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Game News Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition Released + Trent Oster Interview

Infinitron

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Tags: Beamdog; Icewind Dale; Trent Oster

Beamdog's Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition has just been released. They haven't put together any new trailer or anything, but Beamdog CEO Trent Oster did give a fairly interesting interview over at PCGamesN yesterday, where he spoke a bit about the differences between BioWare and Black Isle games, and about Beamdog's plans for the future. So I'll quote some of that here to give this post some substance:

“Icewind Dale was kind of this left-turn where you just jumped out and it was all about the bashing and combat and winning the fight and wondering what was around the next corner, that was going to be as challenging or even more challenging than what you just fought,” said Oster.

“At BioWare at some points we tried to introduce puzzles that were different. Icewind Dale is like combat puzzles. And they’re just fun.”

Just as BioWare and their publishing counterparts at Black Isle were getting to grips with the possibilities of their engine, so too were their players. They salivated at the chance to spend two hours in character creation - building an entire six-person party from the ‘gender’ button onwards, rolling and re-rolling their stats as they went.

“I think that’s where a lot of the satisfaction of Icewind Dale comes from,” said Oster. “By knowing the rules and by being able to build great combination characters and play them how they’re intended, you can do some amazing things that you wouldn’t think are possible with a party.”

By the turn of the millenium, BioWare had learned to play their henchmen off against each other to produce their juiciest dialogue. But Black Isle’s Icewind Dale, with its player-made party members, didn’t have that. Nor did it have the conversation-filled city hubs that punctuate play in Baldur’s Gate. What it had in great, snowy dollops was something Black Isle had learned on Fallout: atmosphere.

“Those guys were good,” recalled Oster. “To me Black Isle was always about really, really strong artwork, and it still looks phenomenal. It’s just haunting.

“Initially we were pretty intimidated by it, but once we started working with the content we were like, ‘Man, this stuff is so beautiful, it holds up so well’.”

When Black Isle did allow themselves to unsheath their quills, Oster reckons they often outdid BioWare - whose plots were more “convoluted”.

“I always found Black Isle’s writing to be a lot more direct, a lot shorter,” he said. “At BioWare I think we tended to get a little novelistic. Whereas Chris’ stuff was more colloquial, and more accessible.”
Hmmm, I'm not sure that's quite how I'd characterize MCA's writing style, particularly back then. But it's an interesting take. IWD:EE is now available on Steam, GOG, or direct from Beamdog, for the price of 20 dollars.
 
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Infinitron

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Remember, you guys aren't getting any brofists for posting those posts, either. :M
 

Infinitron

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GameBanshee review: http://www.gamebanshee.com/reviews/114679-icewind-dale-enhanced-edition-review/all-pages.html

Bugs

One of the downsides to primarily writing walkthroughs these days is that I don't play as many games as I used to, and I still haven't gotten around to playing the enhanced editions of either of the Baldur's Gate games. But from my understanding, those games were released with a lot of bugs that all but negated the improvements Beamdog added.

My experience with the Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition is completely different. I didn't encounter any broken quests or graphical glitches or crash bugs during the 50+ hours I spent with the game. The closest I came to a bug was in Trials of the Luremaster when my party fought a djinni who cast the Whirlwind spell -- and the whirlwind effect never disappeared. I had to leave the tower room I was in and then re-enter it to get the spell to go away.

So if you heard bad things about the first two enhanced editions and decided to stay away, that might have been the case then, but it's not the case now. The Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition worked great for me.

Conclusion

It's interesting going back and playing an old game. Icewind Dale isn't wildly old, but even so it came from a time when developers didn't cater their games to the masses. Just sitting down and playing a game didn't give you any sort of guarantee that you'd be able to finish it. Many parts of Icewind Dale are extremely difficult -- even without the Heart of Fury mode, where monsters are smarter and more powerful -- and that's just not something you see any more. So going back and playing Icewind Dale was a treat, even if sometimes I wanted to throw my mouse at somebody.

So if you haven't played Icewind Dale yet, then you should definitely give the Enhanced Edition a try. The Infinity Engine games make up one of the cornerstones of CRPG history, and they're all worth playing. But if you already own Icewind Dale, then the answer is a little more difficult because most of the enhancements are available for free from mods. As I was playing the EE, I was sort of wondering why anybody with bother with it when they could just play a modded version of the original game, but then just like with my recent review forXenonauts, I went back and tried playing the original game again, and I figured out the answer: the interface.

If you look at the screenshots for the EE, then its interface looks like it's exactly the same as the one for the original Icewind Dale, but it's not. There are myriad improvements, some of which I've listed in this review, and combined they make playing the EE much more enjoyable than playing the original game, and without the need of installing mods and trying to get them to work together. This makes it easy for me to recommend the Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition whether you own the original game or not.
 

aVENGER

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One note on the Gamebanshee review.

