Icewind Dale


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

Icewind Dale is a computer role-playing game developed by Black Isle Studios. Released on June 20, 2000, it is set in the Forgotten Realms Icewind Dale region of Dungeons & Dragons, but takes place decades before the events described in R. A. Salvatore's books which popularized the area. An expansion to the game, Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter, was released in 2001.

Based on the BioWare Infinity Engine, the game features pre-rendered backgrounds, and an isometric camera perspective with sprite-based characters. This engine was used to power Black Isle Studios' previous game, Planescape: Torment. Icewind Dale is based on a real-time modification of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition ruleset.

Icewind Dale was released to mostly positive reviews. Critics cited the game's musical score and combat-heavy gameplay as high points, although some found fault with the game's time-consuming character creation and similarities to previous games on the Infinity Engine. The game is far more hack-and-slash than Baldur's Gate, and has often been compared to the Diablo series of games for its heavy focus on combat.

Gameplay
The gameplay of Icewind Dale is very similar to that of Baldur's Gate. As with Baldur's Gate, the game is based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition ruleset, and the combat system is a quasi-real-time adaption of the normally turn-based Dungeons & Dragons combat system used - dice rolling and the like are all done automatically, without requiring the player's participation, although it is possible to pause the game at any time to issue orders to the party.

The player begins the game by generating a party of up to 6 characters, but is unable to recruit NPCs as was possible in some of the other games on the Infinity Engine. Character generation is almost identical to that of Baldur's Gate - the player must roll virtual dice for a character's statistics (strength, dexterity, constitution, wisdom, intelligence, and charisma), choose a race and class, select weapon proficiencies, and choose a handful of starting spells for magic-users. However, as the entire party is generated by the player, the player-characters do not have preset personalities, and are all capable of assuming the role of "protagonist" with minor differences at most.

One of the most noticeable differences from Baldur's Gate is the much larger beastiary: ettins, orcs, goblins, and orogs, for example, are all major foes in this game, whereas they weren't even present in the original Baldur's Gate. Some other differences are the heavily raised experience level-cap, much bigger battles sometimes involving 20 or more foes at once, and a far larger spell selection - used by or against the player's party, 6th level spells and above make frequent appearances throughout the game.

Also unlike Baldur's Gate, the game makes use of a semi-random item generation system. In Baldur's Gate most items were completely pre-placed - meaning that the same items were in the same places every time the game was played. In Icewind Dale however, most quest-earned items are randomly picked out of a handful of pre-generated ones, and items taken from the corpses of more major foes are similar in that regard, although slightly more random.

Plot synopsis
The game begins in the town of Easthaven, where the player's party of adventurers is resting at the local pub. Soon enough, the town's leader, Hrothgar, invites the player's party to take part in an expedition to the town of Kuldahar, which has recently sent word of strange goings-on. However, before the group makes it to their destination, they are ambushed by Frost Giants, who cause an avalanche - apparently crushing the entire expedition force save for the player's party, and blocking the way back to Easthaven.

The party continues onward to Kuldahar, where they meet the Archdruid, Arundel. He explains that, due to the evil which has been terrorizing Kuldahar, the magical ring of warmth surrounding the great oak which the town is built around has begun to recede. Arundel sends the party to help discover the source of the evil before the great oak dies, and Kuldahar is destroyed. After an unsuccessful attempt to locate the evil by scouring the Vale of Shadows (culminating in a visit with a cursed barbarian spirit named Kresselack, The Black Wolf), Arundel asks the party to find 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....

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 music for Icewind Dale was composed by Jeremy Soule, while Icewind Dale II's music was composed by Inon Zur; who also composed the soundtrack for Prince of Persia: Warrior Within.
 * 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 and current CEO of Obsidian Entertainment.