Before beginning this review, I would like to bring forth a little history of the game developers known as Black Isle and their repertoire of released games. In 1997, the company released Fallout, a game that started a running title of "RPG of the Year". The year after, using BioWare's Infinity engine, they released Baldur's Gate, bringing to every RPG and AD&D fan alike a revolutionary mix of excellent graphics and fantastic gameplay. The game would go down in history as 1998's "RPG of the Year".
Following the success of Baldur's Gate, Black Isle released yet another AD&D-based game, once again using the Infinity engine, called Planescape: Torment. This time, Black Isle took the graphics and gameplay of Baldur's Gate and added a storyline unequaled in any other game of its time. As the game progressed, there was an incredible sense of immersion, slowly unfolding the story and revealing areas of the character's past. It came as no shock that this impressive game once again gave Black Isle their "RPG of the Year" award for 1999. Now, in the year 2000, Black Isle has released Icewind Dale. How does this new title compare to its earlier contenders? Let's take a look...
BioWare's Infinity engine has made some additional progress since Baldur's Gate, giving Icewind Dale a familiar, yet more sophisticated look. One nicely added touch is the size of some of the adversaries in the game. Ettins, cyclops, and giants take up much more screen room in relation to your characters, adding an additional sense of realism to the game. Weapon effects, ranging from diseased halberds to flaming sling bullets, are also a welcome addition. Along with weapons, spells have also been given additional effects that didn't exist in Baldur's Gate. With the advent of a summoning restriction (you can only summon six creatures to your aid in Icewind Dale, whereas previous Black Isle RPGs didn't have a limit), combat is considerably fluid and only when letting loose a barrage of heavy spell casting and executing multiple weapon effects does the action slow down whatsoever.
One significant difference between the graphics of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale is their cinematics. This is one place that Icewind Dale truly shines. Throughout the game, you slowly unravel more of the story, narrated by an unseen reader out of an ancient tome. These cinematic sequences dazzle the eyes with candlelight flickering upon the pages of the book and the turning of each page in perfect animation. Together with the captivating storyline, the cinematics could almost be considered hypnotic at times.
Overall, BioWare's engine is a stable and excellent piece of work, but it does have a few drawbacks to its design. Most of these drawbacks can be attributed to the 640x480 resolution in a two-dimensional world that the engine has produced since its beginning. It's a bit behind the times and will hopefully be enhanced in future Black Isle RPGs.
The music of Icewind Dale does an excellent job of keeping you immersed in the game. While visiting towns and villages, you will hear some very soothing and tranquil music. Once an enemy approaches, however, the music changes to a very uplifting and aggressive overture of drum beats that pull you into combat.
Sound effects add a very distinctive part to the game. Baldur's Gate veterans will notice the large increase in character voices that they are able to choose from when creating new characters. Adventuring sounds, such as the subtle sounds of footsteps in the distance, the chirping of birds, or the sound of the wind rolling across the snow have been added to enhance outdoor traveling. The creaking of bones when you battle the undead and the hiss of an approaching lizard man are just two examples of additional dungeon delving effects. Overall, I'm very impressed with the ambience that both the music and sound effects create.
Although small, there are a plentiful number of refinements in Icewind Dale's gameplay over that of its predecessors. Some of these are entirely new options and some are the removal or correction of annoying issues in Baldur's Gate. For example, in Baldur's Gate, you could pause the game at any time, but if you were to change to a different screen, say a character's inventory, the game would automatically unpause. This is no longer true in Icewind Dale, and it is a welcome change. Also worthy of note is that the map screen's functionality has been altered slightly. In previous Black Isle RPGs, the game would automatically pause when viewing your current location's map. Now, in Icewind Dale, you can watch your characters travel while viewing the map, thus enhancing your ability to catch any pathing problems your characters might experience.
One of the largest gameplay annoyances of Baldur's Gate was the seemingly endless expanses of wilderness that you would be forced to tread through in search of some sort of excitement or adventure. You do very little outdoor traveling in Icewind Dale (manually anyway). The vast majority of your gameplay resides in dungeons, towers, and caves spread across Faerun. Being a fan of dungeon excursions, I found this difference much more pleasing than trying to cover empty ground in an outdoor zone.
The interface hasn't changed a whole lot from previous Black Isle RPGs, other than some minor tweaks to the icon appearances. I'm not implying that this is a detriment, however, as the interface is one distinguishing characteristic of these games that I have been impressed with from the beginning. It's very simple to navigate through different aspects of the game, as well as use certain items in your inventory, perform various skills, or cast spells. Rest assured, Icewind Dale has only improved upon earlier ease in this facet of the game.
Somewhat of a disappointment, Icewind Dale does fall short in this area. The problem with the replayability of this game can be attributed to both the experience cap that Black Isle has enforced and the (for the most part) linear storyline. Although not nearly as bad as Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale still thwarts your efforts to build ultra-powerful characters by replaying the game through multiple times. For those of you who aren't aware of this problem, Baldur's Gate capped experience at a meager 89,000 points (161,000 for TotSC owners). Icewind Dale did increase this to 1,801,000, but that doesn't even allow for your mages to memorize eighth or ninth level spells. I imagine this measure was taken in anticipation of a future sequel, but it is annoying nonetheless.
Saying that the game's storyline causes its replayability to be diminished may appear to be contradicting myself. Previously, I stated that the story line was captivating and one of Icewind Dale's strong points. I still feel this way, but what the storyline does for a person the first time through the game compared to the second and third is very different. The game travels a very straight path and there are very few deviations from it, aside from a small handful of side quests. Overall, once you've played the game through once, there are very few reasons to start again from the beginning other than to cap your experience for all characters or to obtain more loot.
Icewind Dale is not without its share of problems. During the course of the game I did run across a few bugs, though scant. There are some problems in a couple of particular quests, such as the quest given by Orrick the Grey in Kuldahar to find a book on Mythal Theory. When I completed the quest using the release version of the game, I was given some sort of error along the lines of "No Valid Replies or Links". This has been addressed in Black Isle's latest patches, but it was an annoying bug nonetheless. Additional quest bugs do exist in the release version and some of them are even plot spoilers as they update your journal with more information than they should. Aside from bugs, the game runs pretty well in terms of lockups and memory leaks (which plagued the release version of Planescape: Torment). I only remember having to restart my PC once and that's having played through the entire campaign twice. Keep in mind this is in single-player mode though, and there may be additional lockups for multi-player.
Icewind Dale is an extremely fun and addictive game, providing challenges for the beginner as well as for veterans. It has taken Baldur's Gate to a new level of excitement and built upon the weaknesses of its predecessors. Even though I didn't score the game very high overall, this was only due to the lack of replayability and the bugs I encountered. Despite these problems, I would highly recommend this game to anyone who possesses an interest in RPGs and would consider it a necessity for those who have played and liked previous Black Isle RPGs. In my opinion, this game has a very good chance of becoming yet another "RPG of the Year" for Black Isle, depending on the success of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn which is slated for release this month.
