In the wake of this year's blockbuster role-playing games, including Neverwinter Nights, Morrowind, and Freedom Force, it may be difficult to look away from your monitor, much less all the way back to the year 2000. That was when veteran RPG developer Black Isle Studios released its last Dungeons & Dragons game for the PC. The original Icewind Dale was a hack-and-slash RPG that drew inspiration from noted fantasy author Robert "Bob" Salvatore's Icewind Dale trilogy of novels, which featured the epic adventures of the gallant and disgustingly overpowered fantasy hero Drizzt Do'Urden. But both the frigid reaches of the Forgotten Realms and the equally frigid nerds of Black Isle Studios' own message boards have demanded that the developer create a sequel, and the long-awaited, oft-delayed Icewind Dale II will be the result.

Icewind Dale II takes place in the frozen reaches of the Forgotten Realms.

Icewind Dale II will be a game of firsts and lasts. For instance, the developers have stated in numerous interviews that the sequel will most likely be the last game for which Black Isle will use the BioWare Infinity engine. The Infinity engine is the same 2D sprite-based graphics engine that Black Isle used for Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment and the same engine that developer BioWare created for Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II. Icewind Dale II will default to a screen resolution of 800x600 and, like Baldur's Gate II before it, will support even higher video resolutions (up to and past 1024x768), but it's clear that the Infinity engine is on its last legs and has been for some time. However, Icewind Dale II will, along with Neverwinter Nights, be among the first computer games to use the revised 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons rules. The 3rd Edition makes characters more interesting and more powerful, since it not only lets them become proficient with weapon skills, but also with noncombat skills and new abilities called heroic feats, which let characters run faster, attack their enemies multiple times, and make their magic spells longer-lasting and more powerful. What's more, 3rd Edition rules let characters actually increase their physical abilities--in previous Dungeons & Dragons games, a warrior with a strength score of 15 was stuck with that 15 for the rest of his life. The 3rd Edition rules let that fighter gain more strength as he gains experience levels, and with the bonuses that some races receive, some characters can even begin their lives with an ability of 20 points--the powerful half-orc race can begin with a whopping strength score of 20, for instance. Icewind Dale II will also include the 3rd Edition barbarian, monk, and sorcerer character classes.

We've been able to play through only the opening of the game, which takes place around 30 years after the events of the first game. We find that the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale are besieged by goblin raiders, much like in the beginning of Salvatore's novels. Your party of characters is a band of mercenaries that sails into the town of Targos in search of work, only to find the town already under attack. As in the Icewind Dale trilogy, Icewind Dale II's Ten Towns are small, isolated, mostly autonomous trading posts that rely on the commerce of scrimshaw--the carved bone of the indigenous knucklehead trout. And just like in the novels, the towns themselves are often at odds with each other over trade issues, and as we found, the vicious goblin attacks and the subsequent influx of strange mercenaries like your own party, have only worsened the distrust among the towns' inhabitants--those that haven't been killed in the attacks yet, anyway.

You'll being your career by fighting everyone's favorite monster--the goblin.

Fortunately for the towns, your adventurers arrive before the goblins have leveled everything, and in the first few areas of the game, they can clear out some goblins and perform a few simple quests. The combat system in Icewind Dale II resembles that of the previous game, but it has a more refined and complex interface. Fights still take place in real time, and you can still pause the game with the space bar and use special abilities tied to your function keys (F1, F2, and so on), but you can also create custom hotkeys for your characters' new special abilities or for your favorite spells. As we've seen, the highly damaging power-attack and cleave feats can wreak utter havoc on the numerous but relatively weak goblins of Icewind Dale, especially when they're being used by a raging half-orc barbarian with a high strength score.