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| Icewind Dale | | By Eric Lopez | | July 28, 2000 | |  It’s a great time to be a role-playing gamer. For the past couple of years, we have been treated to several RPG epics. Among the most critically acclaimed titles in recent times are Fallout, Baldur’s Gate and Torment. Coincidentally, Black Isle Studios, a company whose name has become synonomous with quality RPGs, has worked on all of those games in one way or another. Though there were some bumps in their early days (initial QA work on Fallout 2 left a lot to be desired), there’s no question as to the caliber of work they produce. With that, let’s take a look at their latest effort – Icewind Dale.
 Icewind Dale takes place in the far north of the AD&D Forgotten Realms campaign world. If the name sounds familiar, it could be because the setting is based on the trilogy of novels of the same name by R.A. Salvatore. You begin the game in Easthaven, one of the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale, high in the Spine of the World mountain range. Your party members have met for the first time and before they can get settled, they’re promptly recruited by Hrothgar, the town mayor, to investigate some disturbances in the nearby town of Kuldahar. Naturally, things rapidly degenerate out of control, and you’re forced to unravel a complex plot to save not only the townspeople of Kuldahar, but yourselves.
 Before you can continue, your first step is to create a party. There’s no assuming a pre-planned role in this game; you create a party of one to six adventurers from scratch. Many AD&D geeks (myself included) will spend quite a bit of time tweaking their party’s stats and customizing their biographies before actually playing the game. Like Baldur’s Gate, the story of Icewind Dale unfolds in chapters, six in all. Many areas have the feel of the original AD&D modules, and in fact, this game is like undergoing a campaign through your best friend’s entire collection of AD&D modules. The world map has only a few locations, but each location has multiple maps to clear, most of which require some careful planning.
 Even though Icewind Dale has been advertised as a dungeon crawl, that’s not entirely accurate. The term "dungeon crawl" tends to evoke visions of hack and slash games like Diablo, good games in their own right, but not with the depth of the AD&D universe. While it’s true that swordplay is usually the way to go in this game, there are several quests to complete throughout the storyline. While not as numerous as BG or Torment, the quests are a pleasant diversion and make sense in the context of the story.
Your characters will be able to advance to about 14th-18th level, depending on their class. Your characters will start off as level one weaklings, barely capable of holding their own against a kobold assault, to powerful adversaries capable of keeping frost giants at bay. It’s very satisfying to guide character development, and the game does a great job of keeping you challenged, even at higher levels.
Icewind Dale is based on the AD&D 2nd edition rules, with a few modifications made for game balance. Undead attacks are particularly affected, but given the amount of them you’ll be facing, you’ll be glad for the changes. For the most part, the game is very faithful to the rules.
 The game is definitely afflicted with "Monty haul" syndrome, which means you can’t go 10 feet without finding money or a magical item. Before long, your party will be rolling in loot with no place to spend it. While my DM would have frowned on the treasure proliferation, it’s not a bad thing within Icewind Dale. One complaint of Baldur’s Gate was that magic weapons were primarily swords, leaving clerics and druids out in the lurch. But Icewind Dale’s wide variety of items, many alignment-specific, allows the player to customize their team easily. Midway through the game you’ll be able to arm your entire party with magical melee and missile weapons and still have plenty to spare.
Unfortunately, BIG has taken a step backward in the QA department with this release as it was released with multiple bugs. The majority of them are only mildly annoying, but a few are serious enough to crash the game. Most of the bugs seem to have been corrected with version 1.05 of the patch, but it’s obvious the game was rushed to production in order to compete with Diablo 2.
Graphics: 
For the most part ID’s graphics evoke a "been there done that" feeling, but they come across as familiar and accessible. The 640 x 480 pre-rendered graphics are identical in quality to Baldur’s Gate, with the same limitations. The character portraits are very well done, and like Baldur’s Gate, you have the ability to import custom portraits if you so choose. The new monster animations are very nice, and the sight of an advancing frost giant is especially fearful. Many spell effects have been completely redone, and with over 100 spells available in the game, that’s a lot of animations. Most of the spells are very impressive looking, but I have to admit I was missing the Cloudkill effect from Torment. The cinematics are low budget, and are presented as turning pages of a book.
Sound:
Many sound effects have been recycled from Baldur’s Gate, but the new ones are outstanding. The music is very moody, and fits the dark, undead-infested locations you’ll visit. Spells sound like the fabric of reality is being forcibly altered, which makes them that much more fun to cast. For the most part the voice actors are excellent, and the narrator (David Ogden Stiers of M.A.S.H. fame) is especially good.
Interface:
Gamers familiar with Baldur’s Gate or Torment will have no problems finding their way around Icewind Dale. Everything is mouse driven with a few hotkeys, and the reference card will prevent your needing to search the manual for a particular command. Combats are pausable, which allows you to issue new commands to party members. One major improvement is searching your inventory during a battle no longer forces you to resume your game, which is very helpful since certain foes can only be hit with certain types of weapons and some experimentation may be required.
Given the recent crop of games with questionable save features, I’m pleased to report that Icewind Dale lets you save anywhere at anytime, with two restrictions. One, you cannot save if you are currently under attack, or if opponents are onscreen. Two, you cannot save if a spell is currently being cast, or if certain area spells are in effect. This is a restriction inherent in the Infinity Engine games, and players of BG and Torment will be used to this. You just spent 5 minutes rearranging your party’s inventory to maximize your free space? Save! You barely emerged victorious from that last battle, spells drained, almost dead, and you want to save because you doubt you’d be that lucky again? Go ahead, Icewind Dale won’t stop you. Ah, bliss.
AI: 
Many battles feature perfectly placed opponents waiting to ambush you. This does get annoying after a while, but it makes sense. If you’re laying waste to one end of a dungeon it’s only logical that the surviving creatures would plan a defense for your impending arrival. Like other Infinity Engine games, you can lure opponents out one at a time, beat them senseless, and repeat. However, there are situations where you’re forced to contend with multiple foes and you’ll need to develop tactics to handle them.
If you’ve got a magic user casting spells, some monsters will ignore your flanking fighters and head straight for the spellcaster. This can usually be circumvented by having your mage or cleric run around in circles while your remaining characters work on the opponent. Logically, you would expect your foe to turn around and deal with their current attackers, and sometimes this does indeed happen. But I like the idea of your opponents thinking their only chance lies in taking out the spellcasters. Heck, it even worked a couple of times against me at lower levels.
Another major criticism of the Infinity engine was the party pathfinding, and I must report that this problem has not greatly improved in Icewind Dale. Try to force a six-member party through a tiny opening, and the last one or two members will break off and seek an alternate route. However, they will no longer become hopelessly stuck as in Baldur’s Gate. If party members do become separated the stragglers will search all available paths until they eventually meet up with the rest of the party. But as you can imagine, this can be somewhat problematic if you haven’t yet cleared the map of monsters…
Multiplayer: 
Several options are available for Icewind Dale multiplayer games, including LAN, modem and the Mplayer service. Mplayer software is included with Icewind Dale, although you’re immediately forced to install an upgrade should you go that route. The Mplayer site is somewhat annoying to navigate, but I was able to participate in several games without incident.
Multiplayer mode is similar to Baldur’s Gate in the sense that the creator of the game is the party leader and pretty much has ultimate authority in the game. The leader can assign permissions to players as he or she sees fit, including the ability to spend party gold, initiate dialogue, or even modify character statistics. Leaders also have the ability to boot players out at any time, which should eliminate situations where one troublemaker ruins the game for everyone. Even though Icewind Dale is technically capable of multiplayer games, it’s a game best experienced by a single player.
Replayability: 
I completed the first game with a Paladin-led good aligned party, and now I’m having a go with a bard-led evil party. I’ve noticed some dialogue differences but for the most part, it’s the same game. I’m looking to forward to trying some new tactics in a few key battles, but this is not the type of game to play over and over again. Think of it as a favorite novel with key passages you enjoy rereading once in a while.
Conclusion:
The recent crop of Infinity Engine AD&D games is reminiscent of SSI’s gold box series from the late ‘80s. While each new SSI game looked pretty much like the previous one, gamers bought them for the chance to experience a rich, new AD&D adventure. The same goes for Icewind Dale. While technically it offers very little new eye candy, it’s a solid game using a familiar and user-friendly engine. Fans of Baldur’s Gate should definitely not hesitate to purchase this game. It’s great fun, and will definately pass the time until the next RPG epic comes along. |
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