The Reading and Lorefag Experience~

I'm not going to mince my words - it's just not how I dictate my prose, so I'll cut to the chase.

Reading the lore in a vaccuum could be streamlined and heavily be expanded on - but as an experience, is tolerable at minimum. There's enough to sink your teeth into, and you get a general idea of what's going on (about 85% of what's going on) - and what you don't understand, you can unironically blame it on and as >LoRez and happily be on with your day.


Being a lorefag however, the one step beyond casual - and endeavouring to actually look into shit to it's logical extreme (trying to get that understanding to 100%)... is illuminating in how unpolished a concept and project really can be.
It's not a bad narrative - I'll make that clear now. There's some interesting concepts and mechanics, and solid executions; it just needs a more dedicated writer who knows what the fuck they're doing and has the time to back it up. I don't want paragraphs of meaningless prose about some chinaman panicking in a village as my loredrop for a month - I want to know what the fuck kind of crazy shit went on in Smaug mountain when Jormungandr showed up at the front door to ♂forcefully♂ evict Fafnir. I don't want periodic updates of every damn Pantheon and where Baba's cackling around at - I want to hear about what happened when the Xibalba had a secondary uprising that was shutdown offscreen. I want to know how Hou Yi vs Cthulhu went down. I want to hear why Cernunnos would side with Tiamat. I want Iwantiwantiwantiwant to just know shit that's going on, not just be told it.
I say with absolute conviction that you could heptuple the wordcount of this half-decade of lore (or more) and still have concepts and events that could do with fleshing out. So many amazing ideas, so much in terms of interaction potential and side-narratives and rivalries - and most of it is just squandered.

I also said at the start, that my goal of this overall doc was intended not just to compile and streamline everything, but to do it in a better way than LoRez have, for your reading pleasure.
I can now add to that something I wasn't anticipating - I believe, without a shadow of a doubt at this point, that I know more about the lore of and surrounding mythology related to SMITE than any one person at Titanforge. Which is oddly yet mundanely uncomfortable in a way so unique that I think it'd be grounds for a new entry into the English dictionary. A wholly unique >tfw.
I've found lore snippets in places I wasn't even expecting - design notes, archived forum pages and ex-employee blogs - and this isn't reiteration of what we're already told, we're talking notable events that otherwise patch over a hole in the plot perfectly.

Oh, and as for the art-collection side, believe you me, if I knew who the fuck was responsible for releasing that to the public; I'd ring their goddamn fucking necks out.
I know for a fact those bastards are holding onto 10k resolution MINIMUM for much of the art / designs (going from brushstrokes in the development vidoes), and yet I'm lucky if I find 720p conveniently (then having to scratch around hard for a 4k, or just patch one together the best I can). And, like the lore, yet again, I continually find perfectly opportune / fitting art for a void in one point of the narrative, in a completely different place than I was expecting.
They didn't stop making lore art after Grim Omens - let me make that completely transparent (I mean, I've gathered it for you, you've seen it) - they just stopped releasing it with ease of access to the public. For example - the background for Odyssey Underworld portraying Hades and Persephone's throne? I could only show an early version, because the polished in-game one doesn't exist past HUD overlayed screenshots. I've already told you how I now for a fact there's better quality lore art for the Divine Uprising Event, that just hasn't been released over the earlier version. Hell, the background to the Viewer Store is a depiction of a Mayan / Aztec location (eagle eating a snake) that I'd love to have used here, yet I sure as fuck can't find it in isolation.
Oh, and that 'Community Resource Bank' they've got going? Fuck all useful in it - of the ~10GB, I used about 4 images from it across this entire doc (most being space fillers, and others being flat-incomplete / incompiled like the Hera's Odyssey art). Main issue? All of it's in 1080p when the 4k stuff exists elsewhere. Hey, I'd add to it, but I'm an Anon first and foremost, and I'm not giving my data to google just so I can give some other data to LoRez. I want my 10k res's HiRez. I want to see the jittered brushstrokes of a sneezing artist. And all the concept / splash art that's been nuked off the internet. The consequences will never be the same.

