Hexen: Beyond Heretic follows on from Heretic as the second game in the Serpent Riders Trilogy. Hexen was developed by Raven Software using the Doom engine and released in 1995. An official expansion pack was released in 1996. Released for MS-DOS, ports were produced for the Macintosh, RISC OS, Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64, and Sony PlayStation.
Story[]
Hexen is set in the land of Cronos. The main antagonist is Korax one of the three Serpent Riders, but, before finally battling him you have to defeat his minions:
- The Death Wyvern in the Shadow Wood
- Zedek the Fighter in the Necropolis
- Traductus the Cleric in the Necropolis
- Menelkir the Mage in the Necropolis
Game Play[]
Hexen introduced some new concepts to the genre:
- There are three charaters to choose from: Baratus the Fighter, Parias the Cleric and Daedolon the Mage each with different skill sets, advantages and disadvantages and unique weapons.
- The game has a Hub based design with your character having to return to a central hub after completing tasks and puzzles in the surrounding levels.
Game Structure[]
There are five Hubs:
- The Seven Portals with four levels: Seven Portals, Guardian of Ice, Guardian of Steel and Guardian of fire.
- The Shadow Wood with five levels: Shadow Wood, Caves of Circe, Wastelands, Darkmere and Hypostyle.
- The Heresiarch's Seminary with six levels: Heresiarch's Seminary, Orchard of Lamentations, Silent refectory, Griffin Chapel, Wolf chapel and Dragon Chapel.
- The Castle of Grief with five levels: Castle of Grief, Foresaken Outpost, Gibbet, Effluvium and Dungeons.
- The Necropolis with six levels: Necropolis, Vivarium, Zedeck's Tomb, Menelkir's Tomb, Traductus's Tomb and Dark Crucible.
And five individual maps; Winnowing Hall, Bright Crucible, Sacred Grove, Deathwind Chapel, and Desolate Garden