Icewind Dale Retrospective | A History of Isometric CRPGs (Episode 5)
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- Опубліковано 30 січ 2019
- Icewind Dale is Episode 5 in my series on the history of isometric CRPGs. This is based on the Enhanced Edition released by Beamdog in 2014. If you would like to know more about my series on isometric CRPGs then please check out this video: • UPDATE: New CRPG video...
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#IcewindDale #BeamDog #CRPGs - Ігри
Icewind Dale is massively underrated. The setting, music, narration, and overall atmosphere really give it a very 'classic D&D' adventure vibe. The encounter design is also leaps and bounds better than Baldur's Gate's, utilizing the engine and combat system far better imho.
The encounters were better, but the story sucked compared to Baldur's Gate. The major problem with creating your entire party is that the characters don't have any sort of back story or personality.
Also the expansion was a complete rip off.
Graeme Thomson I really enjoyed the main plot. It has a story book feel that is really charming, and besides the scope is much smaller than BG so they’re trying to do different things. The lack of pre defined character personalities didn’t bother me as much because I used my imagination to fill in the gaps, but I can see that being a detriment for some. There’s a mod called NPC project that has Baldur’s Gate style companions, but I haven’t tried it personally.
@@gunblade250 I always make my own parties in these kinds of games, so that never bothered me. The story isn't as good as BG's, but its still a great adventure all the same.
@@gunblade250 In a way though that's what makes dnd great. I named my chars after my wife and kids, old friends, etc. Gave stakes to the adventure. It would a little extra to imagine dialogue etc but someone more 'devoted' than I could lol.
Maybe it's rose tinted glasses but i recall really enjoying IWD, it really had a nice old school feel to it, almost feeling like the dungeon crawler goldbox style D&D games from the 90's remade in the BG engine with all the benefits that go with it. All the extra improvements like voiced dialogue, well crafted massive dungeons, ambience and music really gave the game a memorable setting. Again i cant overstate how good the music is.
Bummer you didn't like this one. Icewind Dale was my childhood and I was so confused when nobody I knew had ever heard of it. To me, there was no world like it that I was able to go through. It was beautiful, it had fantastic sound effects, movie-level music, and, as a kid, it seemed larger than life. I understand your criticisms, but I still appreciate the sheer level of detail that was put into this forgotten game.
Indigo Brown - I played most of the Infinity Engine games but not this one. It's one of the games I want to play but for whatever reason never do. I heard it's similar to Baldurs Gate but more combat focused. Combat and exploring the worlds were always my favorite parts of these types of games.
@@kummakummakummakummakummac8606 It's a lot more directed than Baldur's Gate but definitely more polished. I'm not sure about the remastered version though.
Mordor is my game now knows but I played the shit out of. Found it on a "galaxy of games" cd that was free on the counter at a random store.
I feel the same I played it as a kid (12 years ish) and I was being introduced to d&d at the time. I was completely taken in by it.
I went back and played it a couple of years ago and still enjoyed it.
It's an incredible game
famous and infamous don't mean the same thing
Not according to the 2 Amigos :P
Icewind Dale sets out to replicate the feel of an oldschool dungeon crawling adventure, except it's much more creative than the old AD&D modules when it comes to set-dressing, dungeon design and environmental storytelling.
You either "get it" and appreciate it, or you don't. Calling it a "filler" or "lesser title of the brand" is doing it a huge disservice. It's a different, more traditional, no nonsense look into D&D.
Those that do see the value will stand by it, I do.
It's almost as if some people have different tastes or something. Weird.
I enjoyed it. The story was lame by crpg standards, and it lacked a certain feel that the BG games had, but that said I did enjoy all of the encounters. The game is a breeze to play and experimenting with different types of parties added greatly to the replayability. Want to run a party of nothing but multiclass wizards? Go for it! Want to play a tactical hack and slash party consisting entirely of fighters with various weapon loadouts? Go for it! A band of thieves? A coven of druids? Try it out! Otherwise you can fine tune a perfect party of balanced characters. I wish more games allowed you to build an entire party instead of relying on what the game pushes on you.
That's basically what Chris said, though.
Even though I love BG2 for the narratives, I equally like ID for just giving people, who want more of the combat, a crazy good dungeon crawler.
and now he is out right skipping iwd 2. you can't just be skipping games you don't like and still call it a retrospective.
don't really like any of his retrospectives, shiets on all of my favorite rpg's XD
I like IWD more.
It focused on the combat and mechanics of DnD, which were superior on PC, and ditched the illusions of choice, which were inferior compared to a live DM.
