Last month Bethesda and retro specialists Nightdive Studios announced the return and shadow drop of Heretic + Hexen – a “definitive re-release” of the classic spell shooters.
Now, much like the re-releases of DOOM and Quake, this latest package has now received its first major update. As explained on the Slayers Club website, Update 1 introduces a variety of new features, gameplay changes, fixes, and modding improvements, and has been made available across all platforms.
Here’s the full rundown of what you can expect:
New Features
- Heretic: Added original game’s Firemace placement randomization (albeit with 100% spawn chance instead of the original’s 75%)
- Added option to disable cutscene subtitles in Accessibility menu
- Added option to restore original two-button press behavior when selecting inventory items
- Added option to restore original behavior where flying forward or backward will keep you at the same height, regardless of looking up or down
- Added option to disable weapon animation smoothing
- Added ‘look up’, ‘look down’, and ‘center view’ key bindings
- Allow use of more buttons to advance through intermission text screens
- Gameplay Modifiers menu is now accessible from episode and player class screens, instead of just difficulty selection
Changes
- Hexen: Buffed Bloodscourge damage and adjusted autoaim behavior to work better with large crowds of enemies
- Hexen: Slightly increased attack speed of Timon’s Axe
- Hexen: Decreased Quietus mana usage from 14 of each type to 10
- Hexen: Slightly increased Wraithverge mana usage from 18 to 20
- Hexen: Improved smoothness of weapon attack animations for the weapons: Timon’s Axe, Hammer of Retribution, Mace of Contrition, Wraithverge, Sapphire Wand, and Bloodscourge
- Improved smoothness of weapon raise and lower animations
- Disable menu ambience if music soundtrack is set to None
Fixes
- Automap now scrolls at a consistent speed regardless of screen resolution
- Automap now zooms more quickly when using a mouse wheel
- Strafe left and right keys will now cancel each other out to match original game behavior
- Monsters can no longer be pushed off ledges by player weapon attacks
- Triggers can no longer be skipped in certain circumstances when sliding along walls
- Enemy missiles will no longer fire slightly downward, preventing incorrectly exploding on certain windowsills
- Monster melee attacks no longer have infinite height
- Multiplayer scoreboards will no longer show zeroed out stats in certain cases
- Fixed cases where disabling viewbob would cause weapon sprites to offset incorrectly
- Locked door messages will no longer print if door is activated from back side
- Fixed strafe modifier key not working for mouse or controller movement
- Fixed missing accented glyphs in supported languages when using Classic typeface
- Prevented messages at the top of the screen from being stuck after loading certain save games
- Heretic: The Chaos Serpent in Faith Renewed will no longer shoot fireballs over the player’s head
- Heretic: Gauntlets will no longer push enemies backward
- Heretic: Fixed status bar not redrawing correctly on level transition if crossfade option is disabled
- Heretic: Shadowspheres will now correctly penalize enemy aiming at the player
- Heretic: Fix black box on Firemace sprite
- Hexen: Fixed cases where weapon sprites for certain melee weapons (e.g. Cleric Mace) would occasionally jitter
- Hexen: Fixed explosions having infinite height
- Hexen: Messages for switch sequences in Deathkings will now print properly
Level Changes & Fixes
- Heretic: Fixed inconsistent blood floor texture behavior; blood floors will no longer deal damage)
- Heretic: Fixed inconsistencies between types of locked door textures to be consistent with original game
- Heretic: E1M6: Fixed an instance of overlapping monsters on Hard difficulty
- Heretic: E2M1: Removed a few Weredragons in singleplayer, for a bit less grind
- Heretic: E2M2: Remove mid-air floating stalactite
- Heretic: E2M5: Fixed non-damaging lava sector around yellow key
- Heretic: E2M7: Remove unreachable enemies from disabled green key track on easier difficulty modes
- Heretic: E3M5: Fixed gargoyles getting randomly stuck on hanging corpses
- Heretic: E3M6: Remove out-of-bounds Quartz Flask which caused 100% items being unobtainable
- Heretic: E4M2: Fixed softlock caused by skipping triggers for lowering the yellow key pyramid
- Heretic: E5M1: Fixed unobtainable secrets; add additional Tome of Power to maze area
- Heretic: E5M2: Fixed missing texture on waterfall steps after blue door
- Heretic: E5M3: “Pod-walk” and “Barrel-walk” sections are no longer required to reach the non-secret exit
- Heretic: E5M5: Fixed unobtainable secrets
- Heretic: E5M6: Fixed sky-pillar cutoff when viewing the starting area from the secret ledge outdoors
- Faith Renewed: E5M1: Fixed unobtainable secret
- Faith Renewed: E1M3: Fixed softlock caused by progressing beyond the green doors without a green key
- Faith Renewed: E1M6: Fixed non-lava damaging floor sector
- Faith Renewed: E1M7: Fixed unintended skip to yellow key and softlock caused by leaping into firepits near start
- Faith Renewed: E1M9: Fixed being able to escape beyond the playable bounds of the map in certain areas
- Vestiges of Grandeur: Serpent Temple: Fixed portals to Garden of Medea and Korax’s Domain only being usable one time
- Vestiges of Grandeur: Korax’s Domain: Fixed softlock when choosing incorrectly for the final puzzle switch
- Vestiges of Grandeur: Korax’s Domain: Fixed co-op shortcut teleporter only being usable one time
Microsoft Store
New Features
- Added support for using the Windows virtual keyboard for text inputs
Changes
- Removed option for exclusive fullscreen to fix some issues with Game Bar overlays and to allow virtual keyboard to work
Modding Changes
- Added warning that the mod uploader is not available when using a controller
- Heretic: Added a new non-randomized Firemace actor that can be placed in custom maps
- Heretic: Resolved issue where wand start option was not available when launching Heretic mods
- Heretic: Removed ambient sound limit
- Heretic: Removed D’Sparil boss teleport spot limit
- Heretic: Sector type 4 will now visually scroll again
- Added WF_AUTOAIMFARTHEST flag for weapons; instructs weapon to priortize the furthest available target for autoaim, rather than the nearest
- Added A_MStaffAttackEX (customizable Bloodscourge attack) codepointer
- Fix issue when setting playerclass flags in EXDEFS
- A_RadiusDamage now has flags for customizing behavior
- Added ‘endpalette’ and ‘enddemon’ UMAPINFO keys, allowing arbitrary maps to use finales for Heretic Episodes 2 and 3
- Fix crash when loading certain old mods that utilize custom textures
- Updated order of graphic lumps in IWADs to match the originals, to fix potential HUD display issues in community source ports
- Moved UMAPINFO lump for Heretic to heretic_ex.wad, for better compatibility with community source ports
- Only evaluate the -warp commandline option on first launch, not when switching games in the game selection screen
You can find out more about Heretic + Hexen in the original announcement post and our full review here on Nintendo Life:
