Hexen: Beyond Heretic

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Description

Hexen is the sequel to Heretic. While the Heretic was destroying D'Sparil, the other two Serpent Riders have come to your dimension and slaughtered everyone. Or so they thought. Three humans have managed to escape with their lives and now seek vengeance against the Serpent Rider Korax who remains in their world.

Like Heretic, Hexen is a fantasy game based on an enhanced DOOM engine. All of Heretic's innovations like vertical looking, flying, and the inventory system have been carried over. The new major changes this time around are three characters for the player to choose from and the level hub system. The characters are the Fighter, the Cleric, and the Mage. Each one has four unique weapons and different levels of speed and armor.

The hub system steps away from the traditional "single levels stringed along into episodes" system which had been carried over into the FPS genre from sidescrollers and made popular by Wolfenstein 3D. In Hexen's hub system each episode is still made up of interconnected levels, but most of the levels are connected to a single "hub" level through portals. There are also portals between some of the "spoke" levels. Many of the puzzles in Hexen require travel back and forth between different levels.

Other innovations in Hexen include weather effects, jumping, earth-quakes, and destructible objects such as trees and vases. The game also includes scripted sequences created with a language called ACS, allowing for much more complex puzzles and dramatic scenes.

Screenshots

Promo Images

Alternate Titles

• "Hexen 95" -- Windows re-release title
• "Hexen" -- Console title
• "Heretic 2" -- Working title

Part of the Following Groups

• 3D Engine: id Tech 1
• Gameplay feature: Auto-mapping
• Gameplay feature: Recordable replays
• Heretic and Hexen series

User Reviews

(Review from 1995) Hexen is more than just a "Doom Clone" and is worth trying.	DOS	Kaddy B. (796)
Hexen is an excellent shooter that's just not for everyone.	DOS	WJAndrews (35)
True to its name in many ways... frustrating, somewhat fun.	DOS	ShadowShrike (303)
Enormous switch hunt in scary castles.	DOS	Sir Gofermajster (493)
Pushing the limits of id Tech 1, one sector at a time.	DOS	Chris Charabaruk (199)
A descent Medieval shooter that just tries to be too many games at once	DOS	Medicine Man (374)
An RPG-Style First-Person Shooter	DOS	Aenn Seidhe Priest (10)

Critic Reviews

Mac Ledge	Macintosh	1996	9 out of 10	90
Joystick (French)	Macintosh	Oct, 1996	85 out of 100	85
PC Gamer	DOS	Feb, 1996	85 out of 100	85
GameStar (Germany)	Windows	Sep, 1997	85 out of 100	85
Online Gaming Review (OGR)	DOS	Nov 16, 1995	8 out of 10	80
The DOS Spirit	DOS	Dec 10, 2009	4.5 out of 6	75
Mega Fun	Nintendo 64	Aug, 1997	65 out of 100	65
GameSpot	Nintendo 64	Jul 03, 1997	5 out of 10	50
GameSpot	SEGA Saturn	Apr 29, 1997	4.9 out of 10	49
IGN	Nintendo 64	Jun 26, 1997	3.7 out of 10	37

Forums

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Trivia

Controversy

The Steam download version of the game is listed as Windows platform because the executables are modified to use a DOSBox variant (v 0.70); additionally the traditional setup.exe is missing.

It is confirmed that neither Valve or id Software contacted the DOSBox project staff and initially the game didn't includes the TXT files that must be present under the GPL license (so they failed to fulfill 2 points of the GPL license).

Two days after the launch, there was an update that includes COPYING, AUTHORS and THANKS.txt of the DOSBox 0.71.

References

• In the Necropolis, you can find graves that have the names of some of the authors written on them.
• In the first HUB, "The Seven Portals" there is a secret level hidden. Once you're in it, you can find D'Sparil's (from the original Heretic) heart in there.
• The villain's name, Korax, is derived from the scientific name of the common raven: corvus corax. This is an intentional joke as the game was developed by Raven Software.
• The first place in the game where the Porkalator artifact can be found is on Hub 2: "Caves of Circe". Circe was a character in Greek mythology, who transformed Odysseus' crew into pigs.

References to the game

The final boss of Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, Mordekai The Summoner, carries a staff very similar to the Bloodscourge, the last weapon of the Mage class in Hexen: Beyond Heretic. It should also be noted that the enemy as a whole looks very similar to D'Sparil, the final boss of Heretic.

Speech

One of the demonic sounds that the enemy Dark Bishop sometimes utters, when played backwards, actually sounds like his name.

Title

In German, "hexen" means "witches", or "casting a spell" when used as a verb. Moreover, the game has a Warlock skill level - a warlock (or "hexenmeister") is the male version of a witch.

Version differences

The PlayStation version can be called notoriously evil for being one of the few games on the system to require one ENTIRE Memory Card (yes, all 15 blocks worth) to save just ONE save game!

Information also contributed by Dark Dante, Emepol, Macintrash, Medicine Man, Maw and Satoshi Kunsai

Related Web Sites

• Doomsday HQ (Home of jDoom, jHeretic, and jHexen. These are hardware accelerated ports of those games ( require original DOS versions to work). Useful to make the games prettier, extended multiplayer support, and to work perfectly on Windows Xp!)
• Raven-Games (This site is dedicated to older Raven Software games. Here you can get maps and mods for Heretic, including JHexen and Koka's GLHexen, the two best hardware accelerated Hexen upgrades in existence!)
• This is not your world, mortal. (official game pages at GT Interactive's website, preserved by the Wayback Machine)
• Wikipedia: Hexen: Beyond Heretic (Information about Hexen: Beyond Heretic at Wikipedia)