Last year, Bethesda surprised us with Yet Another Remaster of Doom. Titled DOOM + DOOM II, this one replaced the 2019 remaster done by Nerve Software with a from-the-ground-up approach by Nightdive Studios, which have become the go-to developers for FPS remasters these days. It even came with a brand new Doom episode made by members of id, Nightdive, and MachineGames called Legacy of Rust, which I wrote about last year. I jokingly asked when they’re gonna tackle Raven Software’s Heretic and Hexen next. Well, I got my wish.
Heretic + Hexen – keeping the naming convention from DOOM + DOOM II – is a complete overhaul of Raven’s two medieval action games from 1995-96, pushing the Doom engine to its limits at the time. New levels, new art, a vault of concept art from the previous games, and of course, a newly arranged soundtrack by Andrew Hulshult. (there’s the option to revert to Kevin Schilder’s original soundtracks if you wish, but I like Hulshult’s work when he’s not doing generic metal covers of game music, this remaster included.) This also marks the first time in over 25 years that you can play Heretic and Hexen on modern platforms with all the niceties that come with it.
This also means Nightdive has officially remastered every major commercial Doom engine game from the 90s: Doom, Doom II, Heretic, Hexen, and Strife. Congratulations, y’all. Now if you wanna count stuff like Chex Quest and HacX, you’re more than welcome to, but I’m excluding those here, as Chex Questwas a free* product and HacX has been made freeware by the developers for a while now. I can’t see a remaster of either of these, though I wouldn’t mind one for Chex Quest, just for laughs.
When DOOM + DOOM II came out,I said that they “didn’t need to do this,” that the Nerve Software remaster was perfectly fine for what it set out to do: Make it so you could play Doom on modern devices, without the need for DOSbox wizardry. Anyone who’s diehard into Doom know they can just drag DOOM2.WAD into a source port of choice – GZDoom, dsda-doom, Doomsday, you name it – and play.
Heretic and Hexen, however, are different. Heretic never left its DOS origins, and the last time Hexen got home ports was the mid 90s, on the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and Nintendo 64. (From what I’ve heard, the PS1 port is the worst, while the N64 port was the best.) While Doom had been ported to every platform under the sun, these two games haven’t. So this is the chance for a new audience of folks dealing with annoying Iron Liches spitting tornadoes, or get annoyed at trying to find the hidden switches in Winnowing Hall.
If you’re familiar with Nightdive’s remaster work – They’ve remastered System Shock 2, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Blood, Quake and Quake II, Powerslave, Killing Time, Rise of the Triad, among countless others – you know what to expect here. Polishing up the original game assets, updating levels for clarity and fun factor, and, especially in more recent remasters, a new set of levels often made by Nightdive themselves. Heretic + Hexen have all of those in spades, with a bunch of enhanced features.
Speaking of enhanced features, let’s talk about the updates the port brings. Nightdive updated all the maps from both games to be a bit nicer looking, moving them a bit more closer to “modern” custom Doom map sensibilities. This surprised me to find out during Heretic, as I was trying to find the secret levels in episode 2 (Hell’s Maw) and episode 5 (The Stagnant Demesne), only to realize that the regular way you’d discover them in the original game wouldn’t work here. That’s when I discovered they updated the maps as well.
The last time I played Heretic in its entirety – the three episodes plus the two bonus episodes from the Shadow of the Serpent Riders expansion – was 2016, so I just figured the levels just looked like that. I should’ve expected this, as that seems to be their MO with every remaster. Well, barring DOOM + DOOM II, they treat all 68 levels of those two games as sacred and don’t touch a thing on them besides maybe fixing a bug or two.
This along with some tweaks to the overall gameplay and item placement makes it more of a “director’s cut” experience to the game. These can all be turned off if you wanna play the game the way Raven originally designed it, but I think for new players you’d be better off keeping the enhanced features on.
To make it also more user-friendly, the inventory systems in both games will now give a description on what the item does. Which makes sense, the way we digest info in games now is different than in the mid-90s, where we’d pore over manuals that would give this info. It’s nice, but the inventory system can be a bit unwieldy especially in the midst of combat, but I’m glad this is there so I know the different between a quartz flask and a chaos device.
For Hexen, they opted to add markers on the automap to indicate where keys and other important items might be, as well as using the X from the Hexen logo to indicate to the player towards progress in a “hey, there’s Something Important in this level, you should head to this teleporter” sort of way. I honestly wish they implemented the Compass item from their Quake II remaster, but with how you’re probably gonna be jugging multiple objectives, they probably wanted to avoid confusion, and this automap marker was the compromise. It works, and it definitely helped me figure out where to go while playing the new Hexen expansion.
Speaking of new expansions, it wouldn’t be a modern Nightdive remaster without them. This time around we got two expansions: one for Heretic called Faith Renewed, and one for Hexen called Vestiges of Grandeur. Vestiges is how I got to experience Hexen’s side of the remaster, as I had already beaten Hexen and Deathkings of the Dark Citadel earlier this year using dsda-doom, and didn’t feel like immediately replaying Hexen. (I’ve been half-tempted to write about Hexen a few times, might do so in the future.)
