Heart of Winter Preview

GameSpot has posted up a preview of the not-too-distant expansion for Icewind Dale, Heart of Winter. Not only that, but they also have some movies from the game (including the intro) for your viewing pleasure. To tantalize your interest, here’s an excerpt from the preview:

The original Icewind Dale offered about 40 hours of gameplay overall, as the player traveled through a dozen distinct areas. Heart of Winter will be slightly shorter, offering somewhere between 20 and 30 hours of play and five brand-new settings. However, one of the new additions planned for the expansion is an enhanced difficulty level, which will significantly boost the power of your enemies but will suitably increase experience rewards. This should extend the expansion’s replay value, as well as that of the original game, since this enhancement will be retroactive. Of further note, the designers are still deciding to what exact capacity to raise the game’s experience cap. Icewind Dale let your characters gain experience up to around the 15th level, depending on character class. Heart of Winter will extend this limit to at least the same point as in Baldur’s Gate II, which means you’ll be able to gain at least several more levels as you fight through the game. However, D&D fans will be excited to learn that the designers are doing their best to try to lift the experience cap altogether, thereby theoretically letting your characters reach or even exceed the 30th level.

Read the rest of the preview by clicking here and make sure to check out the movies by clicking here.