I've been enjoying a bit of a blast-from-the-past lately. I finally picked up the Enhanced Edition of Icewind Dale. This game originally came out around the same time as Baldur's Gate, and along with Planescape: Torment was part of a cluster of AD&D Infinity Engine games from different companies that shared the same underlying game system but had significantly different approaches to game construction. As I've belatedly come to think of it, it's like having three very different Dungeon Masters offering you seats at their tables.
I've been aware of Icewind Dale for decades, but haven't been very interested in it. It has a reputation as a combat-heavy game, mostly focused on builds and tactics. There aren't recruitable party members and very little freedom in the story. Those were the aspects I loved most about Baldur's Gate and Planescape, and I figured I'd be frustrated by the lack of those elements.
However, over the years I've heard many positive things about Icewind Dale. In particular, that its combat is far more entertaining, and that the art and music are some of the best of this era. So when the Enhanced Edition recently went on sale during the Steam Spring Sale, I decided to pick it up and check it out. I'll note up top that I agree with the overall impression of the community: while lacking in the story-oriented aspects of roleplaying, its fights tend to be more interesting, and a lot of the visual design and the score still hold up really well.
The game starts right off the bat with a bit of a wall to climb: chargen. I can easily spend 15 minutes or more rolling a character, and with Icewind Dale, you are rolling six of them. While I was getting up to speed I followed a very helpful gamefaq which guided me in my choices. My overall party was:
Samantha was the leader. The only single-class character in my roster, she was a half-elf Skald Bard. As with my original Bhaalspawn Cirion, she almost never fought, and just hung in the back while strumming on her harp. She did have some buffing and summoning spells, though, and would occasionally charge up the party prior to an encounter. She wielded a longbow that she never fired, and a scimitar that she never swung, but some of the scimitars give pretty decent bonuses just for holding them, such as to Luck or AC.
Cora was an elf, multi-classing as a Ranger and Cleric. She could use a Flail, but mostly wielded a Sling from the back-row. Her spells were oriented around buffing the party: Bless, Chant, Prayer, Recitation, Protection from Evil, and so on.
Tessa was another half-elf, and a triple-class Fighter/Mage/Thief. You don't need many Thief abilities, and still level quickly enough even splitting XP three ways. I maxed out Find Traps early on, which is the only really important skill. I maxed out Pick Locks next, which is only very occasionally useful. By the end of the game I had close to 80 in both Move Silently and Hide in Shadows, which would have been useful if she was a backstabber, but since she was primarily an archer it didn't really matter. She had an eclectic mix of spells, including disrupting spells like Magic Missile, some debuffs like Sleep and Web, and some protective or utility spells. Mostly she was a very effective archer, getting in lots of powerful attacks from a distance.
Everyone else was a dual-classed human. First was Doris, who was a Kensai through Level 9 before dualing to Druid. Druids regain XP pretty quickly for lower levels, so I felt comfortable waiting a bit longer before dualing. Kensais are notoriously squishy, so I focused on her Dex and gave her any AC-boosting items I could find that she could wear (there are not many). She mostly wielded Scimitars, sharing hand-me-downs with Samantha. I didn't get a ton of utility out of her Druid spells, but more Heals are always convenient. Barkskin helped a bit early on, and Ironskin helps enormously later.
Then was Mary, a Fighter through level 7 and then a Mage. Mary wielded a long sword with a shield, and eventually swapped her full plate for mage robes. Mary's spells tended to focus on ones that helped her combat, including Stoneskin, Magic Mirror, and more.
Finally was Trixie, a Fighter through level 7 and then a Cleric. Trixie swung a mace with a shield, and got to keep her full plate. Like Mary, she focused on spells that directly helped her in combat, such as Strength of One, Draw Upon Holy Might, Holy Power, and so on.
I was definitely doing some munchkin-ing in this game. I avoided any plot spoilers, but did carefully plan my party in advance. One thing that threw me off were the comments about "sitting out" levels. Basically, if you were originally a Fighter and later became, say, a Mage, then every time you Level Up you get the normal Mage spell slots and stuff. If you get a Weapon Proficiency as a Mage, then you can only spend it on weapons Mages can wield, like Daggers or Quarterstaffs. After you regain your Fighter abilities, though, you can spend weapon proficiencies from your Mage level-ups on Fighter-only weapons like Two-Handed Swords. Anyways, I noticed that online guides would remark about "sitting out" levels even after you had raised your second class high enough to get back Fighter abilities. I eventually realized why this is - even if you can put a pip back in, say, Long Swords, the game won't let you put more pips into that specialization than you could if you were a Fighter of the same level. Basically, you can't become a Grandmaster at a lower level dual-class than a single-class Fighter. It all works out in the long run, and you earn XP much more quickly later in the game, but it did mean running with slightly weaker characters for longer than I'd planned. I was glad to slightly stagger my duals, with Doris remaining a Fighter for a few more levels, and Mary and Trixie coming back into their martial strength while she was Druiding.
