Heresiarch/Korax

I just played through Heretic right now, and the ending to me seems to suggest that the Heresiarch was one of the Serpent Riders. Not only this, but it seems to make more sense. D'Sparil and the Heresiarch are similar, both are in the robes of the Trident, yet the Heresiarch is not Korax, which is instead a gray serpent-like beast

Magic is something that exists in there, so I wouldn't be surprised at all if Korax had many faces. The Heresiarch does look like a wannabe Serpent Rider, but I doubt he has enough power.

Korax looks like the classical dragon villain to me.

It's pretty clear to me that the Heresiarch's design was supposed to be Korax, but they changed it during Hexen's development for some reason. I kinda like the idea of the Heresiarch just being one of Korax's avatars, which may better explain why there are two. :P

I wonder what Eidolon would have looked like if Raven made the Heresiarch Korax though...

EIDOLON SLUG!

*ahem*

Well, who knows? I remember reading in an interview or something that they made Eidolon red because they remembered the end screen from Heretic, although the graphics clearly show otherwise. Raven retconned it to explain the 'oops'. :P

Too, Heresiarch shows up at the end of heretic on the screen after beat D'sparil. So perhaps Heresiarch was meant to be Korax, afterall.
EDIT: I should probably read through the thread a bit more before posting from now on.

I wonder why they changed it in the first place anyway though

Heresiarch is a title rather than a name, right?

This is only at least the third thread on this forum about this ;) They've all pretty much reached the same conclusions.

A Heresiarch is the leader of a heretical cult or order. So it would have made some sense if there had been only ONE Heresiarch in Hexen(probably the end boss, who is the leader of all the Hexen monsters). My guess is that somebody high up felt that the Heresiarch was too similar to D'Sparil so they made him a tough mini-boss instead of the end boss.

Korax is pretty much a black Chaos Serpent with six arms and a Giger touch. He was meant to be the mount.

As Michael Raymond-Judy said, though, the bosses are always the last thing to get done where there's the least time to get them right. So they must have decided to turn a two-stage boss into a boss and a miniboss and to make it less like Heretic.

I think it'd have been better if the three Serpent Riders had all been riding serpents, but obviously they went another way.

Yes, I'm pretty much in agreement. I think that the Heresiarch was originally going to be the boss and I think it is possible (though not as certain) that Korax was going to be his mount. Personally, I would rather that they had went that way. It makes more sense in the context of the "serpent rider" idea and ties in better with the Heretic end screen. Also, IMO, the Hersiarch is a better boss than Korax and fighting him at the end of the game (especially if you had to do so after killing his mount) would have been a far more epic battle.

Too similar to the Heretic ending? Possibly, but I think it would feel more complete and logical in a "part of a bigger story" kind of way.

Eidolon could have worked well as either a mount or a rider - if there had been some actual serpent riding going on. He could have done the getting bigger thing as a mount (with a tiny rider perched on top) or he could have been the rider and when he was toppled from his mount he could have then grown to gargantuan size. Of course, a better arena would have helped that battle too IMO.

Gez said:

I think it'd have been better if the three Serpent Riders had all been riding serpents, but obviously they went another way.

Yeah since they are called, after all... the Serpent Riders.

How they came up with this anonymous "Heresiarch" creature that comes out of nowhere adds an even more bizarre edge to an already bizarre game. Not that that's a bad thing.

Maybe they're wearing serpent-skin roller blades. Flying all over the place burns up mana, and even a BBEG's gotta get some exercise to stay healthy...

Gez said:

Korax is pretty much a black Chaos Serpent with six arms and a Giger touch. He was meant to be the mount.

He was? Was it initially planned for him to be a mount? Let's admit that he looks quite fine as a draconic villain, especially with his alien or godlike (depending on interpretation) 6 arms.

Gez said:

I think it'd have been better if the three Serpent Riders had all been riding serpents, but obviously they went another way.

Err, why? Why would they NEED to ride other creatures when fighting you? Maybe they're better off without them in combat or they're in name only. After all, they're villains, they can lie about themselves. And thinking that the "serpent" D'sparil was riding was only the thing you see in E3M8 is anticlimactic. When I read "serpent", especially the ridden one, I think of giant Chinese dragons or worms (especially due to serpent equaling snake for me) that they're using to travel through worlds.

HeXen was rushed; while it's never been officially stated as far as I am aware, it's fairly obvious that it was. I've commented on a couple of pieces of the game that seem to indicate such before.

It's worth noting that D'sparil's sprites are called SOR1 and SOR2 (On serpent and off respectively), while the Heresiarch’s sprites are also named SOR2.

Interestingly, the HeXen 2 intro shows an image of D'sparil's serpent instead of D'sparil himself when referring to D'sparil.

HeXen 2 Intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tQ69bgxcmw

However, the HeXen 2 expansion has a wall texture showing D'sparil on his serpent.

printz said:

He was? Was it initially planned for him to be a mount?

