Icewind Dale was a game that exceeded the expectations of those who had waited for Black Isle's next game after Baldur's Gate and its expansions. It turned out to be more than the filler in between the first Baldur's Gate and its sequel that cynics had suggested it would be.
Instead, it is a fully-fledged game with its own flavour and offered what the more boisterous of RPG players had wanted for in a Dungeons and Dragons game: plenty of battles with just enough narrative content and story to give the player characters the purpose that they need in a campaign – barring all the melodrama from handling each player character's whims, fancies and anxieties and their relationships with each other and any NPCs.
Yet, Icewind Dale had a campaign with surprisingly good plot development. Heart of Winter seeks to build on this quality of Icewind Dale, by offering a new side campaign with not just good plot development but also some very strong (and bitter) themes.
Accessing Heart of Winter's side campaign is a bit disjointed, narrative-wise. The player will have to load a party of characters and play the original campaign until they reach the town of Kuldahar. Then, they have to seek out a house that was previously inaccessible, meet a certain mysterious person inside and have said person teleport the party over to a new region of Icewind Dale.
There is no plot device that was used to indicate to the player that he/she should have his/her party doing so. There was a mere text message about instructions for this popping up in the text display tab when the game is loaded, and also a passage in the Readme documentation outside of the game. As a result, a player could have the impression that the expansion's campaign was added in rather expediently, at the expense of immersion into the story.
The new campaign, of course, serves to show off some new content that Black Isle had created. Otherwise, all of the core gameplay designs in Icewind Dale are used for Heart of Winter; there will not be much deliberation of these in this review, unless it concerns certain pieces of the new content.
The new region in play is located around one of the Ten Towns of the North: Lonelywood. Lonelywood is precariously close to the ancient roaming grounds of the barbarians of the North, and so has weathered a lot of raids from them and is also one of the few towns that had managed to strike up a relationship of sorts with the barbarians – albeit a tenuous one.
The first thing that the player will notice is that Lonelywood has forests, albeit these are far less lush compared to the ones further south of Faerun. The player will explore maps with evergreen trees, light snow covering and tough grass living in coexistence. These maps are certainly a different sight from those in Icewind Dale.
Throughout the development of the plot, the player will also explore maps which show off the extremes of the North but were not present in the original Icewind Dale; there are caverns made entirely out of very ancient and very hard ice, for example.
As the barbarians of the North are involved, some maps are made to showcase the temporary dwellings of the barbarians, their war camps included. There are also maps that concern the culture of the barbarians, such as the barrows for the more exalted (and deceased) of their number and the rivers which they cast their dead upon in boats – or cast into to slip into the depths, depending on the worth of the individuals.
These maps serve to highlight the harsh lives of the barbarians, and are also used to accommodate the presence of new enemies that the player has to battle.
There are many new enemies to confront. These new enemies have their own models and sprites, most of which have never been seen in previous Black Isle games that used the Infinity Engine. Most of them are also animated quite well, though these impressive animations also inadvertently remind the player of the relatively lousy and limited ones for player characters and the regular humanoid models.
Many of these new enemies are surprisingly tough and dangerous; fighting them on their terms is a sure way to have the party of player characters suffering tremendous harm. For example, Barrow Wights have attacks that have a small chance to slay what they hit instantly (which is a trait that is justified by the lore behind them) and Festering Dead are bloated creatures that can take a tremendous amount of damage.
The caveat here is that some of the most challenging of these new enemies happen to be undead; a party with a Cleric or two (or a Paladin), especially a high level one that the player may have imported, can quickly plow through most undead forces with generous use of the Turn Undead ability or any other anti-undead abilities, spells or items. On the other hand, a party that lacks clerics or paladins is going to have a disproportionately more difficult time with the game.
Other new enemies include the barbarians themselves, who generally fight as mobs of very tough but otherwise simple brutes who are susceptible to crowd control tactics (though not as much as other kinds of brutes – the player is warned about this); pseudo-dragon creatures like drakes, who serve as a build-up to an eventual battle with a dragon; and the Remorhaz, which is perhaps the most iconic monster to be had in this expansion due to their lore as giant bugs which are perpetually hot-blooded and exhibits this trait in their intimidating combat capabilities.