We didn't remove the highlighting functionality, it's just mapped to the TAB key now (like in BG2). It used to be mapped to the ALT key in the original Icewind Dale which is probably what confused the reviewer.
 

Gragt

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“At BioWare I think we tended to get a little novelistic. Whereas Chris’ stuff was more colloquial, and more accessible.”
Hmmm, I'm not sure that's quite how I'd characterize MCA's writing style, particularly back then. But it's an interesting take. IWD:EE is now available on Steam, GOG, or direct from Beamdog, for the price of 20 dollars.

These are not the words I would use either, but one of MCA's strength, at least "back then", is that his dialogs tended to lean towards verisimilitude, and thus felt natural and realistic, while Bioware' style was/is not simply "convoluted" or "novelistic" but stiff and wooden—interesting way of turning a flaw into a strength.
 
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Jaesun

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MCA
“At BioWare I think we tended to get a little novelistic. Whereas Chris’ stuff was more colloquial, and more accessible.”
Hmmm, I'm not sure that's quite how I'd characterize MCA's writing style, particularly back then. But it's an interesting take. IWD:EE is now available on Steam, GOG, or direct from Beamdog, for the price of 20 dollars.

These are not the words I would use either, but one of MCA's strength, at least "back then", is that his dialogs tended to lean towards verisimilitude, and thus felt natural and realistic, while Bioware' style was/is not simply "convoluted" or "novelistic" but stiff and wooden—interesting way of turning a flaw into a strength.

:salute:
 
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J_C

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One note on the Gamebanshee review.

We didn't remove the highlighting functionality, it's just mapped to the TAB key now (like in BG2). It used to be mapped to the ALT key in the original Icewind Dale which is probably what confused the reviewer.
A prime example for how easy is to confuse a modern game reviewer.
 

Grunker

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One note on the Gamebanshee review.

We didn't remove the highlighting functionality, it's just mapped to the TAB key now (like in BG2). It used to be mapped to the ALT key in the original Icewind Dale which is probably what confused the reviewer.

How does mod compatability look?
 

aVENGER

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How does mod compatability look?

It's a bit early to tell with certainty, but technically, everything that worked on BGII:EE should also work on IWD:EE. Similarly, mods aimed at the original IWD should work on IWD:EE.

However, a new WeiDU version is required to properly detect IWD:EE since it's a brand new game. It should be out in the next few weeks. When that happens, I know that at least CamDawg and myself will be updating our mods for IWD:EE. ;)
 

Grunker

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How does mod compatability look?

It's a bit early to tell with certainty, but technically, everything that worked on BGII:EE should also work on IWD:EE. Similarly, mods aimed at the original IWD should work on IWD:EE.

However, a new WeiDU version is required to properly detect IWD:EE since it's a brand new game. It should be out in the next few weeks. When that happens, I know that at least CamDawg and myself will be updating our mods for IWD:EE. ;)

Cool, keep us updated. Unlike BG:EE I might actually buy this one.
 

Darth Roxor

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IWD:EE +
haughty.png
Developer

Error! Does not compute!
 

Blaine

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Yes, I'd love to purchase a game that's essentially back-to-back RTwP battles a second time, for $20.

Wait a minute....
 

Zboj Lamignat

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At least this one doesn't seem completely incompetent (not bugged to eternity and back) and has some actual improvements over vanilla + mods (IWD needed the kits badly, they should've been implemented with HoW and the mod that tried to add them was horribly bugged afair).

The pricing is still beyond retarded however.
 

Harold

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IWD needs kits like I need warts on my balls. Unless your idea of fun is playing a combat-centric game in what is basically easy-mode thanks to kits, and there's even a story mode on top of that ffs. Sawyer must be spinning in his... chair.
 

Zboj Lamignat

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It needs kits because party development in IWD is fucking boring and kits spice it up a little bit. Of course if people making it were competent, they would balance the game for the occasion, but they didn't give a fuck with BG1 and so they don't give a fuck here. There's also stuff like protection from level drain when there are no enemies that can level drain you etc.
 

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One note on the Gamebanshee review.

We didn't remove the highlighting functionality, it's just mapped to the TAB key now (like in BG2). It used to be mapped to the ALT key in the original Icewind Dale which is probably what confused the reviewer.
A prime example for how easy is to confuse a modern game reviewer.

Why is this person doing a review for GameBanshee? IGN I would understand but GB?

Well, it is Steven Carter we are talking about...
I used to look forward to every GameBanshee review. Not any more.
 

Melcar

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Linux client is on GoG and Steam. Tempted. Don't know guys. Can't really get my originals to install properly on Wine anymore after doing some updates without some extra work. It's only USD$20 and I got all this extra money from my bonus just laying there on my condom drawer.
 

Blaine

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This is why I refuse to believe Linux emissaries who claim you don't have to spend hours repeatedly updating drivers and dependencies in Wine.
 

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