‘Smite’ Studio Unveils ‘Paladins’, A F2P Shooter With Card Collecting Elements
Hi-Rez Studios, the developer behind Smite for the PC and Xbox One, revealed a new first-person shooter on Monday just in time for Gamescom this week. Paladins mixes technology and fantasy in a team-based first-person shooter that stirs in a collectible card game element to keep characters fresh — and its coming to both current-gen consoles plus the PC.
Paladins features six versus six multiplayer matches where the objective is to capture and hold control points on the map in order to reach the enemy’s base and destroy it. The game borrows elements from the Siege gametype in Smite as the team that holds a control point will spawn a siege engine that must be escorted to attack the enemy’s base.
Welcome to the official Paladins Twitter! Follow for updates on the new game by @HiRezStudios. http://t.co/KYedvRWyRj pic.twitter.com/PbDQsd0OOW
— PaladinsGame (@PaladinsGame) August 3, 2015
Combat in Paladins is almost entirely projectile-based, and each character will have their own special primary weapon, movement, and combat abilities, plus a personal mount to carry them around the map quickly. The mount is one of the important twists to the game as the maps are large and spacious.
The other twist that makes Paladins unique from other colorful shooters such as Blizzard’s Overwatch is the introduction of collectible cards to build decks that boost champions during the match. Instead of characters being built through a progression system the same way, such as in Smite and other MOBAs, the cards introduce some randomness and variation into builds.
The collectible cards can modify character’s shots and abilities with damage boosts or new effects, Hi-Rez explained to IGN. Others can improve health regeneration or decrease the cooldown on abilities faster.
Cards are drawn as player’s progress through matches and players must choose one from a hand of three that are drawn. Each card has five different tiers of effectiveness. The strength of the card depends on the level it was drawn at and some cards are more effective at lower levels while others are better at higher levels. In addition to making each play-through more varied, this adds a unique strategic layer to Paladins that will make players think about whether to play a card now or wait for a higher level.
“Paladins has been a passion project of ours from the beginning,” commented Mick Larkins, senior producer on the title. “We’ve dedicated a separate team from SMITE to work on it, and while we are still early in development, we know we’re crafting something very special. Paladins is extremely quick, with a great deal of depth in how it blends action, tactics, and teamwork, and we’re excited for gamers to start discovering all it has to offer.”
“We’ve managed to keep Paladins under wraps for over a year now, so the dev team is really looking forward to receiving feedback from the hands-on demo at gamescom,” said Todd Harris, COO at Hi-Rez Studios. “We’ve focused on making something we find fun and competitive, and soon players will help us craft how Paladins grows from here.”
A release date for Paladins has not been announced yet, but those interested can sign up for the beta test at the game’s website. The video above shows that it is still very much early in development as there are a few placeholder sounds and graphics carried over from Smite. The good news is that the VGS quick communication system does appear to be carrying over.
Hi-Rez Studios showed that it can take a familiar formula and add enough uniqueness to it to carve out its own successful niche. The studio has grown successfully in its unlikely home of Alpharetta, Georgia, due to the success of Smite. Now it looks to carve out another niche in a first-person shooter genre that will see heavy competition from the likes of Overwatch and Gearbox Software’s non-F2P title Battleborn.
[Images via Paladins]