If they got their shit together, they could *EASILY* make a pretty fucking heavy, yearly artbook for SMITE - with both digital and hardback versions, and retards / asipring artists (Read: retards) would definitely buy that shit for reference notes alone - on top of the usual fandom side of merchandising. Use it to fund the game, use it to fund le SPL, use it to fund hookers and blow - I'm not judging, only pointing out the missed oppotunity. I'd pirate the artbooks though, and distribute it to all my Anon frens for free through questionably legal but completely secure venues. I mean, what do you expect - it's me....THE NEWEST MORTAL-GOD OF THE CARRIBBEAN PIRATE PANTHEON, CAPTAIN KIDD!
Just squandered opportunity everywhere you look. I cast the blame 50/50 on the internal Non-Disclosure-Agreement and just lack of clear management in terms of just gathering it together.


In terms of narrative....

Characterization, I'll give that for the most part, the Gods are done charismatically and charmingly - which isn't as easy as it sounds in writing terms if you're not really a /lit/fag. They could be 'pushed' further, to be more emphatic or explosive at times without outright flanderizing (they're physical emboidments of concepts that have been around for apparent milennia, a slight amount of unhingement or more outright autismo is actually expectable) - but for what I was expecting, I was pleasantly surprised.
In terms of MC's, Susano-O was a bit bland (but expected for how early it was in the development of the lore), however Ares, Hera, Zeus, Set, Persephone, Amaterasu / Tsukuyomi and Merlin (+ pretty much all the other unnamed / side characters) were fun to read about for the most part in their related parts of the narrative, were generally done accurately and mostly respectfully (even if sometimes lacking wordcount).

But there were a few exceptions. A few. ;

  • First (to begin with the least egregious) Mulan is just whiney and usually degrades the scene she's in. I don't need lecturing on morality from the Goddess that tried to cash in on the free marketing from the Disney Live Action, and I don't want expositiondumps. She works as a fresh point of view in the Divine Realm, but she 'says' and (in terms of characterization) 'learns' nothing of value that isn't immediately obvious to everyone around her.
    She's far better as an eyepiece than a mouthpiece, and not stealing charactercounts from the interesting Gods - and if that wasn't her intended role, then she's failed utterly. I don't like seeing her show up in a scene.
  • Secondly - I'm going to be completely level with you.... I still have no fucking clue what Jormungandr's supposed to be - to the point that calling him something else (in my case, Mungo) is genuinely more accurate to what we're told. He is easily the worst explained God in SMITE's, and to 'punctuate' this, there are multiple, notiseable speling adn punctuatio,n errors in his mononologue, includign flatt owt unfnhiisd senten

    • He says he sympathises with mortals, but is smug remembering going after and killing the mortals Arthur / Merlin, as well as genociding wherever the fuck the Arthurian Camelot was.
    • He's out against Gods that turn tyrannical, but uncaring of the ones sympathetic to mortals and wreacks more havoc and pain than any of them combined (for example as a result of Hades's and Anubis's first conflict, we know that if there's no Death Gods in attendance to process them, all souls get the eternal-agony treatment after death)
    • He's both the Arthurian Dragon (the fire-y winged quadraped) only-stronger because he was given the power of Ragnarok, and a Primordial being native to the SMITEverse since time immemorial that doesn't need the power of Ragnarok to be a one-man-apocalypse. He's also Loki's World-Snake kid on the side too, but it's not like that's ever touched on.
    • His apparent 'trigger' is when the divine get strong enough to reshape or tear holes in reality, yet there are Gods present in canon that he should have woken up ages ago to deal with (namely, Janus - as any person who has played the Portal franchise should know).

