The SMITE world championships are kicking off right about now, and a tonne of information is coming out of the keynote being broadcast on Twitch. As well as various announcements for Hi-Rez’s other games, the latest new addition to SMITE’s roster and the first god from the Japanese pantheon, Amateratsu, has made her debut.
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As their first character from Japan, Hi-Rez picked Amaterasu as one of the most well-known, but also because her status as a sun goddess fit the themes they wanted to push. You can hear more about it in this making of:
The other skins and “weird shit” that will be coming are all part of the Japanese-themed Rising Dawn event, which will run for a few weeks following Amaterasu’s release on January 12th. Todd Harris’ keynote will also be talking about a new 3v3 Joust map and league coming to SMITE, something the community has been after for some time.
He’s also going to be revealing how the company will be going full Blizzard (phrasing writers’ own) when it comes to cross-promotion within their games. The tree that Sylvanas, one of the Gods in SMITE, is riding, called Grover, will be appearing as the next character in Paladins, their upcoming objective-oriented FPS currently in Alpha. The Nemesis god will also be appearing in their new iOS game Jetpack Fighter, and a skin for her based on one of the other characters in that game will be available in SMITE.
The world championships themselves will be running until Sunday. I tuned in for a bit of last year’s and was surprisingly enthralled, despite never being that into SMITE – a bit awkward on the balance between 3rd person action game and F2P MOBA for me. You can find, and the keynote which is ongoing at time of writing, on the SMITE Twitch channel.