As I often and cheerfully complain about, 2nd edition AD&D feels like a really clunky and unintuitive system. If I hadn't cut my teeth on these games, I probably would find them impenetrable. Beyond the complexity, though, I did find myself longing for the modern quality of life improvements we've gotten over the years. One major example is magic and healing. In these games, by far the best way to heal from damage is to use healing spells; sleeping for 8 hours will only restore 1 HP, or a few more if you pay for a room at an inn, while a healing spell can heal far more. But you don't really want to be casting healing spells in the heat of battle, you want damage and buffs. So there's this whole rigamarole where, if my party is injured, I will:
- Erase all of my cleric's memorized useful spells.
- Fill up all the slots with healing spells.
- Rest for 8 hours to memorize those spells.
- Cast the spells on my party.
- Repeat steps 3-4 as necessary.
- Erase all the healing spells.
- Restore my original useful spells (from memory).
- Rest for 8 hours to re-memorized the useful spells.
- Continue questing until I'm banged up enough that I need to heal again.
That did ease up a bit later in the game; you get to a point where there are enough spell slots that you can just walk around with heals, and I'm fine with resting a couple of times. But it did feel like an annoyance early in the game. But, again, maybe that's on me - plenty of players will cheerfully have their characters sleep for weeks until they are fully healed, which is ridiculous from a storytelling perspective but actually significantly faster in real-world time.
I should mention here that, unlike Baldur's Gate, I never encountered any ambushes while traveling between map regions. I'm guessing they just aren't implemented in this game, though it also might be something that happens on difficulty levels above Normal. I usually avoided resting in areas with enemies around, but I think I did get ambushed once or twice that way.
Speaking of travel: the travel distances in this game are very long, often encompassing multiple days, unlike the hours of Baldur's Gate. But I think that the game assumes you rest while traveling, while BG assumes that you don't. So that was a difference: in Baldur's Gate you'll sometimes arrive at a new area with an exhausted and sleepy party that needs to rest immediately, while in Icewind Dale they'll be chipper, albeit at the HP and spells that you left the previous map with. I'm really glad you don't get exhausted, because there are a few places with scripted fights at the very entrance to a new region, before you can even save your game.
MINI SPOILERS
The characters are pretty decent, less compelling than those in Baldur's Gate but a bit more colorful than I'd been expecting. The voice acting is pretty good. I'm pretty sure they shared some of the voice actors with Baldur's Gate; one of my PCs sounded a ton like Imoen, and others also seemed familiar. A few key NPCs have fully voiced dialogue, which worked out pretty well and didn't overstay its welcome. Some of the villains have really over-the-top, campy, scenery-chewing deliveries, which can be fun if you're in the right mood.
I did love the look of this game. I'm pretty inured to the standard fantasy tropes of forests and castles, so it was really compelling to see the snowy and icy expanses in this game. Even the interiors felt pretty unique. The Severed Hand is a really interesting structure that you climb up in, unlike the descent into dungeons that tend to define these games, and it splits into a variety of separate towers near the top. Dorn's Deep was probably my favorite visual area of the game. It's a bit like the Mines of Moria, but filled with streams of lava, which gives everything a great red glow.
The chapters of the game each start with a storybook, which was a pretty nice presentation. In general these sorts of graphics have aged far less well than the in-game sprites have, but I think it helps that the FMV is just showing static pages in a book, illuminated with a flickering candlelight. Overall it seems a bit blurry but not bad.
One mechanic of Icewind Dale that changes things up is the random loot generation. I haven't read too in-depth on this, but from what I understand, instead of a certain boss dropping a certain item, in some cases he/she/it will have, say, a 25% chance of dropping one of four different items. Or you might roll from a random table to find what specific item you get. This means you may never see a specific weapon in your game; and it also might mean you get duplicates of the same item. Going in pretty blind, I was happy with how things worked out, though I can see how this could be a source of frustration on replays. For example, I never came across any Elven Chainmail, and I later read that it's only available as a random drop in one specific encounter, so most players will make a hard save before entering that area and reload until they get it.
Overall I felt pretty powerful once I finished my dual-classing. My overall setup was three melee dual-classed Fighters in the front line, variously protected with things like Mirror Image and Iron Skin, while I had two ranged fighters and spellcasters in the rear, and Samantha uselessly strumming her harp. (Okay, okay, the Skald Song is actually really good and I'm glad that I have it.) But by the end of the game my mages only got to about the 5th circle of spells, while I think my divine casters got to the 6th. I think that even single-classed wouldn't have gotten much further as the total amount of XP for the fighter class levels is less than a single later caster level. I haven't yet played the Heart of Winter expansion, though, and I'm curious how high up I'll go. There's also a mode called Heart of Fury that significantly boosts enemy strength and also the XP they grant. From what I gather, veteran players will import their end-game party into a new Heart of Fury game as a sort of New Game +, so it's probably good that there's new power levels to look forward to with that setup.
