Dhruin
SasqWatch
GameBanshee has published a truckload of new material in a huge Icewind Dale retrospective. Aside from content additions to their walkthrough and resources, there are interviews with Josh Sawyer, Chris Parker and Scott Everts. Let's take a bit from J.E. Sawyer:
More information.GB: What was it like to be a part of the development team for each of these projects? Any fond memories you can share with us?
Josh: Icewind Dale was fantastic for me because I had somehow stumbled into my dream job. I didn’t know anything about CRPG development, but I knew more about AD&D and the Forgotten Realms than anyone outside of TSR/WotC should. We didn’t have any leads on the original title, so we sort of just... did things... with Chris Parker telling us when we were being dumb.
Scott Warner (the designer of Upper Dorn’s Deep) and I will always remember Greedy Ghost, which is referenced to this day. Someone (who shall remain nameless) asked why the dwarf priest ghost in Upper Dorn’s didn’t charge the party for healing services. Scott and I explained that it was a ghost and ghosts don’t have any need for money. That Someone then replied, “Maybe he’s a greedy ghost.”
After Icewind Dale shipped, Feargus forwarded us an e-mail from Brian Fargo in which he said that he really enjoyed Icewind Dale and it was the first game in years that he had finished. I knew Icewind Dale was a flawed game, but I grew up on Bard’s Tale, so that meant a lot to me.
I was also pretty happy when we finally got most of the major 3E stuff into Icewind Dale 2. Danien Chee, Bernie Weir, Rich “Malavon” Finegan, and Darren Monahan really gutted a lot of the Infinity Engine’s game logic to make 3E work in it, and I think our implementation of the rule set was fantastic.