Icewind Dale


 * For the Forgotten Realms region, see the Sword Coast article

Icewind Dale is a computer role-playing game developed for Windows by Black Isle Studios and published by Interplay Entertainment. Released on June 20, 2000, it takes place in the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms campaign setting, and is based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition ruleset.

The player begins the game by creating an adventuring party, which becomes enlisted as a caravan guard in the wake of strange events. As the story progresses, the player learns of a demonic feud that threatens the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale.

Icewind Dale was released to positive reviews, with critics praising the game's musical score and gameplay, the latter being compared to Diablo. The game received negative criticism for its similarities to previous Infinity Engine games. An expansion to the game, Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter, was released in 2001.

Gameplay
Icewind Dale ' s gameplay incorporates a modified version of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition ruleset. The rules' intricacies are automatically computed; the game keeps track of statistics and controls die rolling.

The player begins the game by creating an adventuring party of up to six characters. During character creation, statistics including name, gender, race, class, ability scores and weapon proficiencies may be altered. Magic users and thieves possess additional statistics, in the form of spells and thief abilities, respectively.

After a character has earned sufficient experience points through completing quests and defeating enemies, the player is given the option of leveling up that character. The player may alter several statistics when leveling up a character, while others are automatically upgraded. Certain character classes require less experience than others to achieve a new level. An experience point limit of 1,801,000 is in place for all characters, meaning that certain classes are able to reach higher levels than others.

The player may order characters to engage in movement, dialogue and combat. Combat occurs in real-time, replacing the originally turn-based system. The player may pause the game at any time, during which orders may be given to characters, who will carry them out when the game is resumed. Gameplay is focused mainly on combat, often against large groups of enemies.

Plot
The game begins in the town of Easthaven, where the player's party of adventurers is resting at a tavern. The town's leader, Hrothgar (voiced by Jim Cummings), invites the player's party to take part in an expedition to the town of Kuldahar, which has recently sent word of strange happenings. On the road to Kuldahar, the group is ambushed by frost giants, who cause an avalanche. Save for the player's party, the entire expedition force is crushed, and the way back to Easthaven is blocked.

The party continues onward to Kuldahar, where they meet Arundel (Jim Cummings), the village's Archdruid. The druid explains that a mysterious evil force has been causing abnormal weather patterns and monster behavior, and kidnapping villagers. As a result of these disturbances, the magical warmth surrounding the giant tree, under which the town is built, has begun to recede. Arundel sends the party to discover the source of the evil before the tree dies, and Kuldahar is destroyed. Following Arundel's advice, the party first goes to the "Vale of Shadows", an area containing Kuldahar's crypts, due to rumors of undead creatures being seen there. A cursed barbarian spirit named Kresselack (Tony Jay) informs the player that the undead were caused by a priestess of Auril, and not the force threatening Kuldahar. After dealing with the priestess, the party returns to Arundel, who then asks them to retrieve an ancient scrying item, known as the Heartstone Gem, so he may discover the source of the evil more quickly.

The player's party then ventures to a temple where Arundel believes the gem may be kept, only to find that it had been raided quite recently, and that the gem had been stolen. However, Arundel is able to discover the location of the raiders responsible for the theft of the gem – the caverns of Dragon's Eye. After making their way through the vast network of tunnels, the party finds and defeats a powerful demonic creature, a marilith, named Yxunomei. Yxunomei claimed to be using the Heartstone Gem for personal reasons, and mentioned a vendetta and age-old war with someone she sarcastically referred to as an "old friend."

When the party returns to Kuldahar, they find it under assault by orogs. After making their way to Arundel's hut, the player converses with a shapechanger disguised as Arundel, who reveals that he is the one Yxunomei was waging war against, and that the real Arundel is dying in another section of the hut, before vanishing. With his dying breath, the real Arundel tells the party to take the Heartstone Gem to "Larrel" at the fortress of the Severed Hand, as he is now the only one capable of using it. Unfortunately for the player's party, Larrel is found to be insane upon arriving at the fortress, and he only brokenly mentions something about freeing his cursed people, along with a hint on how to go about it. After completing his task, Larrel regains his sanity and uses the Heartstone Gem to discover the source of the evil, which apparently resides in the dwarven city of Dorn's Deep.

After carving their way through Upper Dorn's Deep, Wyrm's Tooth, and Lower Dorn's Deep, the party at last reaches Brother Poquelin – the villain of the game. Poquelin explains that he arrived in the material plane due to his superiors exiling him from his home plane – according to Poquelin, calling his vendetta with Yxunomei "out of control." Poquelin had predicted that Yxunomei would follow him to the material plane, so he had sought a base of operations in order to begin a military force capable of crushing her. While he was doing so, he stumbled upon the ancient artifact Crenshinibon, which he claims had been "calling" to him. Using its power of attracting evil-intentioned creatures, Poquelin began amassing an immense army with which to conquer the lands of Icewind Dale. He claims that everything was going as planned until Hrothgar's expedition had set out to investigate Yxunomei's activities in the area around Kuldahar. He used his frost giant minions to cause the avalanche to crush the expedition. Apparently, he did not see the player's party as a threat until they stole the Heartstone Gem from Yxunomei, to which he responded by killing Arundel – the only person he thought would be capable of using it. Although the party discovered his location by taking it to Larrel, Poquelin wasn't bothered, as all the while he was amassing his forces outside of Easthaven. After combating Poquelin, he teleports the party back to Easthaven, which is now in ruins. After freeing the surviving villagers and speaking with a local cleric of Tempus, the party makes its way to Poquelin's lair – Easthaven's temple, which has been enveloped by a Cryshal-Tirith (Elvish, meaning "crystal tower"), courtesy of Crenshinibon.

In the end, it is revealed that Poquelin's true intention was to re-open Jerrod's Stone (a portal to the Nine Hells of Baator created long ago), so that he could conquer the North with an army of devils at his command. Although after opening the portal, the local cleric of Tempus, Everard, hurls himself into it just as its namesake did – sealing it off at the cost of his own life. This buys the party enough time to fight Poquelin, who has reverted to his true form – the devil Belhifet. After defeating Belhifet and banishing him back to the Nine Hells, the Chryshal-Tirith collapses, and the party barely escapes in time. Easthaven begins to be rebuilt, and the game ends with the party victorious.

In a surprise twist ending, the game's Narrator and Belhifet are revealed to be one and the same; the Demon implies that his mandatory century of imprisonment (after his defeat at the hands of the Player's party) is close to an end and that he will soon walk the Prime Material Plane once more....

Development
Icewind Dale is based on the BioWare Infinity Engine, featuring pre-rendered backgrounds and sprite-based characters displayed with an isometric camera perspective. This engine was used to power Black Isle Studios' previous game, Planescape: Torment. The music for Icewind Dale was composed by Jeremy Soule.

Trivia

 * If the player follows a certain dialogue with Belhifet, it is revealed that Crenshinibon actually betrayed him to his death. According to the conversation, it did not agree with Belhifet's scheme to open a demonic portal.
 * The "Shadowed Orc Grunt" enemies in the Fortress of the Severed Hand often shout "Zug Zug" as a battle cry. This is a reference to the WarCraft series of games.
 * The voice actor for the Narrator in Icewind Dale is David Ogden Stiers, who played Major Charles Emmerson Winchester III from the television show M*A*S*H.
 * There are twin priests of Ilmater in Kuldahar – one named Ferg and the other Gus. This is quite possibly a hidden reference to Feargus Urquhart, the lead developer of the Infinity Engine games and current CEO of Obsidian Entertainment.
 * The voice actor for Kresselack, the Black Wolf, is the late Tony Jay. He also provided the voice of the Transcendent One in Planescape: Torment and The Elder God in the Legacy of Kain series.