Icewind Dale Sneak Peek
I stopped by Black Isle Studios and was able to see Icewind Dale a few weeks before it was to be completed. Below are a few observations from that trip.
Silverdawn - June 14, 2000
Last week, I had the opportunity to stop by Black Isle Studios and see Icewind Dale. Steve Bokkes and J. E. Sawyer are the primary designers and share a dark office littered with AD&D manuals and guides. Keeping Steve company are pictures of Xena, while Josh decorated with a couple swords and a mace.
Steve was testing the voice-overs and sounds that are now in the game. They are first-rate like you'd come to expect with Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment. The final battle had a very deep stomping sound, but I did not see what was causing it. The voice acting was very good and there were many selections. Two voices were a male dwarf reminiscent of a pirate and a female halfling that sounded similar to Valerie (Carol Kane), the Wizard's wife in the Princess Bride. Steve also got his ass kicked by the archdruid Arundel, the leader of the good people of Kuldahar.
J. E. Sawyer was busy balancing the Lower Dorn's Deep dungeon, the final and largest in the game. Miss Sassypants was running around slaying salamanders, mycanoids, shriekers and unusual skeletons. Josh uses the guard function extensively, the first time I'd ever seen it employed in the game. He indicated that in the last few weeks they have killed many bugs and was very optimistic that Icewind Dale would be ready by the end of the month.
In the press preview from a month ago, the graphic user interface (GUI) was still transitional. It now looks crisper due to the efforts of Kihan Pak. The snowy fort image sits behind the startup menu, which is off-center. The white font now blends into the GUI properly as the stray, colored pixels have been removed. All the buttons look good and remnants from Baldur's Gate, like a skull that pops up when saving a game, have all been removed. Several new portraits have been added including a male fighter with dreadlocks (inspiration?).
The introductory movie had just been completed, featuring the voice talent of David Ogden Stiers, Major Winchester from M*A*S*H. The screen is black. A narrator starts to recount the history of Icewind Dale, the frigid home of the barbarian tribes. As he talks, he lights a candle that illuminates a tome with drawings of the events in the Dale. The candle casts a flickering shadow across the book. Turning the pages, the narrator arrives at the instance when the archmage Arakon entered the vale. The barbarians defend their homeland again the forces of the mage and when the mage sees he is going to lose, he opens up a portal to the Abyss, and demons flow forth. All the humans rallied together and faced the common threat, to be slaughtered. Watching the battle, the barbarian shaman Jerrod knew he had to stop the carnage and, praying to his god Tempos, he learned the answer. He ran through the writhing battle and jumped into the portal. In a flash of light, the portal was sealed. All that remained was a monument of Jerrod frozen in has last moments of agony in a stone circle. But that was not the end of the story…
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