BG I'm sure is the better game for all those with no real DnD, but for those with real DnD who just want to experiment with different classes abilities and party compositions in all kinds of adventures without much fluff in between, IWD was just so much better.
The music and general art aesthetic is on another level too, this sound-track was made in Jeremy sole's prime.
LOL. When I first started watching this series I was actually specifically looking forward to the Icewind Dale episode
I asked for Icewind Dale :(
For me it's my favorite game of those RPG due to the party creation freedom. I actually have a ongoing game right now.
I only played it a few months back for the first time and I had a great time with it.
I loved Icewind! :( my pc died around the time I was playing in the snakemen tunnels, in the mountain. Lost game saves and never went back to it. Might revisit it one day.
This is a man in search of a perfect story...for him. Remember that, and sleep dreamfully.
Icewind Dale is a heaven for people who read R.A.Salvatore.
I read R.A. Salvatore because of Icewind Dale.
@@tatuira93 I played Icewind Dale because I read Salvatore :P
@@gdoggcasey I played icewind dale because of r l stine.
Also same. I played it because Akar Kessel and Crenshinabon!
I read Icewind Dale after playing Salvatore
I'm joining the chorus of Icewind Dale lovers. It's a really phenomenal game that never got its due because of comparisons to the Baldur's Gate series. As a tabletop AD&D gamer since the late 80's, I find that ID is the closest of the Infinity Engine games to capturing the feel of both live-action roleplaying and the classic 'Gold Box' games. I love creating my entire party and coming up with different builds and imagined personalities for the characters. I agree, ID certainly could have used more varied dialogue options and incorporated side quests to cut down on the linearity, but the richness of its tactical combat is second-to-none for this era of D&D CRPGs.
It doesn't surprise me that as someone without a background in D&D you enjoyed BG and Planescape more than ID because of their deeper stories. I also really enjoy the Baldur's Gate and Planescape games, but they're much more like video games with a D&D setting and ruleset strapped on them than an attempt to replicate tabletop D&D on the PC. And that's fine, it's just important to recognize that these series, despite utilizing the same game engine, are trying to do different things and lend themselves to different playstyles.
2019 and i played icewind dale today, i stil love it
Was just doing vale of shadows yesterday
I kind of miss playing these games. They tried to tell the story through the atmosphere, the winter climates, the big tree woods, etc. The scenery told the story.
And I kind of understood what it was about even though it didn't have large dialogues.
I think the Icewind Dale series was more of a D&D simulation, as opposed to the PC centric story of BG...I LOVE BG...I also appreciate the ability to play as whoever I want in ID...not just another Baalspawn.
I have Icewind Dale 2 for Windows 98. Once i get a suitable computer, i will play it. never played these types of games before.
im in dorns deep now :))
I'm currently playing icewind dale for the first time since 2005. still one of my fav games, old as it is.
"It would be like reading the Bible through once and then saying, 'I've got some ideas to share,' when you know you won't be saying anything that hasn't been said 1,000 times before."
Wow, in a video about an old RPG, this was a nugget of wisdom I don't often come across, but you are 100% right. SOOOO many people read something from the Bible and start spouting off about this and that like they've uncovered some bright or dark secret thousands of years old that NO ONE has ever heard about YOU GUYS! LOL. Worst part is many people doing this have not read the entire Bible through even once, just some snippet someone sent them out of context.
I disagree that bottle-necking large groups of enemies in narrow passages is "cheap". Its a legit battle tactic, think Battle of Thermopylae.
Totally agree. Games like Pillars of Eternity really push that tactic in dungeons so your tanks don't get overwhelmed.
Its logical and was used in ancient warfare.
I loved using choke point. Pillars 1-2 as well.
Nahhh the spartans clearly used cheats...
Hahahaha jk
The spartans also invented a tactic where they'd walk around the periphery of the opposing army until one or two soldiers spotted them, became aggressive and abandoned the rest of the army in a dumb animal rage to pursue the spartans away from the others Once these soldiers were out of range of their comrades they'd always decide that they were tough enough to face the spartans alone and would never do anything to warn their allies often resulting in their demise. The spartans would repeat the process until only the strongest member of the opposing faction was left still standing and then finish them off when the numbers were in the spartans favor.
I'm Infinity Engine veteran
Things that you missed :
* Icewind dale deals great with lvl 1 problem in DnD - Baldur's Gate is super hard on level 1 and kinda trivial after achieving lvl2 . Every combat encounter is super hard and it takes ages to get lvl 2. Icewind dale is super generous and after leaving Easthaven most of your party should be at level 2. Thanks to that difficulty curve is much smoother.
