Ymir during a two-hour Smite 2 preview at the site, and this god is actually characteristic of the changes coming into the game, according to Cantatore: “Way back in the history of Smite 1, Ymir was able to build up physical strength and volitional power, And that’s something we’re opening up again.” This should be a big change for Smite veterans. “Such an opening is really a big deal, as is the fact that we are going to allow active items. Right now in Smite 1, all items are purely passive, and so you have to know the trigger conditions to activate them. In Smite 2, those are essentially six additional key lines with different customizations you can do with your character. Or you can follow the standard Smite 1 path and go for those passive items.”

Design director Daniel Cooper added to the list of key new features the addition of a new action button. “One of the big changes is that there’s now a button that allows you to interact with things on the map. And that has opened up a lot of new gameplay possibilities. Just one example is that there is a door at the back of the Fire Giant well that you can now press the interact button to open if you pay 10% of your life for it. It’s an interesting new tactical way to enter the fight and perhaps surprise the team trying to kill the Fire Giant.”

Regarding the new engine, general manager and creative director Travis Brown explained that it also allows for some significant stability improvements. “Architecture is not the sexiest subject, but the game is a lot more stable on the back end.” something players are likely to notice right away. There will be another improvement in matchmaking: “Our current matchmaking has a lot of problems with the way players onboard the game.” Brown explained. Players are automatically assumed to be average, which means you are paired with more experienced average players, which often results in new players losing most of their first games. The new matchmaking allows players to start at level zero, while also tracking whether people are more comfortable in certain roles initially. According to Brown, Smite 2 will “take into account the role you play and your different skills in different roles. So it won’t put you in a match that you just don’t have the skills to win.”

Not everything revolves around the new engine, however. There are also more than 100 new gods coming to Smite 2. When I asked the developers where they get their inspiration for upcoming gods, they replied that they already have a huge backlog of potential gods. “We’ve been working on Smite 1 for so long that we have our own internal list of gods,” he said. Cantatore told me. “There should be about a hundred characters on there that people are really passionate about internally.” In addition, they occasionally ask around within the community for inspiration. When considering the addition of a new character, the developers are looking for novelties that will set them apart from existing gods. “What helps make our selection complete, what are we currently missing? One of the reasons we chose to do Hecate (a Greek witch god) as the first all-new god in Smite 2 was because we thought, man, that’s a character that would look really cool with flowing robes,”added Cooper. The new engine allows new gods to be added in ways not possible before, which is why Titan Forge will not port all of Smite’s skins to the new game.

When I asked about new pantheons that might be added in Smite 2, they replied that they “considering adding new cultures, but have nothing to announce at this time.” Cantatore, however, said that “we have a list of possible options that we have.” The main criterion for adding a new pantheon is actually the possibility of adding at least two new gods. They prefer not to add cultures that have only one god. Cantatore added, “Cthulhu is the only great old one in Smite 1 and some people keep pestering us to go back and do others, but we really think Cthulhu is the main one and we will eventually go to another one.”

One of the hardest things about development right now for Titan Forge is optimization and capturing the right feel compared to Smite. The developers noted that rebuilding the game in Unreal Engine 5 is “like death by a thousand cuts in reverse. Sometimes the game doesn’t feel right and you can’t quite put your finger on it, because there are about 20 very small things and you have to dive in and figure out what they are.” They also shared a little anecdote about what they had been working on recently: “Right before we flew here, we realized that in Smite 2 we’re handling criterion probability calculations differently than in Smite 1. And so now we’re having the conversation like, oh, which way does it feel better? Is this right? Should we go back to the Smite 1 system? So we have a lot of little things to consider.”

The balance between taking a new route or sticking to what is familiar to Smite -players also translates to other aspects of the game, including the new soundtrack for Smite 2. Cooper shared some insights on their development of new music: “We had a long Slack conversation where we had iterations of the Smite 2 theme and we tried to be, I want to feel that nostalgia when I hear this, but hear something new.” Brown noted about the new music that existing players “can basically hum the themes in their sleep, Right? We wanted the music of Smite 2 to be such that when a Smite 1 player hears it, it’s familiar, but then breaks out into something new. That’s what we chose to do on the music now.” The three developers then joked among themselves that the new music “will be more orchestral.” In particular, it’s more cello. There’s just more cello.” Finally, they had to laugh at the fact that they often give their audio team a hard time with their feedback, as Brown recalled telling them, “I hear a ‘ting ting ting’, but can you do more of a ‘whooo’ there?”

In an earlier session with the developers, they mentioned Smite 2 “Smite, but better. My opinion from my interview with the developers confirms this in several ways. Overall, it is clear that Titan Forge is doing their best to capture the success of Smite and refresh it with some major improvements for Smite 2, including stability improvements, new gods using the new engine and an updated but familiar soundtrack. An early alpha of the game will be available for early access this spring.