Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter Q&A
We spoke with Black Isle Studios' Josh Sawyer to find out what the development team has in store for the official expansion to Icewind Dale.
Interplay and Black Isle recently announced the development of Heart of Winter, the official expansion pack to the company's successful role-playing game, Icewind Dale. For players who've finished Icewind Dale, Heart of Winter will take place immediately after the events of the original game. For those who haven't had the opportunity to complete Icewind Dale, the expansion pack will let you start roughly midway through, at the town of Kuldahar. The developers at Black Isle are planning to include up to 40 new items, 60 magic spells, and up to 20 enemy characters into Heart of Winter. And aside from offering additional quests and playtime to fans of the original game, Heart of Winter will also incorporate a number of improvements to the aging Infinity engine like higher resolution modes; improved 3D support under OpenGL; and an optimized multiplayer component for lag-free sessions over LAN and Internet connections. Black Isle's Josh Sawyer, designer on the Heart of Winter project, took time to sit down with us and answer a few questions about the upcoming expansion pack.
GameSpot: When did you decide to develop Heart of Winter? Was the decision made in light of Icewind Dale's commercial success? If not, did you at some point decide to cut the original game short to leave room for the expansion?
Josh Sawyer: We talked about doing an expansion when the [Icewind Dale] project started to wrap up. It wasn't until a few weeks after the game shipped that we actually decided to start working on Heart of Winter. We made the decision based on the commercial success of Icewind Dale and a personal desire to expand the game in terms of content and core features. We didn't cut the game short for the expansion, though. Anything that was taken out toward the end of development has been left out. The expansion is entirely new material.
GS: Heart of Winter will incorporate some of the technological advances that first appeared in Baldur's Gate II, such as support for higher resolutions. Will you be borrowing any other elements from BioWare's game like the ability to wield two weapons at once or use the difficulty slider?
JS: As much as I'd really like to give you a full rundown on everything we're trying to get implemented, I don't want to promise anything right now. Let's just say that we're working on including some of BioWare's improvements as well as our own. We're hoping to give several of the classes an overhaul in terms of special abilities, but our scheduling will determine how much of that we can accomplish.
GS: The expansion takes place after the events of Icewind Dale, right? Will the story comprise a new set of chapters, with all new cinematics as in the original game?
JS: Actually, the expansion takes place as a result of the early story of Icewind Dale. You can enter it from Kuldahar or simply move to it after the end of the core game. The expansion is a fully developed ministory on its own and will feature new cinematic sequences and narration.
Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter Quick Links
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- Interplay
- Black Isle Studios
- Role-Playing
- Release: Feb 19, 2001
- ESRB: Teen
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