Icewind Dale II Designer Diary #1

Icewind Dale II’s Dave Maldonado has written up a Designer Diary for RPGVault, talking about when the game went into development and what he has worked on. An excerpt to follow:

Each designer handled this in his own little way, and I’m thinking there could be some pretty cool gameplay as a result – all of IWD’s nutty battles are still present, but now there’s a tad bit more meat to the rest of the game. I won’t speak for anyone else (thereby potentially ruining only some of the surprises), but for my part I plopped down a Happy Little Hunting Village with a host of minor characters and tasks to fiddle with, a SPOOKY CREEPY FOREST complete with a mysterious sinister force that twists the paths from clearing to clearing, will o’wisps trying to lead PC’s to their miserable deaths, and the angry ghosts of those who died trying to find their way out, and sundry other odd characters and locations (I guess I shouldn’t talk about everything, right?)… and then mixed all that up with some areas chock-full of slavering hordes of ugly monsters. Because you know, in Icewind Dale, there should always be plent-o’ places to get your kill on.