Icewind Dale The Icewind Dale Series Thread

[Roguey]

It may have been "competing" with Diablo but IWD wasn't expected to be a huge multimillion seller. It didn't even match BG in sales but it still had a very high return on investment because it only took them a year to make it.

IWD was "simplified" cause
http://o.rpgvaultarchive.ign.com/features/interviews/icewind_a.shtml

Black Isle had just finished up Baldur's Gate and Fallout 2, and many were working on Torment at the time, and all of these games were heavily dialogue oriented. We said, why don't we make something that is a little more accessible, something that you can play whenever you want, know what you need to do next, but give it a strong story. We bounced around how this would work and came up with the Dungeon Crawl idea. I know that sounds dumb, but essentially we were thinking of making a game like The Bard's Tale, or Wizardry, but add in the story elements that couldn't be done back then.

 

[selkin]

That's an interesting interview, thanks!

Now I see why Planescape: Torment is looking less good then IWD. The people who knew how to make nice-looking games were working on IWD

Just kidding.

 

[kmonster]

Actually Baldur's Gate is closer to Diablo than Icewind Dale is. One chosen character who hires helpers in a dark, pseudo-religious athmosphere while Icewind Dale is more in the classical Goldbox direction, a party of characters with different strengths and weaknesses work together as team in tactical combat, helping their world and becoming heroes.

 

[Revenant]

But the biggest obstacle was that H&S and turn-based AD&D is incompatible. In my opinion.

Another ignorant novice detected. AD&D is phase based, not turn based, and both turn based and real time implementations of AD&D suck. Although real time AD&D implementation can still be played somewhat like phase based, so it's slightly better than turn based, in my opinion.

 

[selkin]

But the biggest obstacle was that H&S and turn-based AD&D is incompatible. In my opinion.

Another ignorant novice detected.

 

[Lilura]

Diablo 2 combat is more about... you click an enemy over and over, as fast as you can, until it dies.
Baldur's Gate combat is more about... you click an enemy, and then watch your character attack it, automatically, over and over, until it dies.

you're watching auto-attacks in BG because the combat system is based strictly on time (6 secs = 1 round).

If you have 2 attacks, that means you attack twice for every 6 secs that passes.
It doesn't matter how fast you click, or even how many times the avatar seems to animate an attack, you will only attack twice, no more, no less.

The other... big difference... is that in BG you have (up to) five other avatars to control, so there's lots of pausing, setting them to do things, then unpausing (aka tactics)... you can only pause Diablo 2 with the Esc key, and doing so blocks out the game, so you can't do anything - except take a deep breath - before you plunge back in...

both games are very fun, but they do play differently...
(and this without going into the dialogue and questing of BG, which further separates it from hackfests...)

 

[Dorateen]

Actually Baldur's Gate is closer to Diablo than Icewind Dale is. One chosen character who hires helpers in a dark, pseudo-religious athmosphere while Icewind Dale is more in the classical Goldbox direction, a party of characters with different strengths and weaknesses work together as team in tactical combat, helping their world and becoming heroes.

That works for me. Although, playing BG with a custom party, there is not so much daylight between IWD in terms of gameplay. Icewind Dale had more ruthless combat.

 

[Volourn]

"Black Isle had just finished up Baldur's Gate"

STFU


"Actually Baldur's Gate is closer to Diablo than Icewind Dale is."

No. It says a lot when your very first point is a flat out fukkin' lie. You do NOT hire 'helpers' in BG. Fuck nutz. And, BG and IWD have the same exact game play. FFS

 

[Roguey]

"STFU"

Context, Volly. Chris Parker, the Black Isle producer, was talking about the games Black Isle was publishing.

 

[Orma]

I've been replaying Icewind Dale recently. And i decided to play Heart of Winter AFTER i finished the game. (Exported party)

So after the first dialogue with Wylfdene my party simply stopped talking. Silent on both selection and orders.
I tried loading earlier saves but it somehow effects all of my HoW saves. No problem with the main game though.

Nothing came up from googling it.

Did this happen to anyone else?

 

[Monocause]

Nope, never happened to me. I actually remember IWD&HoW as really clean games, especially for modern standards.

Perhaps it's something with your hardware acceleration? Do you use EAX? Have you tried turning it off? Par the course, if running on W7 try experimenting with compat options. If you're on WinXP try running DXDiag and reducing levels of sound hardware acceleration to see if it helps.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.shsforums.net/topic/50492-1pp-animation-fixes-for-iwdtotlm/
http://www.gibberlings3.net/iwd_fixpack/

 

[Orma]

Tried toggling EAX.
Already installed the G3 fixpack infinitron linked.
Even reinstalled the whole game.

None of this worked, now im checking out the first link.

EDIT: How are animation changes going to help?

 

[Lilura]

Was this not fixed in the ToLM patch, as in, there is a large patch for HoW that adds ToLM and fixes many bugs.

 

[Orma]

Yeah i have Trials of Lure Master. Apparently not fixed.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Copy save games in a backup folder, then reinstall the game. Not works everytime though :/

 

[Infinitron]

Tried toggling EAX.
Already installed the G3 fixpack infinitron linked.
Even reinstalled the whole game.

None of this worked, now im checking out the first link.

EDIT: How are animation changes going to help?

It also fixes a sound bug.

 

[Orma]

Tried toggling EAX.
Already installed the G3 fixpack infinitron linked.
Even reinstalled the whole game.

None of this worked, now im checking out the first link.

EDIT: How are animation changes going to help?

It also fixes a sound bug.

Weapon sounds rather than voices. Tried anyway, didn't work.

 

[Orma]

Haha i finally found a solution. :D

The character's voices were somehow reset and i just chose the voices again in character sheet customize menu.

Thanks guys for trying to help.

 

[octavius]

Anyone read the Drizzt novels, especially the Dark Elf trilogy, by Salvatore?
Do they provide any background story or "lore" relevant for the Icewind Dale games?

 

[selkin]

It's about dark elves so it provides some lore on Loth the Menzoberanzzan the Underdark and so on. And there are dark elves and Underdark in Icewind Dale too so yes I guess it's not a bad source for lore.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Anyone read the Drizzt novels, especially the Dark Elf trilogy, by Salvatore?
Do they provide any background story or "lore" relevant for the Icewind Dale games?

Well, Dark Elf triliogy is mainly about the Underdark and drows, no Icewind Dale until 3/4 of 3rd book. They have got good description of the Underdark and some of its denizens.
Next trilogy 's only first book takes place in Icewind Dale and don't really have much lore relevant for games. Second and third books are good road adventures, second book takes us to Luskan, Silverymoon and Evermoors while third book takes us to south to Baldurs Gate and Luskan. So still no lore for games

 

[Erebus]

Anyone read the Drizzt novels, especially the Dark Elf trilogy, by Salvatore?
Do they provide any background story or "lore" relevant for the Icewind Dale games?

I seem to remember that the evil cristal that appears in IWD1 (Crenshinibon or something like that) was introduced in a Drizzt novel.

 

[CappenVarra]

Yup, basically some elements of the IWD ending are inspired by Salvatore's drivel. That's why Yxunomei is a much better villain than Belhifet or whatever.

 

[Erebus]

That's why Yxunomei is a much better villain than Belhifet

To be fair, even Melissan is a much better villain than Belhifet.