#if this flops I will ascend to godhood and bring about the end of the world

[lovecoredeity]

🩸once bitten twice shy doesn’t quite apply 💋

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[ranger-report]

Thoughts On: HERETIC II (1998)

Just over one year after the release of Hexen II, Raven Software published the final game in their dark fantasy series. Set apart from the Serpent Rider Trilogy of Heretic./Hexen/Hexen II, Heretic II told the tale of Corvus Corax, the elven hero of the first Heretic, and his journey to return home after years of wandering the Outer Worlds. See, defeating one of the Serpent Riders resulted in his being thrown far far away from his origin world of Parthoris, and left to his own devices, he had a bit of a time attempting to make his way back. Marking the first time in the series that id Software had no involvement in the release of the game save for providing the modified id tech 2 engine (AKA the Quake 2 engine), this release was published by Activision under their purview. Moving in the direction of a third-person adventure with first-person shooter mechanics, Raven made it clear that they were going to take inspiration from wherever they could, including a popular little title called Tomb Raider. While garnering favorable reviews, Heretic II would ultimately be lost in the holiday shuffle of PC gaming as it had the unfortunate circumstance to be released one week after a particularly groundbreaking first-person shooter from Valve Software. You may have heard of it: Half-Life. As a result of the unfortunate coincidence and the lackluster response from fans due to the series changes, Heretic II was a commercial flop. But, with all that said, how does Heretic II stack in the lineup of the series it brings to a conclusion? And why has there been no further entries in the series since?

To begin with, the decision to make Heretic II a third person adventure was controversial amongst fans of the series. Yes, the style was popular and gaining traction, and Raven was nothing if not innovators, so the decision to a degree made sense. Why not take their dark fantasy world and put it through the wringer, especially since the main plot of the first three games was now over? Going into this title, I knew I was in for an adjustment period, but I had no idea it would be as shocking as it was. Slow, unintuitive camera movement coupled with clunky, lackluster controls make the game much more of a chore to play than the original games. Gone is the fast-paced combat, replaced with deliberately paced enemy encounters. Picking up heavily on the Tomb Raider inspiration, Corvus can leap, flip, roll, and somersault his way around the maps. Points for inspiration. But man’s -- er, elf’s -- reach exceeds his grasp, and while this sounds well and good on paper, molasses-like reaction times feel more like directing Corvus through waist-high water instead of the nimble acrobatics the game shoots for. Animations, graphics, sound design, everything on a technical level is top notch stuff. Corvus himself has a modeled backbone to allow for more fluid animations, shown off in his running, fighting, and even idle cycles. It’s impressive stuff that the gameplay just can’t seem to live up to on an engaging level. Heretic II feels like an attempt to return to the form of the first Heretic, but through the lens of a team who’s never played the first one. Rather than using different types of mana for ammunition, green mana is reserved for offensive spells, blue mana for defensive spells, and most weapons have unique ammunition types. Gone, too, is the inventory system of carrying items and objects for future use; instead, Corvus automatically uses any health or magic pickups he comes across, something which is bolstered by shrines which either completely refill mana, health, or armor points. When it comes to story, one must wonder which direction the intent was headed. Perhaps the original vision of Hecatomb was to come full circle with Corvus and face the final Serpent Rider after being outcast from the realms. The scattershot nature of the plot here doesn’t seem to suggest it, however.

As Corvus progresses, he returns to his home of Parthoris to discover a strange disease has taken over the land, changing the elves into diseased, violent versions of themselves. After being attacked, Corvus himself is infected, initiating his quest to discover a cure, and stop the mad magus Morcalavin. On an interesting note, it turns out that Morcalavin has collected the Seven Tomes of Power to aid him in magic use, but one of the Tomes is a fake and is the cause of the infection -- Corvus has been carrying the seventh Tome with him since Heretic. A bit of revisionist history considering that Tomes of Power have been consumable items since Heretic, and there were many more than seven. Noting this change to lore, Corvus simply needs to replace the fake Tome with the true one, and that should reverse Morcalavin’s corrupted power. Another noteworthy change is that the hub system of the previous games is also gone, replaced with a similar map progression to Heretic. Some maps are linear exercises in traveling from start to finish, others require moving about the many layers of the map to collect and bring together keys and objects. This is one of the largest departures from the previous games -- this story is far more intimate, more structured, more character-driven with cutscenes, dialogue, worldbuilding not seen in prior entries. Before, we were simply nameless warriors moving through dark fantasy worlds, kicking ass, taking names, killing gods and monsters alike. Here, we get to know one of said warriors by name and history. Yes, before now, Corvus was never actually named in his first appearance. He was simply “The Heretic” which was FAR more badass, although Corvus Corax is up there on the list of great fantasy names with ease. But, rather than a ride, this game wants to tell a story, watering down the experience. Whether Raven can tell a good story in other games is besides the point; here, the slipshod nature of the shoestring story attempting to provide a bit more theatricality feels tacked on, an oddity. Sure, perhaps the evolutionary nature of progression is where Raven felt the need to provide an actual factual story with their action game, also again from the inspiration of Tomb Raider slipping in, but it doesn’t hit the mark, nor age well in particular. Here we can see the beginnings of action games moving forward out of simple exercises in running and shooting, but telling stories with cinematic flair. Half-Life did the same, but with striking results, and far less awkward dialogue. And then, furthering the frustratingly bland story is the abrupt ending, in which the villain is cleansed of his corruption and ascends to godhood the way he intended, but leaving behind his power to Corvus in order to protect the world. So the bad guy....wins? But has become a good guy?

