In a surprise shadowdrop announced during QuakeCon, Heretic and HeXen are back in a big way!

Years and years after their original release, the forgotten franchise has been re-released for all major formats in a shadow drop that’s only been outdone by Bethesda’s own Oblivion earlier this year.

Night Dive Studios have been behind some of the biggest re-releases of the past few years, including The Thing Remastered, System Shock, Blade Runner, and Dark Forces. This one has shot right up to the top of their charts.

Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders and Hexen: Beyond Heretic are the first two games in the franchise, and are joined by the expansion, Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel. And with this latest update have been modernised for modern platforms.

There’s also Online Cross-platform deathmatch and co-op for up to 16 players, split-screen deathmatch and co-op for 4 players on PS, Switch and Xbox One and amazingly 8 players for PC and Xbox Series X|S.

There’s also remastered Tome of Power soundtrack from Andrew Hulshult, a Community-published mod support in-game browser, and improved performance with 4k resolution and 120 FPS on PC, Xbox and PS.

For super fans, there’s even more under the hood, though, as there’s a Vault section with concept art and unused sprites, modern controller support, which even includes a weapon carousel and gyroscope aiming, and even new accessibility options, with improved UI, contrast and text to speech.

And if all that’s not enough, there are two brand new episodes that have been created for this compilation.

• Heretic: Faith Renewed
• Hexen: Vestiges of Grandeur

In total, there’s 117 campaign maps and 120 deathmatch maps. It’s massive! And best of all, if you happen to own the OG releases on PC, you can get this brand new release for free. No additional charge. It’s also available right now on Xbox Game Pass. Incredible!

Heretic + Hexen is out now on PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch.