I played a lot of heretic when I was a kid. Thinking about it gives me great nostalgia, it comes form that mid 90's archetype when ID and Doom were the king of kings and almost every game ran in the id Tech engine. What was different about this game was that you were a demon wizard who instead of using guns, used staves and magic (or a crossbow sometimes) to take on countless numbers of monsters. Heretic was popular enough to receive three sequels, Hexen, Hexen II, and lastly Heretic II. The last game in the series was released in 1998 and the franchise hasn't so much as let out a whisper in the decades to follow. I really loved the themes and settings to these games and recently, while playing through the new Wolfenstein, I've also been wondering what a new Heretic today would be like.

There sure as hell aren't a lot of first person magic games around these parts anymore. Games like the Elder Scrolls series have added magic elements into the games but it took until Skyrim for that system to not feel completely awful. Still, I want a whole game of just magic! Casting magic at magic stuff and watching magic things happen, magically! WHY CANT I HAVE THIS?! The potential of a first person sorcerer game built on a new engine with modern day concepts could be limitless. I wonder, why has this style of game never been capitalized on for today's market?

Well, what do you guys think? Any other long lost fans of Heretic here? Are there newer games like this that I am simply not aware of? Or what are your ideas for a new Heretic made today?

@xanadu: I guess the only thing I disagree with here is the idea that Heretic fans are long lost, or that Heretic is forgotten. I always got the impression that Heretic and Hexen are well remembered. At least for those of us who played a lot of those older FPS games.

Also, an updated, coop Hexen would be awesome.

@sbaitso: Good to know I'm not alone on that. And coop could be really cool. A portal 2 like coop campaign with magic spells instead of portals could be amazing.

I remember Heretic and Hexen but I can't remember if I had the full games or just played the hell out of the shareware.
Those days I was playing a lot of Doom on D.W.A.N.G.O.
That's some pre-internet shit right there!
; )

I will not lie when I say I often reinstall this game series..... it was flawed, but entertaining. Always felt like the definitive Doom Clone except for Hexen which actually brought in stats.

Actually..... was there any news on why id never expanded theses games AFTER Romero left id? After Romero left it was mostly focused on Doom, Quake and Wolfenstien not Heretic..... I always got the impression Romero loved RPGs more then Carmack.

Yeah I loved Heretic as well... Should go back and finish it. And also I guess Lichdom: Battlemage is kind of a magic game with casting magic at magical thingies...

Hexens and Heretic might not be forgotten, but I'm pretty sure people weren't really aware of Heretic 2 even when it came out. I remember liking the demo of it, but never gave the full game a try. Hexen 2 I recall liking, but don't think it would hold up that well now.

Only similiar game (that's more your typical FPS than Skyrim) that comes to mind would be probably Dark Messiah, and even that doesn't rely that much on magic. Other similiar one would probably be the upcoming Hellraid. That's all I can think of right now.

I would certainly love to play a shooter with spectacular visuals and a badass wizard blowing stuff up. Or like someone from here suggested ages ago, a gritty 3rd person actiongame similiar to Max Payne, where you'd be treating your magic potion addiction instead of a painkiller one...the idea didn't get much further than that, but it's a start. Maybe someone will try something similiar to Hexen/Heretic in a Kickstarter one day?

They're still installed on Steam for me. Forgotten not!

@glottery: The Max Payne angle could be really cool, especially bundled with a Remedy-like graphic novel style.

It's not forgotten at all. I play those games on occsasion still.

More possibly forgotten is Mageslayer which is a forgotten sequel/offshoot game of heretic. The thing is... it's kind of terrible- only raven game I can think to say that about- and I know people forgot it because the wiki page is empty.

edit: oh and I just popped it in the drive on my PC just now, for giggles since I'm currently thinking about it, and shockingly the game still works on my modern PC. Crazy.

Oh man. Time to dig out unpack my WAD archive and track down the latest version of whatever source port again.. Seems like I do this every year or two and play through at least Ultimate Doom and Heretic. I remember thinking Heretic II was pretty rad back in the day, no idea how it holds up now.