    ...why couldn't they have just kept it simple and have him be Loki's kid, and not the omnipresent primordial aethiest not-but-actually-is-but-might-not-be possibly interdimensional arthurian dragon at some point (singular, despite there being 3 major ones in Arthurian lore; Red, White and Efflam's) who isn't the World Serpent because it had wings but also is the World Serpent because it's fucking Jormungandr the World Serpent and did I mention he has voice lines saying he's also Loki's kid on top of all this? Fuck.
    This snaeklol is *such* a fucking mess, if you didn't laugh you'd cry. Whenever he showed up, I'd just sigh and rub my eyes for the clusterfuck I was going to read.
    Characterwise... he's ok? He's got fun interactions, good VA. Impactwise... fuck knows what he is... yeah he's just Mungo. He sure as fuck ain't Jormungandr. He needs retcons, and to be properly established going forward. He can't be from two unrelated Pantheons at once, especially with... well whatever the fuck Arthurians are supposed to be in this Universe too.


And then we move onto the obvious ones.

Just. . .
don't take this the way it's gonna come off.

I'm in super seriousfag mode right now.
A rare sight throughout this doc.

. . .

. . .

. . .

I kid you fucking not, Olorun, Yemoja and Baron Samedi (ah~- stop, stick with me) are constantly brought up out of nowhere, in scenes they make no sense in - to the point it is *so* crystallinely obvious it is *just* a race thing. Holy shit, just Death to America, Osama was onto something.
Without drawing on any outright negative connotations when making this criticism, they are in literal terms, Lo-Rez's / Titanforge's lore writer's pet niggers.

While Olorun can be 'excused' as a Gary Stu main character; Yemoja and Baron's continual referrances is to the point of distracting. May I just note that, as of this point in the narrative the following Gods have not been mentioned or even alluded to as much as a *single* fucking time in the Comic/Post-Comic lore: Achilles, Ah Muzen Cab, Aphrodite, Apollo, Artemis, Artio, Bacchus, Bakasura, Chang'e, Chiron, Chronos, Cupid, Cu Chuulainn, Da Ji, Freya, Hun Batz, Janus, Jing Wei, Kali, Khepri, Kumbhakarna, Nemesis, Ne Zha, Ravana, Serquet, Skadi, Sol, Thoth, Vamana, Vulcan and Zhong Kui (+ XBalanque if we ignore Battleground of the Gods, which is non-canon).

>hurrr durr muh raysism point ignored
Shut the fuck up. If I was going to be a racismalist, I'd just refer to them as niggers throughout the entire doc - and while I'm at it I'd be referring to the crackers as crackers, chinks as chinks, pajeets / poos as pajeets / poos and spics as spics on top of shitting on every God aside from Xing Tian for not being faceless and green anon
...Wait, do I actually have a argument here?
I did do all that though...
...
...
...
Racism is easy. Deflecting criticism because of perceived racism is even easier. I wouldn't waste the charactercount if either weren't relevant to my criticism.

I will 'give' them that the non-mentioned Hindu Gods have external pajeet issues when using them, apparently making them an issue to write in; but the racially African Gods are so *painfully* overused and ignorant of the lore around them it's nonsensical.
Baron's introduction with Bellona was tasteful - and while short and definitely wanting more detail / meat to it, was well executed.
Ignoring the KANG OF LIMPUS moment, the not!African Raid on the Underworld was quite clearly forced, but was at least passable as 'just an event'.
Their continued referral after the Persephone arc is not only unwelcomely forced, but at the direct detriment to the lore and logic of the Universe.
On the characters individually:

  • Yemoja flat-out ignores regional turf rules so is somehow able to listen in on every river on Earth without any downsides.
  • She's able to call in 'Moonstrikes' that she has literally no mythological relation to, outside of a very minor Brazillian sect that isn't recognised by the actual Nigerian Yorubans (and so, since the Yoruban Pantheon is still praticed in the current day for me to accurately make this comparison, would be an equivalent of saying Catholics and Protestants are one in the same, in how offensive and aggressively culturally ignorant it could be taken) and somehow doesn't conflict with the other in-game Lunar Gods of Artemis / Awalix / Chang'E / Tsukuyomi / Xbalanque interpretation of lunar control when she does it (I'm pretty certain Moon-Lasers are Tsukuyomi's schtick too). This is unlike, the far better done, Ra / Amaterasu - who had differing yet mythologically logical impacts of their mauling / deaths - Ra's injuries resulting in a global eclipse / red giant event (former because Ra went blind, but also the Ancient Egyptian interpretation of the few triumphs of Apophis; latter because he's driven insane to want to consume Earth) while Amaterasu's was a huge solar flare blurring the entire Sun, as she was only 'linked' to the Sun (see Xing Tian's Mountain), then the Sun disappearing over Japan. We'll ignore Sol's inferred mauling at the 'Fimbulwinter' on S6 Assault, as it's not directly referred to in-lore - but even then, still fitting fluidly as her 'damage' creates a mega-sunspot event, like a chunk has been chewed off of the Sun strictly over the Norse domain.
  • Yemoja is narratively used as the 'default' healer at Olympus - when Artemis is equally qualified, more on-location within Olympus and has been in the game since Closed Beta. Are you telling me she was out hunting for piggies while Cthulhu (the biggest hunting game on Earth) was wandering towards her house? Are you telling me that at no point, Artemis looked at all the cool new monsters Tiamat brought with her, but didn't want to trophy-hunt a single one? Are you telling me that the usually-out-and-about, generally apolitical Artemis was just letting Scylla and Charybdis run around as free game, because of political tensions with Tiamat? Bull. Shit. She was ignored at all times so Yemoja could be present in her place. And with how Yemoja refers to Olympus as 'hers' when talking to Olorun, you can fuckin' feel it.
  • Baron (the mythologically completely irresponsible party animal) is the continual Death-rep of Olympus in the abscence of Hades, and used as Olorun's (very srs bsnss) underworld-representative / scout / info gatherer - when that is literally already Zhong Kui's role within mythos to a T, that they could easily have just borrowed him like Athena borrowed Mercury for a bit.
  • Baron is treated all around like a pretty decent cool guy (steroetypical drunk Carribbean guy, eh?). This skips over the fact that Baron Samedi has multiple aspects to him (and an accurate use of aspects, not just 'other-names-we're-gonna-imply-are-other-entites like what they did with Olorun / Olodumare / Olofi) - including one of the outright most sadistic and twistedly evil entities in the Voodoo Pantheon - Baron Kriminel, Patron Entity of Murderers, who demands chickens be set on fire to even ritualistically invoke him, and is the prime culprit behind the rare occasion of the cannibalism found in Voodoo practice. Which is pretty fucking unique - considering most other entities aspects are split between chilled out and hyped up versions of the core entity. Yes, you can have Baron as a morally questionable guy... but he's not le friendly jamaica man.
  • Baron's supposed to be so unpredictable and so coersive that you can't tell if you're dead or alive around him - yet he's played off closer to a corporate drinking buddy. Let the drunk motherfucker have a break, he's been too sober for too long. You're hurting him LoRez, you're hurting Baron. He's about to cry, he's just walked in on Bacchus half-naked and chugging away at his cabinet, and it's like a fucking NTR hentai comic with how cucked he feels to his mythos.

And saving the best worst until last;

  • Olorun is just the worst written character in SMITE, and it's not just because he's a blatent Gary Stu (and, because I likely have to reiterate, it's not because he's African & all Anons are blanketly + usually falsely equated to /pol/tards).