So, the question must be asked: what happened? Where Hexen II showed little of the changes that Raven were forced to make when new owner Activision mandated that they split the Heretic and Hexen series into separate entities, this game bears the unfortunate weight of that departure. As previously mentioned, the planned third game in the Serpent Rider Trilogy, Hecatomb, was divided into two games post-mandate, the ideas of which also went in two separate directions. John Romero has made frequent commentary in the past about the separation of the games as products vs a proper trilogy. He’d been involved with Hecatomb until his departure from id Software, which was also around the time that Raven was purchased by Activision. The publishing giant, he notes, split up the Raven team who had worked on the Heretic/Hexen games, further increasing the divide of the products. According to one of his accounts, one team worked on all three Serpent Rider games before the split, at which point that team was divided amongst the three in-house developing teams that already existed. While Brian Raffel, the mind behind the game series, was present and active on Heretic II, not everyone who’d put their passion into the rest of the series was there for the creation of this game. This shows in the final product. 

With that in mind, it seems a little unfair to judge this game as harshly as I am. Perhaps we should be examining it, looking at the interesting bit of gaming history it represents. It marks a point in time where Raven, having experienced fair success on their own through working with technology giant id Software and other publishers, has become a corporate-owned entity. This is, in fact, the first game by Raven to be published exclusively by Activision. Eventually, Raven Software would be conscripted by Activision into the Holy Trinity of Call of Duty developers, rotating in and out making new COD games so they can come out yearly. What legacy, then, does this particular game leave? There is a mark here, a brand, a scar, a sign of things to come. Mandates from above demanding two franchises instead of one, an ironic analogy of the division of Raven from id Software -- Heretic II may have been published and distributed exclusively by Activision, but id Software published the previous games, and held publishing rights to those games. Meanwhile, the transfer of copyright went to Activision, putting future games into a pickle. Activision no doubt has little interest in creating new games in a series when they can’t make money from previous entries. Furthering problems is that Heretic II does not exist in digital format, probably again due to Activision unable to profit from sales of the prior games; a casual copyright search for Heretic II in the public record comes up with zero results, effectively placing the game as abandonware. With Raven owned by Activision, and id owned by Bethesda (formerly Zenimax), establishing cooperation between the two giants may seem difficult to impossible at this point.

What a shame for the final entry in what began as such a promising series to end limping across the finish line. In my research I found quite a few people who were glowing with nostalgic praise for Heretic II, and why not? In the opening level of Silverspring, we’re greeted with a run down town disparaged by the rampant virus. Flies zip back and forth and Corvus slaps his neck to be rid of them; children cry in the distance, dripping water echoing reminds of the empty nature of this place. All the environments in the game are rife with audio and visual treats that literally drip with atmosphere and character. There is a strange amount of life here, in a living world that feels interesting and worth exploring. But the controls and story fall flat, alongside the abysmal decision to make the game a third person adventure instead of the first person shooters of the previous entries. Whether or not we’ll ever see a proper new entry into the Heretic/Hexen world is, unfortunately, something that remains to be seen. Spiritual successors, such as AMID EVIL and the upcoming Graven reap the fields which were sown of Hexen’s seeds. Activision and Bethesda may never see eye to eye on the subject of reviving Heretic or Hexen or maybe even the fabled Hecatomb, but one thing is clear: regardless of the corporate greed which aborted the lifespan of this wonderful series, the first three games of this series live on as passionate exercises in dark fantasy, examples of how to push the FPS genre forward while remaining firmly grounded in what makes it work. Heretic II is the Crystal Skull of this series -- many will find themselves better off forgetting it ever happened. Activision certainly has. And again, how ironic is it, that the very mandate which they laid down in order to spawn new sequels and twin franchises led to the death of them.