* "Class specific quests" - It's very easy to miss. If specific class-character speaks with specific questgiver, you can get very interesting results. For example, do you remember ogre from location before Kuldahar ? If you have druid, you can help him and you get extra experience. There are few instances of that in the game.
* Difficulty - ID:EE is much much much easier than original. New quests added exp. New classes are basically cheats(dwarven defender wtf) and some of new spells are unbalanced at best.
To be honest I remember not being able to kill final boss in original ID(~10 years ago) because he was that tough. In EE version I killed his minion in cutscene(Contingency spell) and then destroyed him in 2 sec on insane difficulty. I couldn't believe it so I installed original version(thanks gog for giving classic edition when you buy EE) and played entire game again with optimized team and final boss was hard but I was able to beat it this time.
For me Icewind dale is "tactical diablo". I love art and music. In games we rarely go into frozen land so it's kinda unique.
Having finished both the original back then and the EE I can say that aside from a few things, the difficulty from the core gameplay is not that different, if it all.
It might be easier if you indulge in the new stuff (which I saw very little of) , but in my playthrough, it wasn't much different.
u can kill a 5k sirene/nereid at levle 1 in baldur's gate easily with ranged wepons which will automatically level both u and imoen to level 2. Its just that most people don't know what to do or where to go to aquire experience in bg1
Druid's talk with Mytos is pretty great too.
Disagree with the new classes being "cheats", if anything, it brings balance to the game. The original is imbalanced against the player and is frustratingly hard for new timers. Its easy to say that the EE is too easy when you've already played the game and know what to expect...
"Tactical Diablo" Yeah that's it
Icewind Dale is one of the Best RPG's I've ever played and was an absolute joy. Creating 6 characters at once was SO MUCH FUN, I often spent hours creating a team, only to immediately create a new team after I was done, because it was SO enjoyable to create a party - it was one of the funnest parts of the game. Then the gameplay itself was legendary. I loved every second of it!
And Arcanum is my favorite game of all time, if you do a video on it, please do it justice!!! Thx for the channel
Icewind Dale is my favorite because I love testing the mechanics to their limit on the hardest difficulty. Icewind Dale is MUCH harder than BG1 or 2, maybe not ToB, but it's very good.
Plus, the Icewind Dale art was so much more beautiful than any other Isometric RPG I've played. I love the music and atmosphere.
IWDII Heart of Fury mode.
One game you shouldnt really forget imho is Dragons Age Origins. It was a modern CRPG before the CRPG revival in mid 2010s.
loved origins a lot. i even skipped work just so i can continue playing lol. i hated that bioware made newer dragon age into mass effect. origins will forever remain special to me.
@@vaynelevant I had a shitty GPU when DA:O released so I had to borrow a better one from a friend but he could only borrow it to me during the night as he was not using it. I remember a lot of sleepless nights because it was my first cRPG and my mind was blown away of how amazing the game was.
@@NoobFromRomania i was using a shitty $35 geforce 9500gt back in 2011. idk what more shitty card you can have back then. but cheers to DA:O. the first ever game i lost sleep to was icewind dale back in 2000 back when i was in high school. usually i play games up till late night like 1am or 2am. icewind dale kept me up till the next morning, slept for 4 hours and played some more. i even skipped school just so i can keep on playing. lmao
currently enjoying pillars of eternity 2. check it out if you haven't yet. you might like it too.
@@vaynelevant at the moment I am playing PoE 1 + the white march expansions on hard and with expert mode. Got about 120 hours so far. Bought PoE 2 obsidian edition yesterday :D. Took me a while to understand the mechanics of games from infinity engine era and adult life takes its toll.
About the GPU back then, I had a relic, can not even remember the model. Could only play counter strike 1.6 and the dota custom game of warcraft 3. It was a card from 2006... hard times :))
@@NoobFromRomania i had a radeon 9550 back in 2006. it sucked big sweaty balls. ahaha
I just played through IWD again in December. It was my 4th playthrough since its release and I absolutely adore it.