    I genuinely don't think LoRez has half a fucking clue of how the Yoruban Pantheon operates, and much less a clue on who or what Olorun (Olodumare) is. Hell, just to begin with - Olodumare isn't an 'aspect' of Olorun - it is Olorun, or more precisely the concept of Olorun. This isn't a case where Bacchus and Dionysis are aspects of the same entity, this is a case of implying Bacchus and Bacchos are two beings associated with the same thing, and not just a different way to say / spell the first. Along with him switching characterization on a loredrop-by-loredrop basis... he's just so fucking wrong.
    Olorun doesn't particularly give a fuck about Earth in Yoruban mythology - because he's got the entire cosmos to worry about and watch over- and has on multiple occasions directly lead to near-Apocalypse events in Yoruban mythology because he can afford to brush Earth off like it's nothng. He's not at all equitable with Zeus. That's not to say he doesn't care - he's just got better things to do. If we're going by rough comparisons, he's far closer to the Jade Emperor - head of a larger structure that Earth is only a small part of. Obatala is who they've been treating Olorun like, which is a pretty big fucking insult to the Yoruban people, given Obatala is their Pantheon Head - literally the second most important concept, and arguably most important entity, given Olorun leans more into a concept than a figure, much like 'Budda' is a concept before a person.
    To boil it down for you about the mythos of the gay niggas from outer space; Obatala is the guy who terraformed Earth and is widely worshipped throughout the Pantheon - Olorun is the originator who simply gave him the resources to do that and sent him on his way. Treating Olorun as a 'saviour of Earth' and 'mediator of the divine realm' is nonsensical and completely out of mythos - because the motherfucker literally created Eshu, Deity of Disruption, Chaos and Evil within the Yoruban Pantheon, with the intent of him doing the same shit Set does in-lore! Disruption prevents Stagnation! Instigation roots out traitors!
    And in the Voodoo Pantheon. Olorun is directly equated as the same figure as God. He's G-O-D. That God. *That* 'God'. The Abrahamic one. And he sure as fuck isn't written like that. Bit of a fuckup, eh? Cerberus just jumped up in the powerscalings, that's for sure.

    Oh, and God (pun unintended), mythology aside, this 'character'. Just.
    {*Frustrated Sigh Sound*}, because I cannot think of any other way to express this. He's just a Gary Stu that the plot continually bends over backwards to accomodate, and we all already know (externally) exactly fucking why LoRez are doing it. I'm not going to linger on this long, because I won't insult your intelligence as to imply you don't know what a Gary Stu is, but I will say that Cerberus is the rightful God-King of the Divine Realm. I don't care if Olorun just ran a marathon with Atlas's astrolabe on his back to make him tired, a large dog fucking solo'd him; everything from that point onward (like the should-be-enlightened-and-calm Olorun panicking and trying to kamikaze-nuke Earth to deal with Cthulhu, instead of fucking off back into space and just ditching Earth) was just wasted breath. Guy's a joke. Cerberus for King of the Divine Realm, he can rule alongside on top of Freya.
    And skipping on the 'God-King-of-all-the-Divine' shit; the one moment that the title of Kang of Olympus should have gone back to King of Olympus, Zeus has a complete convenient personality shift (that only a true Gary Stu could force onto a narrative), ignores his 'Olorun = Titan-like' internal thought process and is just ok with Olorun staying as Kang for a while. Which was just dissatisfying for what could have been a nice loose-end-tying ending, especially since from that point on anyways, Zeus is the one who calls all the shots and shows up in all the promotional stuff in Olorun's place - because marketing are one of the few non-retarded departments in LoRez, and most people quite logically and rightfully assume that Zeus would be the head of the Greek pantheon in-lore, not a literal fucking who under overstayed and contrived circumstances.

    That's it for Olorun. If you were expecting any Hera x Olorun / Zeus jokes, LoRez forced enough allusions of them while writing the lore that if I try to come up with any more it'd just be stale and even more unfunny needlessly insulting. Yes. It does get that bad. To the point that Zeus and Hera having any actual married couple interactions without any petty dickmeasuring jokes is a jarring breath of fresh air. There's bickering, and there's the 9th time it rears it's head, like a wet turd being rammed in a.... oops, was that the wrong kind of interracial joke?
    If Thunderbrush can force his fetish into Paladins, then I'd give genuine creedance to any notion that there's probably some literal cuck in Titanforge fucking with the lore intern's final draft. Granted, it's not to the point it ruins the lore or characters, but it's distasteful and distracting to say the least. Schizotime; might have been Romanova - as a PR girl with fingers in many pies (citation: Realm Royale) it makes sense she'd potentially be one of the last ones to get her paws on the prose before it's released to the public. I don't know how much involvement she had in SMITE, though - that is the spanner-in-the-works of this schizotheory.

tl;dr LoRez have completely fucked up Olorun. He's treated as if he's Obatala, with the never-shown power level of Olorun, takes sides in conflicts he objectively should be involved in assisting boths sides of, jobs to a dog (but DUUUUUUDE could tooooootally solo Tiamat / Cthulhu broooo) and is given so many free passes you'd think he's on welfare.

