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Cacatou

What if Heretic was released before Doom?

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So imagine you're back in the early days and then people start talking about the new FPS by id software, it's name: Heretic. What do you think would have happened? Heretic is more difficult to associate with for the regular person due to its medieval fantasy setting but how would the development of FPS have shaped out?

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Seeing as how most shooters nowadays aren't about shooting demons on a space station, I think the evolution would have been mostly identical. There might have been less shotguns, but since modern shooters are all about having twenty-seven indistinguishable assault rifles anyway, this again doesn't change much.

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I wouldn't be even surprised, as Heretic's leveldesign and even gameplay are... if not "worse" (I tend to say so), then at least "simpler" than Doom's.

How would the development of FPS be affected? Not much. Someone would very soon come up with a competition FPS with sci-fi/military setting and better qualities, and Heretic would be easily overshined.

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I wouldn't say Heretic's gameplay is simpler than Doom's, it does have an inventory and far more unique weapon abilities.

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You are true. But designers decided to actually employ these features in a way that is not that much interesting as it might have been. Also the fights, those are simple... I better stop.

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Heretic veterans would have found Doom to be too easy once it came out. Fuck that game to Hell and back with its Iron Liches, seriously.

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Cacatou said:

Heretic is more difficult to associate with for the regular person due to its medieval fantasy setting but how would the development of FPS have shaped out?


Duke Nukem would quite LITERALLY get Medieval on your ass (or the enemies' asses, in any case).

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Avoozl said:

I wouldn't say Heretic's gameplay is simpler than Doom's, it does have an inventory and far more unique weapon abilities.


Yeah. And Heretic fearures a wider array of non-linear maps as well.

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Avoozl said:

I wouldn't say Heretic's gameplay is simpler than Doom's, it does have an inventory and far more unique weapon abilities.

Lots of flashy features don't necessarily mean complexity.

I'd say, it's usually the opposite. Throw in some gimmicks and suddenly you don't have to work that hard on actual playability.

Doominator2 said:

Heretic would be remembered and Doom would be forgotten

It should be noted that Doom is a cultural phenomenon. They tend to be unpredictable.

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Da Werecat said:

Lots of flashy features don't necessarily mean complexity.

I'd say, it's usually the opposite. Throw in some gimmicks and suddenly you don't have to work that hard on actual playability.


It should be noted that Doom is a cultural phenomenon. They tend to be unpredictable.

ya but heretic would be remembered as the game to have different altitudes, and all the stuff that doom had and Doom would just be seen as similar to Heretic and would quickly be forgotten by the mainstream, while heretic would be remembered as the game that changed FPS.

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Doominator2 said:

...while heretic would be remembered as the game that changed FPS.

Or as a neat game that brought some innovations in a relatively obscure genre that died out 5 years later.

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If you want to be pedantic, Catacomb3D came out well before Doom and it had very little if any influence on the development on the genre, aside from being the direct precursor to Wolf3D.

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Da Werecat said:

Or as a neat game that brought some innovations in a relatively obscure genre that died out 5 years later.

you could say that but then again there is no way to to tell if it would have made an impact or not.

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Gez said:

Seeing as how most shooters nowadays aren't about shooting demons on a space station, I think the evolution would have been mostly identical. There might have been less shotguns, but since modern shooters are all about having twenty-seven indistinguishable assault rifles anyway, this again doesn't change much.

It sounds like they all take inspiration from Wolfenstein instead.

Comparing Doom to Heretic: keep in mind that for a Wolf3D player, Doom looks instantly familiar; just look at the status bar. And Heretic's design was heavily following Doom's lead. If Heretic came first, it would have been quite different, because Doom wouldn't exist to license its engine and weapon balance to Raven.

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I don't think heretic would have had the same cultural impact as doom. Technically it would have been just as groundbreaking but from a gameplay and stylistic perspective I don't think it is as accessible. Guns and bullets people know, spells and potions and items menus are just too much to think about. And the horror theme is "cool" in a way that fantasy never was back then.

So I think fps games would have remained niche until something with more mainstream appeal came along. Doom enjoys a special place in games history because it was all things at the right time, the technical leap forward came with a cool game attached. Without it things would have still progressed, but maybe we wouldn't think about fps games in such watershed terms.

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Does anyone know sales figures for Heretic? I know it sold a lot more than previous Raven games, but I can't find any numbers.

Doom is generally listed as having sold 1 million copies, having about 10 million shareware installations, and Doom 2 selling 2 million.

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