A lot of what you've said, is what I thought when I first tried out the BG/IWD games, i.e. struggling to understand the damned THACO system. I remember blinking and scratching my head after noticing my armour class went down after equipping armour (given that I was familiar with mostly NWN1/2 before trying out BG/IWD) But with time, and a little reading up on the net, I came to understand it better. And though I love BG2, the Icewind Dale games are really my most favourite, since they are incredibly replayable. Creating your own party is a hell lot of fun, and you can basically use your own imagination to fill in the story of those characters, and because they are your own characters you feel much more stronger attachment to them than some NPC. It has also really rich, welcoming atmosphere and amazing music (truth be told, I think Easthaven/Kuldahar/Lonelywood track are to this date some of the most beautiful tracks ever made by Jeremy Soule, and this man made terrific tracks for games like Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, to name a few)
Also for fans of NWN2, there is an awesome module conversion of the first IWD game for NWN2 on the Neverwinter Vault. HIGHLY recommend, very fun to play the game with the 3.5 system (as well as with more classes, feats, etc)
This was such a beautiful comment.
Icewind Dale is my favorite Forgotten Realms saga put into a video game. So much nostalgia.
One of my all-time favs.. for some weird reason it gets better and better each play through
While it's definitely not my favorite, I seem to remember it quite fondly, maybe even more so than any other CRPG I played back in them olden days. First time I created my own party, think that meant a lot. Just something about creating six characters from scratch, especially with those perfect portraits! The fact that you have your own party, I think that even makes all that combat much more appealing. Or is that just me. I dunno, always just kinda got in the grow of 'OK team, let's do this!' It was exciting, seeing my team overcome all those challenges.
Yeah, YOU are the group of adventurers (and even you can be alone or up to six characters) and you want fame, riches and power. Your group had no luck in others regions so they heard about some remote village called Easthaven were the chief was calling for adventurers.
I really like Icewind Dale. Great atmosphere!
I replayed icewindale last year and loved it. Named the characters after me my wife and kids, and a few friends who'd passed away. I'm not gonna pretend I came up with a narrative and character development, but it made the risk of losing a character real enough to add stakes to the game.
*Yeah watching through the whole video realized I'd forgot the base game, and only remembered the expansion story.lol
First game I ever played.
Had no idea what an RPG is at that time. Yet I feel hopelessly in love and never recovered :)
Icewind dale is by far my favorite game of the Infinity engine games.The soundtrack is just amazing and it adds a lot to the atmosphere. IWD is a linear RPG with a decent story and great combat.Being linear makes it great as an entry game for people who want to try the Infinity engine games.Baldurs gate does have a better story but it is atrocious for newcomers.
I have printed the maps of IWD and Baldurs Gate and i run them as a DM for my pen and paper parties who have not played the games on PC.The IWD campaigns played out much better and my players enjoyed them more.In Baldurs gate it was so easy to get sidetracked in the wilderness and lose the story.I highly recommend them to other DMs to try them for their parties.They make excellent campaigns.
Jeremy Soule is incredible. He also did the Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim soundtracks. Some other works of his include Dungeon Siege, Guild Wars, NWN, and KOTR.
One cool thing about the Bard in this game that might have made you chuckle is that early mermaid/siren quest at the start gives the Bards an option to communicate with the creature by playing a song with them. It's a nice, adorable little touch.
Just so you know...back in the day it wasn't called a DLC. It was an expansion pack.
well trial of the luremaster was basically a dlc for heart of winter. it was jsut not called that.
DLC is an expansion pack, that is short and mostly shit. Expansion packs were basically nearly as long as the original.
wow we didn't know that. thank you sooo much for informing us >.>
I actually loved icewind dale 1 and 2!
I read in a old interview that icewind dale was supposed to be the diablo of black isle/bioware games. (fun fact: planescape torment was supposed to be black isles final fantasy)
Can def see that in the magic of planescape
I feel this is very harsh on IWD. The lore is quality. The story may be simple, but it provides more than a threadbare justification for the adventuring you wanted to do anyway, or you wouldn't be adventurers.
The real problem is that it's based on a weak combat system, which makes most of the game a chore to get through
I found the story ok. Reading a review before, I was prepared for a lot of combat and nice frozen landscapes. And that is what I got. It was nice to make your own group of adventurers, ready to get rich and powerful.
@@Jesion-kv9tu I have never thought of Infinity Engines based on AD&D 2nd a "weak combat system." Just the opposite.
@@shawngillogly6873 it tries to shoehorn real time combat into a system designed with turns in mind
I came for the video review, but stayed for the comments. Like many of you, I played pen & paper RPGs, D&D 3.5 was my first, but then many others like Rolemaster and Vampire: the masquerade.
The first game I played in search of an RPG experience was Diablo 2, but after discovering the Infinity Engine games, I started looking there. I first found a demo of BG, I liked it, but I preferred IWD because of the similarity to p&p rpgs. Another game that I loved was Temple of the elemental evil, just great.