Heretic: Faith Renewed takes place immediately after the original third episode of Heretic, with Corvus discovering that D’Sparil has been brought back from the dead, doing evil deeds once more. This one was handled almost entirely by Nightdive’s Samuel “Kaiser” Villarreal, with one secret level by handled by Doom community member Not Jabba. (Spicy take: You should use your full name when working on a commercial product, not just an online handle. At least make a convincing real name like Xaser Acheron did!)
Since these levels were made about 30 years since the original release, naturally they have a similar sense of evolution that the Doom community’s figured out with level design, with less maze-like corridors and easier sign posting where the player needs to go. One level had me acquire the green key, take me down a specific path once I got it, which lead me back to the central area right where the green key door is.
The sense of “there and back again” is strong, and I only got lost in a later level where it became a pseudo-switch hunt akin to Hexen, and it took me longer than most of the other maps combined.
Of course, there’s a few new monsters to fight in this episode. One which is literally a chaos serpent, another being a faster version of the golem monster, and a charging monster called the Troll, and he lives up to his name, being basically a more aggressive version of the Maulotaur but with fewer hit points. Don’t get too close!
In spite of the ridiculous maze level, it was a pretty breezy experience. Kaiser definitely shows a labor of love with Faith Renewed, understanding Heretic’s mechanics enough to make it fun without it feeling like a Doom level set ported to another game. It’s probably the highlight of the remaster.
Hexen’s new episode, Vestiges of Grandeur, was more of a collaboration between Doom community members and Nightdive employees. Matt Tropiano, another notable Doom level designer and Nightdive employee, was the leader of this project; with Kaiser, Not Jabba, and Xaser contributing the remaining levels for the sole hub of the expansion. Taking place after Deathkings of the Dark Citadel, Korax makes one last return, and it’s up to Our Hero to stop it.
One of the big things Vestiges of Grandeur does is give the option for you to change your class mid-game. In classic Hexen, once you picked a class, you were stuck with it unless you were willing to start a new game. Doing this gives the opportunity for the player to try out the different classes, or to use a specific class that would be better in one area compared to another. (There’s also an achievement for playing as all three classes in a single playthrough, something I neglected to do in my first playthrough.)
This also means the special fourth weapon, which requires 3 pieces to build, is strewn all around the hubs for each class, meaning you could potentially build any one of the powerful weapons for their classes. Alas it’s locked to whatever class you are playing as, you don’t get to wield Quietus, the Fighter’s slot 4 weapon, as a Mage; you still have to find the parts for their class, the Bloodscourge, instead. Would’ve been funny to implement, at least.
With the aforementioned automap hints I mentioned earlier, this made getting through Vestiges without too much trouble. Much like Winnowing Hall from Hexen, there’s a lot of going between the hub areas to access another level, in a back-and-forth sort of way, but it’s not super cryptic like it can be in Hexen. Again, with hindsight and improvements to game design since the original Hexen’s release, this means it’s easier to point players in the right direction without them being outright confused and relying on YouTube videos to progress.
There is a big downside though: The final map with Korax himself. There were not enough mana pickups as my Cleric, and since it’s basically a boss fight that doubles as the classic Doom slaughter map, I ended up running out of mana frequently, thus having to do a lot of dodging of projectiles and enemies so I could heal up and restock. I could use a chaos device to warp to the start, which thankfully has a teleporter that’ll warp you back in, but there was no ammo or health to grab once I was in, and the teleporter stopped working after I used another Chaos Device, causing a softlock. Once I defeated Korax, I had no mana to fight the last few serpents guarding the exit, and I wasn’t gonna bash them to death with a mace at 20HP. Lots of dodging had to be done to conquer that one. I would’ve added a few more healing items and maybe a Krater of Might or two just to get back into the fight.
Despite that frustrating end, I still recommend Vestiges of Grandeur. It’s a little bit weaker than Faith Renewed, but those flaws come more from Hexen’s design as a whole more than anything Nightdive did. Compared to massive amount of custom Doom levels, there aren’t very many community made Hexen hubs, so I’ll forgive them on this one.
Heretic + Hexen is undeniably the Definitive Edition of these two games. Yeah, sure, you could do what me and several other Doom diehards do and grab a copy of HERETIC.WAD and HEXEN.WAD and shove it in dsda-doom and be happy with that, but if you’re not willing to futz around with that, this is the best way to experience these. If you wanna experience the beginnings of Raven Software’s long-standing legacy before being another cog in the Call of Duty machine, this is the one to grab.
Heretic + Hexen is available on all major platforms (console and PC) for $15. Owners of the old DOS games on Steam/GOG get this upgrade for free, which is how I got to play this for this article.
Now I’m not sure what to ask Nightdive to remaster next. They’ve hit all the classics, they’ve got most of the B-tier stuff like Turok and Rise of the Triad, hell they’ve even remastered the less fondly remembered games like PO’ed and Killing Time. Maybe they can find a way to make Redneck Rampage actually good. Blood: Fresh Supply could do with a Big Update of its own. Maybe they can find a way to remaster Quake III Arena next. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
I’ve seen folks suggest Doom 3 and I doubt that’ll happen any time soon, as the “BFG Edition” seems to be the de facto remaster of that game despite it being somewhat flawed. Would be neat to get a new Doom 3 episode from them, though!
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