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Introduction

Icewind Dale takes place in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D) world of the Forgotten Realms. The Forgotten Realms world is a planet much like the planet Earth, with one dominant landmass on it, the continent of Faerun. In Baldur’s Gate, Bioware/Black Isle’s previous Forgotten Realms RPG, adventurers saw a lot of the middle region of Faerun, mainly the area surrounding the city of Baldur’s Gate, and the area a little north of the Kingdom of Amn. In Icewind Dale, adventurers are sent to the barbaric northlands of the continent of Faerun.

The game takes place about 80 years before Baldur’s Gate, and about 16 years before R.A. Salvatore’s book, Icewind Dale, thus, you and your party will be making history in your adventure to the Spine of the World mountains.

The game starts off with you creating a party consisting of up to 6 characters of your design. Unlike Baldur’s Gate, where you create 1 character and meet the rest of your party in your adventures, in Icewind Dale you can design the party based on the AD&D 2nd Edition ruleset, customizing their appearance, portrait, sounds, and even writing a full biography if you so please. Once you create a party to your liking you begin your quest into the Spine of the World mountains in the quiet town of Easthaven, one of the Ten Towns surrounding the Mountains, from there you and your party will go on quests deeper and deeper into the mountains.

A lot of the monsters have been recycled from Baldur’s Gate, although Black Isle also added 70 new monsters into the game for a grand total of 150 different types in all. Apart from the monsters, character animations, character looks, and NPC looks have also been recycled from Baldur’s Gate, so if you are looking for anything drastically new, you won’t find it here. All of the portraits in the game are brand new, and Black Isle constantly releases new ones which are downloadable at Interplay’s Icewind Dale Page.