The Heretic and Hexen franchises. What happened to them? der=0>

[Kiroptus]

Am I the only one who greatly miss these franchises?

Heretic 2 was such a great adventure action games and a very underrated multiplayer game.

And Hexen 2 was so amazing, facing the horseman of the apocalypse was so epic, the necro was so fun to play, the cleric had amazing power tome variants, the assassin was a lot of fun (and had imo, the best final weapon of the game).


What happened to these franchises? Nowdays with all these FPS with leveling RPG mechanics tacked-in, the world of hexen could be perfectly bought back in a borderlands style of game, maybe not even requiring the loot part, the game was a lot of fun either way.

Anyone knows what happened to the developers? Who owns the trademark? Recently I really felt like playing Hexen 2 again, and damn, its old school but there is something magical about that game, it could be so well adapted to our current time.

[Maurish]

I'm actually in the middle of playing HeXen from time to time. Finished Heretic last year and it was great. If you're into the old Doom like games, you'll probably like these as well. Although these games are quite old for modern systems, there are various projects that have enhanced the game engine to work on newer systems. Doomsday Engine for example.

According to Wikipedia, Raven Software, who made these games was acquired by Activision so I guess they hold the intellectual property for these games. The people responsible for HeXen and Heretic left after the acquisition and formed Human Head Studios. Sadly, I haven't played any of their other games but I've heard good from Prey.

I guess what's holding back making another game like HeXen or Heretic are publishers. They probably considers these old games dead (except for the flagship Doom) and refuse to fund them. A Kickstarter project might be the only way with a reasonable budget.

[Kiroptus]

Thats too bad, lets hope that with this Kickstarter craze someone remembers about those 2 franchises, I am sick of all those military shooters, an FPS like heretic or hexen would be a breath of fresh air.

[Ixnatifual]

There's still a community around those older games, primarily the original Doom and games using the same engine (Heretic, Hexen and Strife). Advanced engines like ZDoom/GZDoom, Eternity, Boom and Doomsday add some great extra features like hi-res and scripting. Plenty of people are still churning out custom levels at sites such as www.doomworld.com. Also made a few custom episodes myself.