Icewind Dale/Icewind Dale II Interview
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GB: Why was the decision made to deviate from other Infinity Engine games (where all loot was static) and implement random loot tables into the Icewind Dale series? Chris: There were two key reasons for this decision. First, static drops were a little weird. If you knew what you were doing you could go get really powerful items very early in BG and that didn't seem fun. Second, we wanted to make sure the player was constantly tempted with ever improving loot. So by using random loot tables we could make sure the player was always getting cool items while making sure they didn't get overpowering items right from the start.
It was a complete hack to get those tables working in the game, by the way, and they required constant tweaking and balancing throughout the QA process.
GB: Why did you choose to develop the series in the northermost arctic reaches of the Sword Coast? Were any other regions in the Forgotten Realms considered before development began?
Chris: There were a few different locales debated for the game. At one point I think it was a straight up 20 level dungeon (like Castle Greyhawk, without Elfen John), but that seemed we might be selling the license short.
I don't recall there being any "great" reason why we chose the Icewind Dale region, but it definately had some positive aspects. From a design perspective, there wasn't much in the FR canon about the area, essentially everything was in the novels - this gave us a lot of room to play around. On the art side, the snowy mountainous region would be different from the BG games. And of course there was some brand recognition with the consumer - people like the Icewind Dale books.
GB: The campaign in Heart of Winter was criticized for being too short, which led to the release of a downloadable add-on called Trials of the Luremaster. Did you originally intend to include this content with HoW or was it developed specifically in response to such criticism? Was it difficult to convince Interplay that a free add-on was necessary?
Chris: We did a number of things in Heart of Winter that were really "neat", but didn't pay off in actual game-play time. We thought these things would be an adequate trade-off but we were flat out wrong. Trials of the Luremaster was developed specifically to satisfy what our customers felt was unfair. As for convincing Interplay... we didn't really work that way. Black Isle was almost like a separate entity and we handled our staff internally. So I think Feargus just put a bunch of people on it and didn't really trouble Interplay with the details. Besides, we had just released the Fallouts, the BGs, IWD and Torment, nobody at Interplay was complaining too much about what we did.
GB: Why did you choose to put most of your development efforts into an Icewind Dale sequel rather than finishing Fallout 3/Van Buren or The Black Hound/Jefferson?
Chris: I'm not really sure that we did. I think that IWD2 was a distraction from FR6/F3 (and all those other names the projects had), but outside of a few designers and one programmer, the project wasn't hurt by IWD2. We had sufficient technical design, programming, and art working on the project. The bottleneck was really the engine/editor development, and that wasn't stalled by the Icewind sequel.
I suppose there were some inefficiencies though. For example, Josh was supposed to be the Lead Designer on FR6/Black Hound/Jefferson, but he was on IWD2 for a long perioid. During that time I and the other designers kept writing stuff without him. Then when he finally made it back to us he rewrote a bunch of stuff that was "done". I think that was frustrating for him and me, and it was inefficient. But if you look at it from the opposite side, by the time people came off IWD2, we could actually make levels and write dialogue and place items... so I'm not sure everybody would have been busy on Jefferson if they hadn't been on IWD2.
One final note here: there are financial aspects to every game, and of course Interplay wasn't doing well financially. Because Black Isle had seen a lot of success, they leaned on us to make more games... the IWD series was the least risky thing for us to continue and all of us were invested in that series.
GB: How much work was it for you personally to help in the implementation of the 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons rules into BioWare's Infinity Engine for Icewind Dale II? Do you think the conversion was necessary and worth the time?
Chris: I didn't work on it, but I was involved with the decision to incorporate the rules. We all felt that it was an important step for the series and that we wouldn't be giving players the experience they deserved if we just pounded out another 2nd Edition game. And I personally liked 1st Edition better than 2nd Edition, and 3rd Edition was a godsend in my opinion - so I couldn't wait to play the game.