MEGA SPOILERS
Again, this game doesn't really have any branching plotlines or choice-and-consequences. There's the typical Baldur's Gate choice between "I'll help you because I'm nice!" or "I'll help you if you pay me!". And there are some cases where you can choose between showing mercy, tricking an opponent or killing them. But the storyline is pretty static.
Here's my overall impression of what happens:
As we learn in the prologue, many years ago there was a war between the native barbarians of Icewind Dale and the human settlers who were moving in. During that war, one of the leaders opened a portal to the Abyss and demons began pouring out. The two sides stopped fighting each other to face their common foe. One of the humans, a cleric of Tempus, sacrificed himself to close the portal. This led to an uneasy peace.
Some time later, elves and dwarves created an alliance against their common foes the orcs. The dwarves made high-quality equipment, and the elves enchanted it. The dwarves wanted to sell the equipment, but the elves forbade it. A drow trader was able to break into the vaults, stole some equipment, and sold it to the orcs. This caused the elves to believe that the dwarves had betrayed them. The two sides grew estranged, and orcs overran both of their respective fortresses.
An ancient demon, Belhifet, has been struggling for a while with another extraplanar entity, Yxunomei. They both want an ancient artifact called the Heartstone Gem, which has been wielded by a druid in Kuldahar to hold back the cold and support a comfortable environment for human settlement. Yxunomei manages to steal the gem, and starts using it for Reasons that I never really understood. Belhifet is plotting to get the gem and use it to reopen the portal to the Abyss: this will cause the world to be overrun by demons and fuel the Blood War.
As part of Yxunomei's machinations, people start getting kidnapped from villages, goblins are seen roaming around, and the winter is getting worse due to the gem being stolen. This is where the game starts. Your group of adventurers agrees to join an expedition to discover the source of the trouble.
You kill Yxunomei and take the gem, but Belhifet murders the druid of Kuldahar. You then travel to the Severed Hand to see Lyssan, the ancient elf who commanded the garrison before being driven insane. He reveals that the secrets you seek lie in Dorn's Deep. You travel there, where you learn that someone known as Brother Pelquin, supposedly a priest of Ilmater, has been building up an army and turning the resources of the dwarves to war. You defeat his lieutenants but discover that his main army has marched on Easthaven and destroyed it.
Teleporting back to Easthaven, you rescue the villagers and confront Pelquin, who is revealed to be Belhifet. This is a really long fight! And really annoying! He clears any buffs you have at the start, and the battlefield is littered with traps, so anywhere you step you'll take damage and dispel any buffs you have gotten. He also has two Iron Golems with him, who hit hard and fill the field with poison gas clouds. He can only be hit with +3 weapons, hits like a truck and has a buttload of HP.
Eventually you (hopefully) defeat him, which leads into the final storybook sequence showing the triumphant heroes carrying the day. The narrator grows increasingly agitated, and you gradually realize that the narrator is, in fact, Belhifet himself. Pretty fun twist!
I never looked up any strategy or anything for the last fight. I stayed laser-focused on Belhifet, but if I were to do it again, I think I would try and take down the two Iron Golems first, after which I think it would be much more feasible to kite him around with a melee fighter while my ranged fighters and casters engaged him from a distance. I might also see if it's realistic to have the thief detect and disarm the traps on the map - it feels like there are a hundred of them. If you could clear them, though, you could bring up buffs during combat, which would be a huge game-changer.
One pretty major difference in game rhythm from old-school to modern games is how side quests are handled. There are very few side quests in general in this game. A lot of them are immediately opened and closed: you'll talk to someone, they'll say to fight the monster in the basement, you go into the basement, fight the monster, and return for your reward. But on the other extreme, there are a bunch of quests related to a dilapidated garden in the Severed Hand. You're supposed to fetch various things, including pure water and seeds and animals, to restore the garden. All of these are in future maps. When you find one, it is a LONG journey back to the Severed Hand and up through the labyrinthine maze to the garden again, just to drop off the item and get some XP and make the long and convoluted journey back again.
Even more annoying, several of the required items are in what turns out to be the last region of the game. I was planning to finish clearing Dorn's Deep before returning to the Hand to drop off my goods; but the last encounter of the Deep zaps you all the way back to Easthaven, and you can't re-enter the world map from there and must proceed to the final boss. Having this experience gave me a fresh appreciation for why modern RPGs give a clear signal of passing the "point of no return" - it wouldn't just be a matter of reloading for me, I would need to redo huge chunks of gameplay if I went back to finish those side-quests.
END SPOILERS
Despite my various gripes, I did have a blast playing Icewind Dale. The combat is satisfying and the unique setting kept me engaged. The EE also comes with the Heart of Winter expansion, I'm looking forward to playing that next!
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