I can hardly imagine how many adventures you have gone through but it is something I feel in the comments, that magic, those allies lost in battle, the enemies defeated and the mysteries uncovered. A big hug to all tabletop role-players.
Wooo!! I’m hyped for this! Love the series so far!
So glad I found this channel! I played all the Dungeons and Dragons games of this era (except Planescape for some reason) and Icewind Dale was my favorite--- maybe because I played the whole thing co-op with a friend on my LAN. Story-wise I think creating your own party is an advantage over being stuck on the path of a 'chosen one' because it's YOUR party and I was immediately more invested in digital versions of my pen-and-paper D&D characters.
I may have already posted this (because I keep rewatching the videos in this series, and having different thoughts each time), but I actually really like IWD and IWD2. IWD2 taught me how to do combat, and it enabled me to actually do well(ish) in BG1/2.
I love your Isometric RPG series, thanks for creating these videos! About Icewind Dale, despite the lack of deep storytelling, I found the hand-painted backgrounds in maps vivid and immersive and the most beautiful of all the Infinity Engine games :)
Thanks for covering this less loved game as well!
They are really spectacular. It's like you are there, with the cold piercing your bones. My favourite area is the exterior zone of the frozen aquarium.
I loved Icewind Dale, great game.
I'm not sure if anyone else feels this way, but the way Chris talks and structures his essays is kinda meditative. Where as most other long form essay writers tend to deliver there lines with and air of command/authority. The calmness of these reviews feel almost asmr inducing to me.
I watch them to fall asleep. I enjoy his reviews then I listen again at bed time lol
You are more interested in story and character than combat, that's fair enough, but it means IWD was not designed for your taste. IWD is a combat game above all, and it is special because of the love that went into the encounter design - some of the encounters are spectacularly well designed. It was not a "filler", it was made specifically because a lot of folk really like playing hard core combat in their D20 games and designing their own parties from scratch to do that. Another big thing with IWD was the location artwork, a big step up from BG in some areas.
What an amazing, in-depth review and retrospective. I love the bit at the end where you are willing to get better at the game. Most would just complete it and move on.
Ahhh... IWD... my first introduction to isometric AD&D-based RPG's (bar Eye of the Beholder many years before, but that was different era and different type of game). I can't count how many times I've played it. I do like the things that you pointed out as flaws: that fact that you don't have to care about your party's personal feelings and waste time on conversations and personal quests is a bonus. I used to play a lot of dungeon crawlers back before that so IWD was basically a dungeon crawler that had a fairly good story, nice graphics and intersting (for the time) combat. It didn't overwhelm you with choices and consequences, didn't threaten you to miss some pieces of content because you made such or such choice in such and such moment. I liked that. One of the reasons that among all those classic RPGs from the era this game was the only one I completed. I was never able to do it with BG or P:T precisely because of choice and consequence. I am the type of player that wants to see everything, so I kept reloading in those other games to see all the possibilities and at some point it led to drawn-out campaigns that I would lose interest in continuing.
IWD was free of that. You had a party that you made yourself, you had a series of tasks and conversations served to carry the narrative rather than you making any decisions. Which in turn led to a tighter game which let you experience everything in one playthrough.
Thats a really good comment.
C&C can be overrated; not everything in your world needs to be reactive.
Awesome video. I love Icewind Dale, it was the first game of the series that I played, and it still has a special place in my heart. :)
Well you don’t speak for everybody, I’m happy you made a video about it bruv
Guess I'm a weirdo. This was my first crpg and I loved it start to finish. Went back and tried to play Baldur's Gate and never understood why people loved it and didn't like Icewind Dale. I missed having the control of building my party the way I wanted and really enjoyed the more linear story. Come to think of it, I don't like many of the modern sandbox games either, so maybe that explains it. Point is, this is exactly the video I've been waiting for personally.
To be fair Baldurs Gate 2 blows both Baldurs Gate and Icewindale out of the water. With Planescape Torment having the most amazing storyline out of the infinity engine games.
Big fan of IWD here.
Absolutely brilliant content. I've marathoned all your Baldur's Gate and Torment videos. Very enjoyable, well reasoned, thought out and presented. You deserve more subs and these games deserve more attention!
This is one of my most favorite CRPGs. I have played this game several times with countless parties. It is a fun dungeon romp.
The music in Kuldahar is my favorite video game music of ALL TIME.
