That sound you heard Back on August 31st was yours truly screaming in ecstasy when Beamdog let loose the news that Icewind Dale Enhanced Edition was a “thing”. Not just a thing, either, but according to a new interview, it’s a version of the game that has a lot of new content as well.
For those that don’t know, Icewind Dale is the redheaded stepchild of the Infinity Engine games, with Planescape and the two Baldur’s Gate titles getting all the glory and attention. Maybe it was due to the fact that you didn’t have a pre-made party to banter with (Though there are mods that can change that), but many disliked Black Isle’s cold northern spin-off. The more combat-heavy, story-lite approach was something I enjoyed, however.
The interview touches on some of the background dealings that went into making the game happen as well as some details about the new content:
On the new content: (TO = Trent Oster)
- TO: As we went through the assets, we found a number of quests which were partially implemented by the original development team, but were inaccessible from the game. While at Bioware, we did a similar approach with cut content, leaving it partially implemented behind the scenes as the work to clean it all up and remove it was too great. One of our team members (Pete Camagna, known in the community as CamDawg) had laid a lot of groundwork on the content restoration, and the team was able to rebuild and fill in the blanks on the quests.
TO:My guess on the unfinished quests is that they were cut due to bugs late in the development cycle. Sometimes you look at a quest that has a bunch of bugs to fix and you question if it just easier to cut it than to fix it.
TO:We’ve added all the classes and kits from Baldur’s Gate II: EE (as well as a couple of new ones), and over 150 new spells and class abilities to improve the game. There are over 60 new items added to the game. As Icewind Dale was always about creating your entire party, we chose not to implement new characters, but retain the nature and feel of the original.
On the rather “wonky” multiplayer of their other two remakes:
- TO: We screwed up. We made the same rookie mistake that many studios do, and we caved to external pressure and shipped Baldur’s Gate: EE and Baldur’s Gate II: EE earlier than we should have and there were bugs in the multiplayer code. With the start of 2014, we had a clean slate on the publishing side, and we were able to take the extra time to fix the bugs and make a game we are proud of.
Icewind Dale: EE multiplayer is tight and works well. We’ve already moved many of those fixes into the Baldur’s Gate: EE 1.3 Update which just released on all platforms, including iPhone, so the proof is out there. The new stability and polish are due to the heroic efforts of our testing team, people such as Gate70, Grogerson, and Troodon80, recruited from the community, and a general high level of commitment to quality across the company. We had the whole team testing the game for a period, and we made the decision to implement “Story Mode” based on feedback from a team member who was new to Infinity Engine games.
And of course, the question everyone wants to know the answer to…BG3:
- TO: We are still interested in Baldur’s Gate III. As to what a Baldur’s Gate III would be, wow, that is a terrifying premise. I think every Baldur’s Gate fan has a different image in their head as to what it would be, and making all of those fans happy would be a monumental challenge. For now, we haven’t started any work on a Baldur’s Gate III, but we do discuss the concept on a pretty regular basis.
As I thought, Beamdog says Icewind Dale 2 will follow this one, but (again, as I figured) its differences will make a remake very difficult.
Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition is nearly upon us, with a release candidate supposedly ready to be launched sometime before the end of the month.