SMITE's got a pretty good schitck going. As you probably thought when booting the game up for the first time and seeing them - yeah, African cultures really don't get that much attention at all (mostly for good reason). Pretty fresh grounds, lots of leeway to work with - considering most of Africa is too inept to make their own damn games and media. It'd be nice in that case, if LoRez focused on getting the core concepts right, instead of appealing to their braindead USA niggers and treating the actual mythology as toilet paper to wipe their skin colour with.
This is one of the cases where (and the exact problem with) getting the interns to look shit up on Wikipedia really won't help - because Africa isn't exactly developed enough to give you all the answers. Just do the bare fucking minimum, and stop forcing them in at every point because extended american culture copypasta.

Characterization complete, now we move on to Gods that should be absolute, undisputed mythological powerhouses that are in relative terms passed up continually, and opportune scenario-fitting Gods that are just ignored (I mean come on, how could they not use Janus for the Hades Raid? Too busy photoshopping Baron onto BLACKED porn methinks.).

  • .
    • Janus is the Pantheon Head of the Romans, and yet hasn't had a single fucking allusion to his existence. Bit of a problem? Yeah, especially considering Bellona struts around like she owns the place.
    • Time is treated as the ultimate form of manipulation in this Universe (Olorun assuming Divine Throne purely because he can slow it, and in extreme conditions, pause it around him - again, not paticularly related to his mythos at all) - meanwhile Chronos is just sat on his hands and never as much as referred to, despite being with the Greek Pantheon.
    • Terra (aka Gaia, a being that should be equitable to Tiamat) is treated like a glorified cameo and as of yet literally has not had a single line of dialogue.
    • Nox (Gaia's equal amongst the Greek Primordials) solo's a colossal Frost Giant, then just poofs out of relevance forevermore from that point. Doesn't even spare an ounce of pity about her canonical grandson Thor, when she tells her grandniece to fuck off and let Asgard burn.
    • The Morrigan is a singlehanded-pantheon-equalling powerhouse and general source of all conflict (and as we learn from Cliodhna on her comment about the Tuatha De Danann, is an everpresent being across cycles), as of yet hasn't showed up since she did not!nothing during Susano-O's bizarre adventure. She didn't even get to play with the League of Best Friends! The horror!
    • Thoth is in his own right a secondary sub-Pantheon-Head within the Egyptian Pantheon (similar to Horus, but more pronounced in importance to his Egyptian locality), and has potential setup from his book having details from previous Universes.... and yet...... pffffffffft?????

WHERE ARE THEY? And no, Neith at the last second saying "le old gods generally stay out of young'un' squabbles" doesn't count - I wouldn't say 2-3 Apocalypses classify as minor, lower-God squabbles.


{checks notes}.... right, is there anything else to bitch about.... no..... ok, I'll finish up....


I guess as final notes... that, while the GN writing has become 'serviceable' in the last few years (Cthulhu and Tiamat arcs being decent examples - even if you do generally need the context I've provided, such as the map alterations over these arcs or cinematic canon-icity context), Lo-Rez's quite clear lack of mythological knowledge combined with a forced diversity drive is at a direct expense to the narrative. If they had a good writer like me ;), they should quite easily / fluidly / passively be able to have le diversitymemes and not make the reader sigh when they see the same few names forced in - especially since the inferrable gender'qualitymemes that were highly likely in the writing process too were handled well enough that they're completely unnoticeable (or at least there's been no overbearing GRRRRRRL gamer moment yet).
It's honestly not that hard given the setting, since you've got a Pantheon on every continent.

As for the rest.... just fucking show, don't tell. Still waiting on how Fenrir figured out a way to chew on Sol.

tl;dr all those times I mentioned 'thank me later' across the doc? go ahead and throw your unending praise in-thread - don't worry, I should see it if I'm still alive

this is your ol' pal anon signing off until next time ;)


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Edit
Pub: 31 May 2022 10:35 UTC
Edit: 14 Jul 2022 05:12 UTC
Views: 60