Glad you did this one mate. Your reviews are good in my book. You cover the details at a caliber as similar enough as me. Im familiar with 90% of your games cant wait for metro dude def give us the scoop and pick that up man!
Icewind Dale II has a more fleshed out and interesting story relative to the first game. While it's more combat-heavy than BG or Planescape, ID II is still my favorite cRPG of that era.
i did enjoy the story more in 2 then 1 but some of the dungeons are bad imo.
I was waiting for this. I really enjoy this series. Great job chris
icewind dale series is my favourite from the infinity engine - i love them and i was excited about this video the most - i do love baldurs gate and torment but.... icewind dale is amazing and icewind dale 2 even better
I love this series, watched it more than once. Hope you're doing good. It got me into do many great games, and gave me new favourites. Such a shame this channel is so underrated.
Just finished Icewind Dale 2 after 16 years playing it back and forth. Thanks for the video on the series!
It sucks IWD2's code was lost- makes me treasure my CDs of it even more!
I grew up playing these games and my favorite was Icewind Dale, just the name brings back excitement. So some of us like that game =)
The PPG NPC Project mod really solves all these issues with feeling disconnected from the story. Highly recommended!
yep. would not have liked iwd 1 or 2 as much as i did with out the npc mods for both. same with bg npc project for bg 1.
LOVED this game way back and bought it on STEAM a month or so ago.
I absolutely LOVED the frozen aquarium it was INSANELY friggin cool!!!
I love these videos man!
Can we get an Icewind Dale 2? I don't meant to be "that guy" but I genuinely enjoyed IWD2 :)
Never played IWD1, but i played IWD2 religiously.. one of the best games i've ever played, the story was awesome.
I loved making a 4char group instead of the normal 6. Made it more interesting.
Well at least I was looking forward to this video, will be fun to watch it now
Icewind dale...1 word describes it ....superb!!!!, it is a game as superb as baldurs gate before it and will always be one of my favourite games of all time and the story is brilliant all in its own right, long live the dale!!!!
I was looking forward to Icewind Dale... thank you.
I was looking forward to watch this video for weeks.
Thanks for uploading another great video Chris!
I had been looking forward to your review of Icewind Dale as it is one of the many classics I could never bring myself to actually finish due to the lack of story making it feel on the whole as too much of a chore to bother with.
For the record I too am a frequent rest/sleep maniac when it comes to crpgs, and while I COULD get by without as much rest (and at times make a point to do so as more of a personal challenge for myself to test how well I really have some mechanics down) I often fall back on that methodology in the end. Not because it makes me feel like a less skilled player per say, but rather due to the fallback plan of resting allows me to stress less on the combat and focus more on the narrative before and after battle instead. So you aren't alone in that mindset.
But anyways I will eagerly look forward to your next video in the meantime!
i ... actually liked icewind dale gamaes, and for some reason when i was young i only had them and this might be the reason why. I actually have very fond memories of them and enjoyed them a lot :)
iwd is my all time favorite dnd game, me and my friend used to play it online and talk about the story all the time
I don't have a lot of experience with CRPGs but of the ones I played I liked Icewind Dale the most....and I did look forward to hearing what you have to say about it.
I enjoyed this game a lot more than i thought i would. i started playing it randomly when i wanted to play something but my schedule was too hectic to commit to any RPG, my favorite style of game. I loved that i could commit a few evenings to this game or just a couple of hours and then not play it for 2 weeks and it wouldnt impact my enjoyment. like you said in previous episodes, one problem with a lot of these games is if you leave for too long you forget the story and the quests. i loved that i could just hack, slash, loot and upgrade in this game. i was also reading the RA Salvatore Icewind books around this time and it was a ton of fun connecting the worlds.
Excellent video! I wondered if I should get it, and I now know exactly what I wanted to know!
These Canadian RPG videos are great! Keep up the good work!
No, its your characters. You use your own imagination for back story and history for these characters.
You can write a whole novel about your character's backstory, it won't change anything in the game itself. No NPC would know or care about your backstory, nothing in the world would be different based on it and there is no DM who will add and prepare content based on your character's backstory which would make you more immersed and attached to the game's world. Writing your own backstory is pretty much pointless, except maybe it can help you role-play and make certain decisions a bit more but choosing and alignment is more than enough for that.
Such an approach just doesn't work in video games.
@@MrFr2eman And there it is...the truth...at the end of your scribble...trying to give it almost no meaning..."except maybe it can help you role-play"....
