What I want in Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale 2 Enhanced Edition (EE)
rockwand
Member Posts: 39
So I just finished Baldur's Gate 2 + Throne of Bhaal EE and I have to say, it was an amazing journey. Why? Well, for me at least, it was an incredible adventure because of the story, the RPG posibilities but more importantly, because of the companions. So many different companions, so many stories, so much adventure with them an SO much flavor. Companions are what really made the journey memorable and what makes you go back again to try other adventures with different ones.
So I was thinking about the chance of getting an Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale 2 EE and I remembered why I never finished any of those, back in the day. Yeah, you guessed right. Complete lack of companions. And yes, the fact that you could create your whole party was neat, but it was a SILENT party and that made the journey (the little that I travelled), incredibly dull. So when the day of enhancing decisions draws near, PLEASE Beamdog, add recrutable companions to those games. 5, 10 of them... doesn't really matter, as long as they are as good as Dorn, Neera, Rasaad or Hexxat. What matters is that they must be alive, react to the player, his decisions, their relationships, the story...but you know that already.
Now, some people will say that IDale is about party creation. Ok, just ignore the new characters then. Be my guest. But (and I would love to think I am not alone in this) a lot of us love flavor. I will get flavor over powergaming any day and I hope Beamdog think about us, flavor lovers, when the time comes.
Thanks! (And please, add your own suggestions too!)
So I was thinking about the chance of getting an Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale 2 EE and I remembered why I never finished any of those, back in the day. Yeah, you guessed right. Complete lack of companions. And yes, the fact that you could create your whole party was neat, but it was a SILENT party and that made the journey (the little that I travelled), incredibly dull. So when the day of enhancing decisions draws near, PLEASE Beamdog, add recrutable companions to those games. 5, 10 of them... doesn't really matter, as long as they are as good as Dorn, Neera, Rasaad or Hexxat. What matters is that they must be alive, react to the player, his decisions, their relationships, the story...but you know that already.
Now, some people will say that IDale is about party creation. Ok, just ignore the new characters then. Be my guest. But (and I would love to think I am not alone in this) a lot of us love flavor. I will get flavor over powergaming any day and I hope Beamdog think about us, flavor lovers, when the time comes.
Thanks! (And please, add your own suggestions too!)
17
Comments
It's been a long time since I've touched the Icewind Dale series because for me, on Win8 it has a lot of serious issues that are horrid to fix and it will often run with amazingly bad lag.
I don't think there are any plans to upgrade any of the other games at the moment but who knows what the future holds? I never thought there would be anymore Star Wars movies, even if they are made by Disney and directed by bloody J.J. Abrams.
And for 15 years there, I never thought the BG series would ever be touched again.
Though I did try to 100% roleplay through IWD2 for my second playthrough with a self setup party and I actually grew very fond of my own characters (I came up with complete backstories for them, their inter-party relationships and stuff). Actually reused them in the Black Pits (though it takes place 60 years after IWD2 ... details :P ).
I think where IWD and IWD2 can really shine is as multiplayer games.
But yeah, companions would be ultra nice. I would especially like to see some old faces from other Forgotten Realms games again. Imagine being able to bring Xan along and then finding you know who :')
And, that's a consideration too. Would 5 to 10 NPCs be feasible for Beamdog? Dorn, Neera, Rasaad & Hexxat required a lot of work. Creating enough unique and enjoyable characters to populate a full party and give them their own unique quests and input on the major events of the game might be as much work as creating an entirely new game.
I'm not against the idea. I think it would be fun to travel the frozen north with a band of misfits and mercenaries. I just don't know how much effort would be involved in comparision to adding only new areas, new items, and new monsters to the existing game.
So even if introducing 5 companions is a lot of work, I think is still much less than what they did for BG and BG2, but who knows, I am just assuming stuff here. In any case, for a lot of players there will be no reason to buy ID and ID2 EE if they don't have new companions. What would be the point?, I just can reinstall the vanilla ID for a vanilla experience at that point.
Regarding the purists...well, I think for people I assume have beaten the game quite a few times, it would be well worth it to have the opportunity to play with a non silent well written party plus new sections and quests plus all the improved visuals, right? At least once. If they still prefer creating their own party, they can go back to that too. I think a good compromise will be 5 recrutable companions with their quests and sections for the flavor lovers and an extra Durlag style dungeon that can be played both with the new companions and with a fully player created party. That way, both purists and flavor lovers get new goodies.
Think about it, IWD and IWD 2 are pretty much on rails as far as places you can visit. You don't want your companions introduced to late or they miss all the roleplaying and the levels and that annoys people.
So to have companions in IWD2 you really need to have 15 people standing around in Targos doing nothing much at all. You're going to need enough companions to cater to various CHARNAMES and various classes and alignments and peoples varied play styles.
It's very nature and design may well be WHY they were never implimented by the team to begin with.
Again, you don't need 15 companions to cater all the possible CHARNAMES, you just need to write characters that are flexible, no matter if they are good, evil or neutral, you only need good writting. Dorn, Neera, Rasaad and Hexxat are the living proof of that. My CHARNAME was good and I had all of them in my party with no problems because even if Dorn is evil, he WANTS to travel with you because you are powerful. And the same is true the other way around. Even if you are good, you can travel with Dorn just for convenience, to try to redeem him, you name it. Again, you only need good writting. Given their experience with the BG saga I think it's certainly possible to implement recrutable companions, so we'll see.
But yeah, here are a few ideas of how new NPC's *could* be implemented:
1. Adding a prolouge Storm of Zehir style. In IWD2 You are on a ship traveling from Luskan to Targos in the beginning. Why not have all possible companions be with you on the ship or meet them in a tavern in Luskan? There you can talk to the guys and take with you who ever you want. This would of course make more sense if you would start out in Luskan to avoid any plotholes regarding "what happened with the other guys?".
If you want to start out with your own party like in the original, you can skip this part.
2. Adding a "camp" Dragon Age style. Basically, you can have as many companions as you want but can only take five of them with you on your quests. This might change the entire flow of the game though.
3. Adjusting the balance based on how many people you have in your party and scatter the NPCs all over the world. That way the already hard as bones IWD doesn't become even harder just because you don't want to play with a custom party.
Speaking of difficulty: They should really adjust the balance of the entire game :I
Some passages are near impossible while others are laughably easy for no apparent reason. I never got far in Heart of Winter because of that and I really don't want to have to resort to cheating >.>
Just ad an additional difficulty level for prissies like me ( ◕‿◕✿)
Let's be more specific. There are 25 "companions" in BG1. Four more if counting the EE companions. Now, from that list, I would only consider Neera, Rasaad and Dorn as real well developed companions. Minsc, Jaheira and Khalid, while charismatic they lack a lot of depth in BG1. The same is true for Montaron, Xzar or Edwin if you are evil. Only Imoen gets slightly more love. And that is way any playthrough with Rasaad+Neera+Dorn in BG1 is esentially much more alive than an adventure without them.
Let's be clear, what I really meant as 5 companions was in the line as they are understood and treated in BG2, meaning, very talkative and alive. Counting Sarevok and the EE companions, BG2 has 21 companions if i am not mistaken. And with a few exceptions, all of them are very interesting and have some saying in the party, events, locations.
Now, that's a lot of variables. That is huge work. Crazy work. And if somehow, Beamdog goes nuts and write 21 amazing characters for ID EE, I would be the first one to throw my money at the screen a couple of times at least. But I wouldn't throw it for BG1 style companions, that's too shallow. I want BG2 companions. They know that, they wrote Neera, Dorn, etc...
What I mean is, I would rather have only 5 very talkative and highly interactive companions than 21 two liners ones. I don't even need more than a few dubbed sentences in the whole game for them. Give me more text any day. But being realistic, I think 5 or 10 juicy and meaty companions is perfect. I don't think Beamdog can afford 21 meaty companions budget wise, but hell, if they prove me wrong, as I said, I would be happy to throw money non stop to my screen. (Still, I am happy with 5-10 and I still would throw money for that content for sure).
I love your ideas, specially the first and the second one. Well, all of them are nice in fact. We'll see what happens if they manage to EE the ID saga.
Hey, thanks Yeah, it would be really hard to find a balance between quality and quantity.
22 available in BG2EE (8 of which are available in BGEE).
So technically (not counting double counts) they are 43.
You might possibly be missing one from BG2EE. In his defense you might have bearly even noticed him.
IWD3!!!!!
by @elminster yet.