Overall, with the exception of a few (such as the Remorhaz), most of the new enemies in this game are not very remarkable; they are well-done and look impressive, but a veteran of Black Isle's games would notice that most of them can be categorized under typical archetypes of hostile monsters and other creatures that serve as adversaries in Dungeons and Dragons games.
In addition to new models/sprites and enemies, Heart of Winter also gives new spells and abilities to player characters, as well as a bunch of new items that are also available in the original campaign (e.g. vendors in the original campaign have been updated to have these for sale).
One of the new abilities can be associated more with the story-writing than it could be with gameplay. The Tracking skill, which is available to Druids and Rangers, can be used to uncover additional details about the current map, which may reveal the presence of enemies and their composition. Otherwise, Tracking has no actual benefits. A player who has already played that map would know what to expect ahead; the spawning of enemy mobs in a map will never change regardless of how many times the game is played after all.
It is unfortunate that this skill is not as usable in the original campaign, i.e. not all maps in the original campaign have had special text written for them that can be triggered to display using this skill.
Other new abilities include new bard songs, further increasing the versatility of this otherwise under-used character (at least in the first Icewind Dale).
The new spells, of course, only benefit player characters that are capable of casting spells. Most of these spells were actually introduced in Baldur's Gate II, though all of these new spells were included to fulfill certain strategic and tactical gaps in spell-casting in the original version of Icewind Dale.
The new items in this game are also transferred over from Baldur's Gate II, especially item containers for scrolls and potions. A glance at the list of new additions would inform any player that the most utilitarian of items from Baldur's Gate II have been re-introduced in Heart of Winter, which is a good design decision.
They are not limited to just utilitarian items of course; there are unique enchanted items that can be obtained from the campaign in Heart of Winter, such as a special halberd that is made of very, very ancient and ever-pristine ice. Most of them are associated with side-quests in the expansion campaign, e.g. rewards for completing them.
Perhaps the biggest contribution that Heart of Winter provided to the Icewind Dale franchise is the Heart of Fury game mode, which ramps up the challenge of the game by increasing the deadliness of enemies.
It can only be triggered through starting an entirely new game, but an assessment of the gameplay differences and the different coding used would reveal to the player that it is not just a modifier for difficulty, but one that alters the rewards that a player would get from playing in this extra-difficult mode. For example, certain magical items that would be rewards from a battle in regular mode would be replaced with different ones, with different lore behind them, in Heart of Fury.
Heart of Fury mode is also applicable to the campaign in the original game, thus increasing the replay value of the latter to the benefit of those who would like to try out the new spells (and items) in the original. (However, the changes brought by Heart of Fury to the original campaign appear to be only limited to the difficulty of battles; there appears to be no special rewards.)
Yet, despite the various improvements and the new adventure that it promises, Heart of Winter had one acute flaw; it was seen as giving too little content for too much money upon its release to the video game market. There were no reasons that Black Isle Studios could give other than the reminder that it was the publisher, Interplay Entertainment, which had set the prices.
(Black Isle Studios did take this criticism to heart, however - no pun intended - and released a second, completely free expansion. Peculiarly enough, this was agreed to by Interplay.)
A tell-tale sign of this flaw can be seen in the new campaign's relative shortness. The number of new maps in the expansion is quite small compared to the number in the original version of Icewind Dale, and there are fewer side-quests too. This leads to the impression that the new campaign amounts to a much bigger than usual side quest on its own – which is not a good impression considering that a new "campaign" had been promised.
Years ahead now, however, Heart of Winter can now be obtained through special, affordable packages from Interplay. Of course, this does not change the fact that at launch, this game was seen as having too little worth, despite being quite a solid expansion.
In conclusion, Heart of Winter is a more than decent expansion to Icewind Dale, but would be better appreciated if obtained through a discounted package.