Every now and then, a few posters on this forum would ask, "How can anyone prefer ID over BG?" or "What sort of person thinks ID series is the best of the IE games?" Suchy, Black, and others have echoed this thought a couple times.
Well, I am that sort of person (and maybe Darth Roxor too) who does think so. And I thought it might be interesting to explain why I think so, even though I understand I won't change anyone's mind about these decade old games. It's more for bouncing off these opinions and wondering if anybody else ever felt the same.
Disclosure: I have my own bias in that Icewind Dale was one of my first RPGs, or my very first RPG I think, while I played BG almost a decade after its release. So yes, it does not help that I played one close to the time of release and the other after it had aged badly.
The Icewind Dale games start on a high, persist on a high, and end on a high.
This difference alone is a major factor for me. Yes, the Baldur's Gate games do reach their epic moments much later. But starting off in the early forest in BG1 or Chateau Irenicus in BG2 always felt too low key for me. There are no interesting enemies to fight, no large scale encounters, and no intensity or heat in the situations you face. Icewind Dale has you killing hordes of goblin armies from the start, moving on to a dozen yetis and ancient ghosts, and then onto the lizardmen in Dragon's Eye. The first five hours are so compelling you feel you are reaching for an early climax. The BioWare habit of keeping trash mobs in the early hours of the game have not made me their biggest fan.
This point alone may be the only reason, and everything else is entirely peripheral by comparison.
Nobody in the Icewind Dale games talks like a LARPer or a faggot.
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Haha, no, I am just joking. This judgment is probably too harsh, I admit. Still, even though this factor doesn't make or break a game, it is something that annoyed me in Baldur's Gate. The caricature medieval accents when clicking on Candlekeep guys and the "Hi-ya!, I'm Imo-en." made me cringe. The long-winded medieval-style dialogue by every generic NPC to make a simple point did not win me over either. In Icewind Dale, for some reason, when I first listened to the dialogue by the priest in Easthaven, I just stopped to read and listen to his story about the wartime sacrifice in which a warrior froze himself into a portal. That was well-delivered, without being in the phony talking style of a typical BG NPC. (Now, if you like the BG voice acting, more power to you, because that means you got to enjoy BG a lot more than a sucker like me did.)
There are no loss-of-control or passive moments in Icewind Dale.
Surely I am not the only one who resents watching the Gorion-Sarevok confrontation, or the arrest of Irenicus by the mages for illegal use of magic, over and over again. I hate losing control, and I just want to be the one in charge at all times, instead of having to be a passive spectator to a cinematic that can't be skipped. I think ID wins points for trying to tell its narrative through the setting and environments rather than by cut-scenes, because that is something more suited for the gaming media.
These are not the only points, but I'll stop here before I make an enormous wall of text. All I can say is that I enjoyed Icewind Dale enough to play it twice from start to finish, while I did not enjoy either of the Baldur's Gate games to finish them once. I still accept, though, that I might be completely wrong and that I am not doing it right. Perhaps enjoying BG requires a different mindset from enjoying ID.
In which case, what would BG fans say that mindset would be? More patience? More slowing down and smelling the roses?