“We want people out killing everything they see,” Icewind Dale’s associate producer, Darren Monahan, told Computer Gaming World in 2000, “not sitting and flapping all day.” Interplay’s Black Isle Studios had just made Planescape: Torment, a role-playing game with, by Computer Gaming World’s count, some 900,000 words of dialogue. Its next game on the same engine went the other way: about 250,000 words of dialogue, more than nine-tenths of the game spent underground, and no ready-made heroes at all. The player rolled up all six adventurers, walked them into the snow and fought.
Fast facts
- Developer: Black Isle Studios, the role-playing division of Interplay.
- Publisher: Interplay; Virgin Interplay in Britain.
- Released: June 2000 in America and July 2000 in Europe, for Windows PCs; later published for the Macintosh by MacPlay.
- Engine: BioWare’s Infinity Engine, first used for Baldur’s Gate.
- Rules: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, second edition.
- Setting: Icewind Dale, in the far north of the Forgotten Realms.
- Producer: Chris Parker. Lead designer: J. E. Sawyer.
- Expansions: Heart of Winter (2001) and the free Trials of the Luremaster (2001).
- Sequel: Icewind Dale II (2002).
A lighter game
Interplay announced the game in late 1999. Chris Parker, the in-house producer on Baldur’s Gate, explained the thinking: the team had looked at “what it took to make Baldur’s Gate, and what people liked”, and decided it could make “a very fun and exciting, more action-based RPG” with the same engine. “This will be a classic dungeon crawl,” he said. Computer Gaming World’s announcement compared it to Diablo, and by May 2000 the magazine reported that Black Isle did not deny the influence, and that the looming Diablo II was a good reason to ship it sooner rather than later.
The setting came with a condition. Icewind Dale was one of the best-known corners of the Forgotten Realms, thanks to R. A. Salvatore’s novels about the dark elf Drizzt. Computer Gaming World reported that Black Isle was allowed to use it only because it promised a “plot-light dungeon romp” that would not disturb the official story. So Drizzt and his companions do not appear, and the game is set in 1281, “a full 16 years before the first recorded mention of Drizzt”. Most of the work went into the fighting. Parker said that “well over 90 percent” of the game took place in dungeons: “You’re either going to be in a fight or licking your wounds.”
Six strangers in the snow
Where Baldur’s Gate gave the player one character and companions to recruit, Icewind Dale handed over a blank party. “There are no pre-rolled characters to use; you must create your entire party from scratch,” Computer Gaming World’s review explained, and the reviewer found that it gave “a greater attachment” to them. Players could import their own portraits and voice files, and write scripts that told each character how to behave in a fight.
The story begins with a narrator, the actor David Ogden Stiers, over a series of hand-drawn sketches. The party starts in Easthaven, one of the Ten Towns, and joins an expedition to the mountain-pass town of Kuldahar, from where quests branch out around the Spine of the World mountains, to crypts, caves, ruined elven towers and dwarven keeps. Computer Gaming World remembered its “large, complex dungeons” such as the Severed Hand and Dorn’s Deep. The fights ran in real time but could be paused with the space bar to give orders, and the review warned that the system “rewards clever strategy over a fast mouse-hand”: lure enemies out, shoot them as they come, and keep a healer ready.
Ice water or old news
The reviews split. Computer Gaming World called it “a cup of refreshingly cold ice water in the vast desert of the RPG genre”, and its reviewer recommended it to serious role-players ahead of Diablo II. PC Zone’s Chris Anderson saw something else. “Icewind Dale is basically an expansion pack for Baldur’s Gate,” he wrote. “The gameplay is absolutely identical”, the graphics looked dated, and the experience system rewarded running errands in town more than killing monsters. The British PC Gamer gave it 84%. Its own readers argued about it in the magazine’s letters pages: one complained that it had marked the game down as a stop-gap for Baldur’s Gate II while giving the “fundamentally repetitive” Diablo II 90%.
Heart of Winter, Luremaster and the sequel
Heart of Winter (2001) added a new story about a war between barbarians and the Ten Towns, set around the town of Lonelywood, and a much higher experience limit. Computer Gaming World found the new dungeons thin but the changes to the main game worthwhile, especially a Heart of Fury mode in which a goblin had “several hundred” hit points and was worth around 2,000 experience points instead of 15. Later in 2001 Black Isle released Trials of the Luremaster, a further expansion with 20 new maps, as a free 71.3 MB download.
Icewind Dale II followed in 2002, the last game on the Infinity Engine. It moved to the third edition of the Dungeons & Dragons rules, in which “any race can be any class”, and kept the battle between the Ten Towns and an invading horde at its centre. Sawyer, again its designer, said the team had made “a bunch of spells that are actually useful” instead of flashy ones.
Enhanced Edition
Overhaul Games, the studio Trent Oster led under Beamdog, which had already remade Baldur’s Gate, released Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition for modern computers in 2014. In 2019 Beamdog brought its collection of the Infinity Engine games to the Nintendo Switch and other consoles, which Wireframe greeted as “deep and fun and smart and interesting”.
Sources
- Computer Gaming World issue 184, November 1999, pp. 34–35: Icewind Dale announced (Chris Parker; “a classic dungeon crawl”; the Diablo comparison).
- Computer Gaming World issue 190, May 2000, pp. 52–53: preview (Darren Monahan’s quote; 250,000 words against 500,000 and 900,000; the Diablo II rivalry; Easthaven, Kuldahar and the Spine of the World; the licence condition and the year 1281; “well over 90 percent” in dungeons; producer Chris Parker).
- Computer Gaming World issue 195, October 2000, pp. 124–126: review (Black Isle’s third Forgotten Realms game; “a cup of refreshingly cold ice water”; Easthaven and the Ten Towns; David Ogden Stiers; the hand-drawn intro; no pre-rolled characters; portraits, voices and scripts; pausing combat; the comparison with Diablo II). Party tips by Thierry Nguyen.
- PC Zone issue 93, September 2000, pp. 72–73: Chris Anderson, Icewind Dale review (£34.99, Virgin Interplay; “basically an expansion pack for Baldur’s Gate”; six characters created at the start; the experience system; pausing with the space bar).
- PC Gamer (UK) issue 88, autumn 2000, pp. 116–118: readers’ letters and “Uncensored” (the issue 86 review’s 84% against Diablo II’s 90%).
- Computer Gaming World issue 203, June 2001: Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter review (Lonelywood, the barbarian war, the Severed Hand and Dorn’s Deep, Heart of Fury mode).
- PC Zone issue 106, September 2001, p. 30: Trials of the Luremaster released as a free download (20 new maps, 71.3 MB).
- Computer Gaming World issue 215, June 2002, pp. 60–61: Icewind Dale II preview (third-edition rules; the Ten Towns and the goblinoid horde; J. E. Sawyer on spells).
- Australian Macworld issue 60, January 2003, p. 37: Icewind Dale among MacPlay’s Macintosh releases.
- Wireframe issue 25, October 2019, p. 65: Beamdog’s Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition on Switch and other formats; Forgotten Realms timeline with Icewind Dale II as “the final Infinity Engine game”.
- Retro Gamer issue 110, January 2013, p. 71: Trent Oster’s team at Overhaul Games and the Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition.
- “Icewind Dale”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): release on 29 June 2000 in North America and 21 July 2000 in Europe; Josh Sawyer as lead designer; the Macintosh version from MacPlay; Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition by Overhaul Games, 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icewind_Dale