IWD2 Development Update

Doug Avery paid another visit to the official Icewind Dale II website to let everyone know how development is coming along on the highly anticipated RPG:

Over the course of the past few weeks, we’ve really been concentrating on getting the interface completed. Artist Brian Menze is still working on the spell icons and they look fantastic, I can’t wait to show them off. We are shrinking the character portraits down and putting them along the top of the bottom panel with their health bars underneath them. You will be able to hide either of the two panels of the interface, the bottom portion with the text window and command buttons or the top portion with the character portraits. That is just the main interface. We have also made the decision to cut the character kits and go with 3E multiclassing. This will make Q.A.’s job much easier and will keep the game way more consistent with our 3E goals.

On the design front, Rob Holloway and John Deiley are almost completely done with their areas. All of the other designers are still polishing up theirs and concentrating on bug fixing. We’ve also gotten a lot of feedback from Q.A. and have implemented a number of their suggestions for the areas.

Programming is where we have allocated most of our resources to implement all of the 3E changes we’re putting in.

On the production side we are answering interview questions from many sources and working closely with our marketing department on the box and going over the possibility of a collector’s edition. Oz (Kevin Osburn) is, as usual, still beating on the buglist and working with Q.A. to get all of the outstanding issues dealt with.

That’s about it for this update. I’ll keep you guys posted on what is happening periodically. I’ll also be on the message boards to answer questions there.

Doug Avery
Black Isle Studios
Associate Producer – Icewind Dale II

Additionally, they’ve added a new wallpaper, a new character portrait, and a few more screenshots.