Maybe it can help you Role-play is the whole effin meaning of this game. And what Timothy was saying, imo, is crucial if you want immersion. Your Backstory is your own. For you to build upon. Why should any NPC in the game "know about" you ??? Who TF do you think you are at the beginning of the Game..??? A NOB, level one. No one knows who you are, except you. It called "Role Playing Game" for a reason. Soo everything you said i s just pointless.
@@MrFr2eman That's handled much better in Icewind Dale 2, where your class and especially race plays a much larger role in dialogue.
Thankful someone said it. How does he even criticize a Computer Roleplaying Game by pointing out his distaste at having to Roleplay??
@@roufaspentaghast1636 how can you roleplay if the world around you doesn't react to your roleplaying? It's an electronic game, not a collective imagination game. There are npcs there, and if they don't react to your choices and personality, roleplaying means nothing
It was the first video game i ever played. It helped me with english as a child. I love this game. There is a review of it, where the reviewer actually shows love to the game and there are many reasons for it.
Icewind dale is as good as the other games, and had some excellent dungeons and fun encounters and the second one was also great.
Can I say how awesome it is to see a very intelligent person discuss games in a very intelligent way? You always make the audience be critical of your own playstyle and knowledge base when making a conclusion you're not totally comfortable treating as an absolute. Even when I vehemently disagree with you; I never got the impression your justifications didn't make 100% sense. The humility makes me even more impressed with how I don't think you're making much of an effort to appeal intelligent like many inferior essayists would try to.
Loved this game.
I loved icewind dale, and it was old as hell :D Isair and Madae were decent antagonists and the first defense of the city against orcs was great!
Or was that icewind dale 2 haha
It was the second game.
I truly love this game. It is focusing mainly on combat, but still has better story than most games nowadays. An dat music!!!!!!!
As someone who spent one summer at their parent's farm with no internet replaying through Shadows of Amn half a dozen times (still one of my fondest cRPG memories) I loved IWD. I absolutely loved the visual aesthetic (the Infinity Engine is still one of my favorite isometric engines to this day and I used to be an absolute SUCKER for frozen mountainous settings), the music and the majority of the encounters. Sure there wasn't much of a story, but the little there was stood out to me, for one reason or another ( I can still recall 'Astrolabe, whirls, twirls' vividly to this day).
Ironically, I've still to this day have not gone past the first half hour of IWD 2 (as back when I tried to run it I encountered a dozen crashes).
Uuuh a well-made cleric is every bit a demigod as any other caster
I loved this game!
Loved IWD back in the day. Think I’m gonna try out the EE that’s been sitting on my drive.
You're spot on about the souls game lore interpretations ; people only recognize information related to what they already thought
while there is of course some confirmation bias it seems pretty clear that least on a larger scale there is a clear story, but the details are up to anyone to interpret how they want
I haven't played either Icewind Dale I or II since the late 00s or early 10s at least, so I largely go by memory even though I have played them a few times each. What I would say is that there is likely a reason to my mind that Icewind Dale II would be worth a video, though it is due to a particularly niche subject which is more to do with the comparison of pre- and post-9/11 climates and the effect they had on narrative and so on. You notice immediately that Icewind Dale is fairly straightforward with a major threat threatening the region, led by a pretty standard villain in the form of some demon with a crystal shard in his power, and you go about killing bad guys because they're bad until you've rid the region of the threat and are hailed as heroes and so on. Icewind Dale II is essentially the same story, or a similar enough story at least, but immediately you recognize nuances and layers to the depictions of good and bad guys that recognize a degree of culpability in the former and a degree of justice and righteous cause in the latter - without spoiling much there's a general feeling of past injustices coming back to reap what the 'good guys' sowed and so on, which is all a pretty classic take on morality and approach to conflict in post-9/11 media. There's a more deliberate intention to understanding the reasoning behind creatures that might have in the past been very traditional one-dimensional villains, by way of deeper motivations, further exposure to their side of the conflict, or merely coming across the odd outliers to the "always chaotic evil" rule and so on. That brings with it a whole can of worms too though, in that the game is again lacking in choice, and this issue is felt even stronger this time around as the other side may well have a point and make you interested in maybe helping *them* out instead. I understand there was an idea to make that a possibility early on but because the game was developed over the course of a ten-month period and made mostly as a band-aid solution for Interplay and therefore Black Isle's financial woes at the time, this alongside other options like goblins and orcs as playable races and so on were left on the cutting room floor.
I enjoyed the dungeon crawl. Challenging fights, great for leveling up fast, and learning how to play all your characters. Great time to try that jester out, stalkers and so on. I don’t like any of those classes but you get the point.
