A Deeper Dive Into Bake Kujira, SMITE’s Newest God

The developers of SMITE have shared some insight about the newest god of the game, talking about his creation, design choices and intended role.

Yesterday, the 3^rd person MOBA SMITE got the teaser for it’s 129^th god – a Japanese deity, Bake Kujira, who is quite literally a whale. The Yokai of Japanese myth will arrive on December 12^th. Both the community and the developers are getting ready for the release of one of the most unique gods of SMITE, and so the team at Titan Forge released some extra information about the creation of Bake Kujira, and how they brought such an obscure deity to life.

Bake Kujira – a closer look

The developers and design team tried to focus on the dread aspect of the stories about Bake Kujira: he is a not-so-typical Japanese grudge spirit, hellbent on revenge because of what fishermen do to whales to this day.

Other than the imminent doom Bake Kujira presents, the developers loved that they could bring an actual whale into SMITE. However, they didn’t want him to feel like he doesn’t belong, so while keeping him whale-like, they made him ominous and spectral – and they hit their mark perfectly.

After deciding on the actual appearance of Bake Kujira, they matched him up with his intended gameplay: the newest Japanese god will be a Solo lane Guardian, just like Cthulhu and Jormungandr. While they didn’t reveal that much about Bake Kujira’s kit, being a solo lane magical tank requires skills that can help you trade and clear minions, so we can expect abilities along those lines.

In the blogpost, it was mentioned multiple times that Bake Kujira will not have burst damage, but gradually wear down his opponents. I believe the spectral whale will have some sort of aura ability, decreasing the offensive and defensive capabilities of his opponents.

TitanAggro did reveal some parts of Bake Kujira’s kit:

• He will be an Auto Attack focused Guardian with special AA’s – maybe similar to Sylvanus’ or Yemoja’s, but with a spin fitting the image of a dreadful ghost whale bringing plagues,
• He will have a Curse mechanic, most likely on his Passive that will help him take down even the fiercest foes,
• His kit will be synergistic with his Auto Attack-style gameplay, like ability cooldowns getting decreased by attacking enemies, and his AA’s scaling well into the lategame.
• His Ultimate will use a debuff that have only been used once in the history of SMITE – this could mean anything from CC’s such as Deafen, Time Dilation and Disorient to more obscure debuffs such as Nox’s old ultimate. But I’m betting on the whale gulping up opponents, completely taking their sight and hearing away for the duration, as the developers said that Bake Kujira will have a unique form of disorienting his opponents.

Bake Kujira will be released next week on December 12^th. With him being the last god of Season 10 of SMITE, I do believe that he will make a huge splash, and if we go off his design, his kit should be nothing but great as well!