O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
After my recent replay of the forgettable (and honestly deserving to be forgotten) Icewind Dale in the Enhanced Edition version, it was time to play the last Infinity Engine game that I’ve never actually played before – the Icewind Dale II (in the Complete version as it’s sold on GOG). Due to its source code being lost, an Enhanced Edition of this game might never happen. And that’s actually a bit of a shame.
This was the last PC project of Black Isle Studios, released just a year and a half before their abrupt closure and less than a year before several key people left the studio to form Obsidian Entertainment. And despite being as combat and loot focused as the original Icewind Dale, this game feels far deeper and far more creative and far more like a proper grand adventure, not just an extended dungeon crawl.
This was the second game, released just a couple of months after Neverwinter Nights, to adapt 3rd edition D&D rules to a videogame. And unlike NWN it tries to put the new skill systems to genuinely good use, with proper (hidden) skill checks for dialogue and actions, with the game acknowledging the class of the character engaging in a talk or an action in creative ways. The game is still very linear and you don’t have that much variety in choices to make. And you’re still funneled into a fight with some characters or groups of enemies even if there might be a chance to avoid a fight first time. But it’s still far more involved, far better written and far more exciting than anything in IWD 1 or NWN. At least, at the start and when it works.
The farther the game progresses, though, the more obnoxious and broken it becomes. You start with sometimes overly long action segments, but at least also a sense of progression and curiosity about what will happen next. Events are fun, ways you have a chance to participate in them are sometimes surprising, writing is actually pretty good and even the main villains of the story gradually reveal their interesting and troubled backstory. But then you start getting obtuse puzzles, made even harder to decipher due to engine limitations and the fact that some events might not work right. Or sometimes look like they did, but they didn’t and vice versa. Which eventually breaks several really cool events, including one involving a time distortion event, a segment that has all elements to be amazing, yet feels annoying due to how badly it all plays.
In addition to that, there’s a constant fear of game locking up on you. It did for me in one particularly obnoxious puzzle segment where one event just decided not to work. Or in another segment where all characters, NPCs and my team included, were locked in a room, unable to exit it despite the door being open with some invisible barrier preventing anyone from walking through. Also, playing in any of the “unsupported resolutions”, even without the use of mods, can lead to some cutscenes locking up and a lot of little helpful effects and overlays (like the overlay for items you can’t use or need to identify) just not rendering at all. And party pathfinding is as infuriating as ever, walking 80% to the destination only to them change their minds, turning around and deciding to go the wrong way or getting stuck in tiny corridors and small rooms, which game starts throwing at you constantly in later Chapters.
And I feel like the biggest issue with the game is that it’s way too long. Original IWD had the same issue, yet it, unless you were in the Luremaster area, had a certain pace to it that made you accept the tedium, at least to a degree. When the sequel gets boring, it gets painfully boring. Perhaps specifically because it is a more involved, more story-driven, more puzzle-driven, more “thinking” game. I suppose, due to that, when it starts forcing you into unnecessary dungeons it feels especially wrong. There’s a moment in the game where you go through a horribly long dungeon, that is reusing the horribly long dungeon maps from the first game, and as you get to the end the game pulls you into a dungeon you completed several hours ago and asks you to clean it up again. No really, it actually happens and the game is shameless about it too – it just pulls you back, goes “Oh shit, I’m sorry.”, asks you to kill enemies, then just dumps you back where you were. And despite the final Chapter somewhat returning to far better paced and written adventuring, it’s far too little and too late. So when you defeat the main villains, which despite their great backstory sound like “Evil Aristocrat Siblings” the game just kinda ends. And you’re left with no sense of accomplishment or fun.
Icewind Dale II has tried. And it feels like a very obvious stepping stone for the team that would go on to create amazing titles as Obsidian Entertainment. Hell, when creating the UI for Pillars of Eternity they clearly based it on this game. But even with it having some really cool ideas and moments, even with it being so much more interesting and fresh than the original Icewind Dale, I can’t really recommend this game to anyone but hardcore Infinity Engine fans or those who, like me, like to see interesting ideas in otherwise flawed games.