I loved Icewind Dale for these exact same reasons.
It the most Diablo-like game from the infinity engine games.
Champing at the bit
Loving this series to death so far, binging it on a Saturday. Love the perspective of a relative newcomer with not as much experience in DnD as I had when I went into some of these games; though I'm only on Baldur's Gate EE at the time of writing, trying to get the damned multiplayer working.
Small aside: My inner grammar Nazi is going berserk every time you use the word infamous, infamous is bad.
Hope the move doesn't spiral
Into a big hassle.
Looking forward to your next vids!
IWD is a love letter to those who played a ton of AD&D and totally bought into the Forgotten Realms lore, reading Salvatore books. Because of this, you certainly will find a small niche that absolutely loved it, like me.
It’s dense and often counter-intuitive almost by design and your criticisms are entirely valid.
I wonder if you'll ever dive into the Divinity series like your doing with this one. Also, as someone who loves D&D but can't stand playing CRPGs, I'm finding this series to be very entertaining and informative about the games, their mechanics and the stories behind their existences.
Keep up the good work!
Belhifet is not banished to the Prime Material Planes, but from the Prime Material Planes back to Baator/Hell :D
18:01 Actually, Icewind Dale is suprrisingly better in that particular regard then Baldur's Gate -- it does feature unique interactions based on class, alignment and race. For example a paladin can use _Detect Evil_ ability in dialogue to see through the masquarade of the talonite cultists, while a mage can have a polite conversation with Presio the necrommancer about the art or communicating via skeletals minions.
I think someone did a roundup of all checks innthe IE games, it came out with BG1 having almost none, BG2 having a few more but not that many and IWD1 and 2 dwarfing them in that department.
That was so good. I have the PS4 version but have yet to play it. Cheers.
If he doesn't like the combat in Baldur's Gate because it's too complex, he'll absolutely hate Temple of Elemental Evil. Curious to see what the final verdict on TOEE will be.
Seemed like a fair assessment of ID though. Icewind Dale was mainly an exercise in dungeon crawling for dungeon crawling's sake, and TOEE is very much in the same vein, but with a more robust system which is either a point people will love (if they found combat in earlier crpgs lacking) or hate (if they aren't inclined to enjoy the micromanagement while suffering at the hands of a fairly harsh learning curve).
Ive been playing d&d and ad&d for about 16 years, mostly 3.0 / 3.5 and imho toee was completely broken from the point of dungeon master - Sure there were some early nonfighting quests in the City but you could get to lvl 2 max. Now Welcome to the Temple - here are 4 dire frogs. Time for some archers, more archers? Here you Go. Oh you have reached lvl 3? Here is this tiny room with an oger xD i loved the strategy in each and every fight, numbercrunching etc but Holy shi***ing goodness fu****g gracious it is Not for the beginners
@@theaspectofvoid Pretty much. ;) It has such a slow start that you end up wanting to rush into the nearest dungeon, and then all of a sudden every battle is severely lethal. And it doesn't really get easier (maybe in the late game but I never finished the damn thing). It's punishing, and demands that you take the time to learn the systems (if you didn't come into the game knowing them) and that's why I'm curious to see his reaction. The combat is good! It's pretty damn satisfying to succeed, even though the story is a bit lacking (kind of like Icewind), but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and call Temple the Dark Souls of D&D CRPGs. /meme
@@simonevogel7990 Temple of Dark souls? Try playing Baldur's Gate 1 as a Mage. Skeleton and Cobold AI always goes for the one with the lowest HP xD also the older Parts of the might and Magic series :) i am just so Happy, that planescape got it's own Video and was received well in this Channel.
And it would be a damn shame, because both IWD and Temple are great games.
Just saw the review Chris & as a long-time fan of Icewind Dale, I'd have to say it's quite accurate. However, it remains one of my favorite Infinity Engine games for one of the reasons that most people don't like it- The fact that all the characters are 'Generic'. This makes it ideal to play a 6-Player Multiplayer game & my friends & I had a blast doing so. The Lore Writing you spoke of actually worked in complementing all the Roleplaying that we did as players & because the characters had no preset personalities there was nothing to interfere with how we envisioned our PC's. So it seems a bit counterintuitive, but if you can find some friends who really want to roleplay through a game like you would a Pen 'n Paper RPG, IWD works extremely well.
I loved the constant fight of Icewind Dale, after playing Baldurs Gate one and Two I went to this and enjoyed the challenge.
The sequal did more of the same.
Nice Music as well.
The music is epic through.
I started to play this game today (: