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Martichoras, The Manticore King, is coming!
We have been listening closely to those who are skeptical about this god's inclusion. The voices of concern are certainly reasonable, but we think Martichoras has many valid traits that have earned him his place as a playable god in SMITE.
The Manticore is an iconic mythological creature. Not only in Greek Mythology, the first culture to document it, but in many other pantheons. This has grown into making it a common inclusion in various fantasy worlds across games, movies, and novels.
This monster is often thought of as a species that there are multiples of, so we set out to find a strong named leader among them before we approved this concept. Reading about the ancient Greek traveler Ctesias and his documentation of the manticore gave us a clear path. “The First Manticore” - Martichoras - felt like a reasonable interpretation of a “named leader”, a king among the manticores. Following up from these original notes revealed that The Manticore was almost always referred to as a singular entity. This is certainly debatable, and has been warped by modern fantasy, but there is a reasonable amount of mythology that confirms that there was only ever one Manticore.
The Manticore also is held near and dear to the hearts of many SMITE Devs and Players. Were it not for the Manticore, SMITE likely wouldn't be here today. For many early players, the Manticore was the first opponent they ever fought.
We've paid homage to the Manticore in the past through things like the Beta Tester avatar and the Fwuffy Manticore ward skin. And the one time we spoke about turning him into a god (an April Fools joke six years ago), the concept resonated with our players so much that the video now has 2.3 million views. That's the second most-viewed video we've ever uploaded. So we thought, for Year 10, it was time we really gave this legend of SMITE his due.
At the moment, we don’t plan to take this approach on another creature. Digging deep for a named leader should, and most likely will, be a rare occurrence. It's something we wanted to experiment with for a while but needed to look for the right opportunity. When planning the first Season of Year 10, we drew on many nostalgic moments and characters from SMITE history. Surtr, the Fire Giant, and Martichoras, the Manticore King were planned together to create the Season of Monsters. We will be paying close attention to the god’s in-game data to help inform any future decisions in this realm.
We are super excited for this god, our first true creature Hunter, and we look forward to the closer look blog post coming out tomorrow and the full reveal on the Update Show this Wednesday!
Wait who does his braids? We need a drip skin for him immediately.