I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Then there's the Heretic endscene (with the Heresiarch sitting on a throne) and the aforementioned resemblance between the Heresiarch and D'Sparil. Compare their respective garbs, and the way they die. Korax looks a lot like D'Sparil's mount, and the Heresiarch looks a lot like D'Sparil.

Maybe they look similar, but Raven decided (at the last minute?) to go for a twist. We are apes too.

Vermil said:

Interestingly, the HeXen 2 intro shows an image of D'sparil's serpent instead of D'sparil himself when referring to D'sparil.

Let's hope that's a goof, and that the mount wasn't the mastermind, or the plot will thicken...

yellowmadness54 said:

Too, Heresiarch shows up at the end of heretic on the screen after beat D'sparil. So perhaps Heresiarch was meant to be Korax, afterall.
EDIT: I should probably read through the thread a bit more before posting from now on.

Furthermore: The ending asks "Then again, what about the other serpent riders?" Right after it asks that question, it shows Heresiarch. Not only that, but he has a crystal ball at the ending of Heretic. Can you tell me what magical artifact do you get after beating Hexen?

One could query what we are looking at in the crystal ball at the end of Heretic (an early version of the final room maybe) and also who the hanging black robed guy is above the ball.

Technically, the only thing the player in HeXen is known to recieve at the end of HeXen is a vacation to the realm of the Deathkings: the ending text of HeXen DK doesn't confirm that the player is actually able to make off with the sphere.

The korax iconography in Hexen would work just as well for the Heresiarch sprite as it do for the Korax sprite.

Also, all sprites in Heretic and Hexen are based off of 3d models. So even if the sprites weren't done the models could have been. As it is now, the Heresiarch sprite is a bit too big to ride the Korax sprite as a mount. But that would have been relative as long as they were models.

Something else I also thought interesting, was the pose Korax was shown in, in the HeXen 2 Intro; his entire body was horizontal (the sprite in HeXen walks upright) except the legs; kind of like a two legged horse.

Four of his 'arms' (though you can't tell if there is hands at the ends) are also pointed vertically upward (the other two can be seen hanging down like standard arms); D'sparil stabs his serpent to make it attack. If Korax were originally suppose to be a mount, maybe he was controlled by pulling on these vertical 'arms'.

The same video as above: Korax appears in the crystal ball at 0.40.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tQ69bgxcmw

I do see a resemblance between all three of these:







It's the teeth mainly that tie it to the original Heretic ending, although the missing nose and the permanent scowling eyebrow ridges are also shared in common between those last two.

I think it's a lot more likely that the Heresiarch grew out of the original idea for the next game's boss and the textures were meant to resemble it, and then when they were not satisfied with having another robed spellcasting trident-marked sorcerer who explodes into a skeleton when he dies for a final boss, they retrofit the Korax design with similar-enough features that it would also resemble the textures.

There are other incidental facts in the game that suggest this. Such as the fact that the Heresiarch's Seminary hub's map level numbers are the highest in the IWAD. To me this suggests that it was originally envisioned to be the final hub and they later reorganized the flow of the game along with the new final boss idea. This didn't necessarily happen late into the process; in fact it may have happened very early.

Hexen WAS rushed, though. The Necropolis maps are full of glaring bugs like HOMs, Eric Biessman couldn't find the time to align ANY of his textures, several of the maps have game-killing glitches in the ACS scripts that are glaringly obvious and can be triggered by mistake, and also, at LEAST two maps were cut from the game: in particular MAP07 is missing despite having unique music assigned to it and a partial MAPINFO entry. There is a missing chapel level as well - they planned on 5 total, including the secret, and only included 4.

The beta screenshots of Hexen, released in August 1995, 3 months before the game came out, include pictures of some locations that do not feature in the final game, including one entire swamp level that is *not* Dreadmere - this may have been the "Black Crypt Swamp" level that Kevin Schilder mentioned to me in his email and which gave the song "Crypt" its title.

Quasar said:

It's the teeth mainly that tie it to the original Heretic ending, although the missing nose and the permanent scowling eyebrow ridges are also shared in common between those last two.

Oh my God. I feel deceived. It... can't be. :(

Also note the shape of the hood on the Heresiarch (looks kinda like if it was fitted over a ♣). This would fit with the bony growths on the jowls of the Korax face texture. The Giger Serpent that ended up being Korax does not feature them.

As for the six arms things, I'm not seeing it. The six wedges around the Korax face aren't arranged as arms (two on each side and two vertically aligned instead of three on each side) and there's not much in the way of symbolism to make them evoke hands or arms. They just look ornamental.

Question is, why would Korax clone himself and let himself die by the player, while leaving the army to another guy? Or is the six armed fellow his son?

Quasar said:

at LEAST two maps were cut from the game: in particular MAP07 is missing despite having unique music assigned to it and a partial MAPINFO entry. There is a missing chapel level as well - they planned on 5 total, including the secret, and only included 4.

Where did those maps end? Is it possible to rescue them?

L.