Icewind Dale (A Diary of Video Games)

Icewind Dale

Preamble: This isn't a review. It doesn't contain critical analysis, just the subjective opinions of one person. The intent is to remember the games I've come across in my life and share the nostalgia, nothing more. And some of those games I didn't play in great depth.

Icewind Dale was something I was very excited about, after playing through the Baldur's Gate series, but was somewhat let down by the lack of a good story.

Game: Icewind Dale
Developer: Bioware
Platform: PC
Release Year: 2000



Basic Plot

The player controls a player-created party of adventurers who get caught up in the evil happenings in the region of Icewind Dale.

The party is sent to investigate evil powers which are altering the weather and threatening the town of Kuldahar. The story progresses until a plot is uncovered involving open a portal to the gates of hell to overthrow the North.

Gameplay

Icewind Dale is a classic RPG which roughly follows the Forgotten Realms universe, following the basic rules of D&D to decide character growth and combat.

Icewind Dale used the Infinity Engine and so was almost identical to Baldur's Gate 2 in the look and feel of the game.

One thing which made this game different to the Baldur's Gate series was that you got to create all the characters in your party, even in a single player game. There were positives and negatives to this decision. I liked how I could customise my party to be supremely powerful and well balanced, but as a drawback you no longer had the humour and company of the NPC's in your party (such as Minsc or Edwin in Baldur's Gate).

The character creation was fun part of the game. You get to pick each of your six party members, choose their race, gender, class, some of their skills or spells.

From then on the player is involved in speaking to NPC's to progress the quest, and travelling from area to area, exploring and defeating enemies. The party increase in level and ability as the game goes on; and there are plenty of magical items for you to obtain.


Frost Giant's were almost comically large.

Positives

For anyone who played Baldur's Gate and wanted some more action this game was ideal. The Infinity Engine was pretty special, and definitely worth utilising.

What will keep you going in this game is the engine itself and the progression of your characters and their abilities, which is just as good as Baldur's Gate.

Negatives

The lack of NPC character's with their own agenda and story was really missed in the game. It lacked a lot of the humour and humanity seen in Baldur's Gate. I think they could have solved this issue by allowing the player to create their own party in terms of skills and class; but the actual character built into the game could have been pre-determined for each player slot.

In general the game as a whole was dry in comparison with the previous series. The story wasn't as interesting or epic, the characters less engaging, the world less detailed, everything about this game was sub-par to the work of art that Baldur's Gate was.

In saying that, it is still well worth playing!



Memorable Moments

I tried to complete this game twice and got quite far, but just didn't get sucked in enough to finish it. In fact one time I believe I lost a quest item, and without it I couldn't progress any further.