One of the talking points coming out of the reveal of Smite 2 is developer Hi-Rez Studios’ decision not to port the original game’s skins, many of which players have paid for, to the sequel.
Free-to-play third-person multiplayer online battle arena game Smite launched in 2014. The sequel is built using Unreal Engine 5, with an alpha playtest planned for spring 2024 some 10 years after the original came out.
Smite was originally designed on Unreal Engine 3 back in the early 2010s and has stayed on that platform. “While it has worked well for us, 10 years is a long time and our work thus far in Unreal Engine 5 has shown us just how exciting the future of Smite can be,” Hi-Rez said.
In its keynote to announce Smite 2, Hi-Rez staff explained why it’s not directly transferring over existing content from Smite 1 to Smite 2, highlighting just how big a change is being made for Smite 2. Calling Smite’s move from Unreal Engine 3 to 5 a “multi-generational leap”, Hi-Rez insisted it’s not feasible to port all the content in Smite 1 to Smite 2 due to the time it would take.
Art director Ben Knapp said: “Currently, because we want to make sure all the content that goes into Smite 2 is strictly better, it takes about two months of work to get one skin from Smite to Smite 2. And that’s if we just port it with effects without making other meaningful improvements.”
“As of today there are about 1,600 skins in Smite, excluding mastery skins,” art producer Sherri Harney added. “To just port every skin to Smite 2 it would take about 246 person-years of work, and we couldn’t do that and make Smite 2 as amazing as we knew it could be if we started fresh.” This “hard call” was made early in development, Hi-Rez revealed. “We believed that our players wanted a better version of Smite more than anything else.”
As a make-good, Hi-Rez has created a Legacy Gems system that rewards Smite 1 players with virtual currency they can spend on Smite 2 content. The amount of Legacy Gems waiting for players in Smite 2 depends on how much they’ve spent in Smite 1.
For those who’d prefer to stick with the original, Smite 2 won’t replace Smite 1. The original will continue to run as a standalone game, and will receive regular updates for the foreseeable future, Hi-Rez said.
Smite 2 launches on PC, Xbox Series X and S, and PlayStation 5 with full crossplay.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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