Just in time for the SMITE World Championship, Hi-Rez releases a shiny new cinematic trailer.
Only two days before ten teams battle for the title of SMITE World Champion, the fine folks at Hi-Rez Studios released a new cinematic trailer for their third-person moba SMITE. For those unfamiliar, SMITE is an otherwise traditional moba in the same vein of League of Legends or DOTA, but with a few twists thrown in.
The biggest departure is that the game is played in a third-person action perceptive with WASD movement, instead of the traditional RTS top-down. It gives the game a unique feel in the moba space, and has certainly helped with a successful jump over to the Xbox One as well. The characters are also all drawn from real-world mythology and legends. There’s roughly 70 gods, demons, and other mythological beings representing seven different pantheons. Cause how else are you going to decide who’s the true ruler of the underworld? The Greek god Hades or the Norse goddess Hel?
The ‘To Hell & Back’ trailer features one of the Roman goddess of war, Bellona, leading the Norse Loki and Ymir into battle as a sort of villainous or bad boys, and girl, team against some more traditional good aligned gods. It took me a second viewing to fully pick up that the whole lava section is a flashback, it’s a nod to there being a fire giant that players can defeat for a powerful team buff. Overall, it’s an improvement over their previous trailer, if for no other reason than you get to see more gods. Though I’m starting to suspect that someone in the Hi-Rez Studios video department doesn’t like Thor, he’s always getting knocked around in their trailers.
Obviously it’s no coincidence that these cinematic are releasing around the same time as SMITE World Championship, and this year’s event is bigger and better in practically every way. 2016 has more teams from more regions and a separate Xbox One tournament – which include an open invitational to seat the final slot. They actually had to add a whole separate day to accommodate it all.
If you don’t happen to be in Atlanta Georgia with a now sold-out ticket, you can catch all the action at http://www.twitch.tv/smitegame. Matches start on Thursday at 11:00 EST.
