Heretic II

Heretic II is a third-person action-adventure by Raven Software, published by Activision and released for Windows in North America on November 24, 1998 and in Europe on December 4, 1998. It continues the story of the elf Corvus from Heretic, but it drops the first-person view of Heretic and Hexen for a camera behind the hero, and swaps the Doom engine for a modified Quake II engine. Critics liked it (GameRankings 82%), but it sold poorly: PC Data counted 28,994 units in the United States by April 1999.

Do not confuse it with Hexen II, the last game of the Serpent Riders trilogy, a separate game with four classes (Paladin, Crusader, Necromancer, Assassin).

Technical Specifications

Plot: A Plague in Parthoris

Corvus returns from banishment to find that a mysterious plague has swept Parthoris and driven its people mad. He is infected as well, but the Tome of Power holds the disease back for a while. He travels through several regions to a mountain castle, where he finds the ancient Seraph Morcalavin, who went insane after using a false tome in his search for immortality. Corvus swaps the false tome for his real one, which cures Morcalavin and ends the plague.

How It Plays: Third Person, Spells, and a Bladestaff

The camera sits behind Corvus. He fights with melee and ranged attacks, and three weapons use their own ammunition. Offensive and defensive spells draw on green and blue mana, and the Tome of Power is now a defensive spell that temporarily boosts damage and grants new abilities. The bladestaff can sever enemy limbs, and shrines give various effects. The 3D levels support climbing, wall back-flips and pole vaulting, and the game was inspired by Tomb Raider. GameSpot’s review praised the detailed swamps and temples, Corvus’s animation and the paced, resource-limited levels, and criticized the load times, the sluggish sidestep, the backtracking through hubs and the short length. It also called the deathmatch less fast than Quake’s.

Development and the Quake II Engine

Development began in November 1997 with a team of about 20. Raven chose the Quake II engine for a third-person game, and Corvus used about 1,600 frames of animation, most of them made in Softimage, while static objects were made in 3D Studio Max. The engine could show up to 4,000 polygons on screen at once. Brian Pelletier directed and made the art, with Steve Stringer producing and Gerald Brom, the artist behind Heretic’s cover, providing concept art.

Reception and Sales

Reviews were good: GameSpot gave 8.1/10, IGN 7.9/10, Edge 8/10 and Next Generation 3/5, and GameRankings averages the Windows version at 82%. It was a finalist for Best Action at Computer Gaming World’s 1999 Premier Awards, won Loonygames’ 1998 Action Game of the Year, and received a Gamesmania 1998 Award of Excellence. The sales were poor. PC Data counted 28,994 US units by April 1999, and Activision’s Steve Felsen blamed the perspective: “fans of first-person shooters, the target audience for this game, stayed away due to the third-person perspective.”

Where to Play It

Heretic II is not part of Heretic + Hexen. The rights were split after ZeniMax bought id in 2009: Activision held development rights and id the publishing rights, and the older Steam and GOG collection also left out Heretic II and Hexen II. We could not find a Steam or GOG store page for it, and one 2021-22 Steam discussion and a sourceport article both describe a boxed copy as the way to get it. Check the stores for any change before you buy. If you own a copy, Heretic2R is a reverse-engineered source port by a developer known as MaxEd. It adds widescreen support with automatic HUD scaling, an unlocked frame rate, faster map loading and cosmetic improvements, and it needs your own game data updated to version 1.06.