NWN2 - Icewind Dale Remake

Dhruin

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NW Vault is highlighting a planned German remake of Icewind Dale as a series of NWN2 modules and making use of original assets such as movies, music and voiceovers if I understand correctly. The original details are all German but Sorcerer's Place has an English summary:
The Iwd-Remake-Modules will include the complete stories of Icewind Dale, Heart of Winter and Trials of the Luremaster (and a new additional story). All characters, voicesets, music and dialogues will be implemented to the IwD-Remake. We will also be trying to update Icewind-Dale-Remake into the D&D Version 3.5 rules.
More information.
 
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Ah the Europeans. They know that it's all about the loot and the levels. I'm so tired of US RPGs with their complex storylines and plot-affecting decisions. Give me an unending streams of baddies to slice and dice my way through! Give me a +3 longsword to give to the fighter, and his +2 goes to the ranger, and his +1 goes I don't let's say to the thief. I want to manage my inventory! Let me decide to leave the arrows but take the longbows, if they're at least +1. Unless the arrows are ice arrows or something. I want to min/max my party, EVERY member. I want it all.

Icewind Dale delivered, and IWD2 doubly delivered. But we Americans have lost sight of that glorious vision, and so it's up to the plucky Germans to save us. Godspeed.
 
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I assume your tongue is stuck firmly in your cheek!! :)
 
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Oh I don't even know when I'm being serious any more.

It's true that I find myself getting itchy when a CRPG goes too long without me killing something. I remember that happening in BGII and KOTOR. On the other hand, I realize now it was erroneous of me to characterize of all Europeans as more hack-and-loot-tastic developers...

That's just the Russians.

Still, I look forward to this greatly. Kill them all and let Gygax sort them out. Now I just need to get my hands on a PC that can run NWN2...
 
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Yeah, the Europeans/Russians really knew what they were doing when they made games like Diablo(2), IWD(2) and WOW.
This module will be great and will give us the opportunity to actually fight in an RGP as opposed to recent American productions like Oblivion and NWN2...
 
Blizzard is located in Canada.

This project sounds very interesting, but will it succeed? I've seen many interesting projects go down the drain long before completion because too many modders fail to understand how much hard work is involved.
 
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Very true, Maylander - and this looks to be a mighty large undertaking ... but we can hope that *something* will come out of it ...
 
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Well, good luck to those guys - I really appreciate the effort they'll have to put into such a project and hope they'll be able to finish it. Personally I think there would be other and better RPGs to remake though, since the IWD series is still fine and very playable as it is (in my opinion ;)
 
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Waste of time really - at least for me. I can see absolutely no reason why to recreate IWD. These were dumbass Hack'n Slash rpgs, pretty much of the same sort that is flodding the market today. Of course everyone can do whatever he or she wants...
 
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Blizzard is located in Canada.

No, they're not. BioWare is Canadian but Blizzard has -to the best of my knowledge- always been a US company, HQ'd in Irvine, CA, with subsidiaries in other US locations.
 
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My bad, mixed the two. Diablo II was produced by Blizzard North, located in northern California (before it got shut down), I constantly think of Canada when I see the snowy logo and the North name.
 
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I liked IWD, but I don't think that a remake will be any good with this engine. The areas are way, way to small and the engine doesn't support nearly enough enemies on screen. Still, I like the idea though.
 
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IWD and 2 were great, great games being that they were story driven unlike Diablo 2 where it was meaningless or Morrowind which seriously lacked focus. The art direction was far superior to its predecessor BG. It didn't have its hordes of sidequests however, but was fortunately intriguing enough to not matter.

That said, I wish them luck on this endeavour. I just completed a 6 month class project with NWN1 and I can tell you getting stuff finished, especially to this scale, is a daunting task.

I believe the complete Trials of the Luremaster was made for NWN1. TotLM was merely an expansion to Heart of Winter. Both weren't that great but TotLM was good in that it made up for the $30 wasted on a 10 hour expansion pack.

ahh..here we go

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Community_News.Detail&id=1764
 
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Well, good luck to those guys - I really appreciate the effort they'll have to put into such a project and hope they'll be able to finish it. Personally I think there would be other and better RPGs to remake though, since the IWD series is still fine and very playable as it is (in my opinion ;)

I tend to agree. I think of a party of six controlled by NWN2 AI, complete with the AOE fry-effect and uncooperative camera and I think maybe I would just as soon play the original. Plus, after the input from modders on how awkard and layered the toolset is, I imagine this will be a long and difficult project. But as you say Kaspar, good luck to em. Should be interesting, anyway.
 
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Even though IWD is a straight-up dungeon crawler, I have a lot of fondness for it. In fact, I think it's my favourite IE game after PS:T. It doesn't pretend to be anything other than a dungeon romp but the story is pretty good and the art and music second to none.

I doubt some of the grand locales (the huge statues and so forth) can be easily replicated in NWN2 and given that it's still perfectly playable as KasperFauerby said, this seems an odd choice of remake to me.

Still, good luck to them.
 
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I wish them good luck, too.

- but one question -
why recreating a game, that is still in good shape ?

older games like the the Krynn-series or Wasteland for example, need a rework.
 
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Exactly, there are SO many old classics that could benefit from a remake!!
 
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Traditonalism galore ! Pronto ! Pep !

I played the entire IWD ultimate collection for the 2nd time recently, and will do so again.It's an absolute classic, with great art, music, and a strongly linear heroic storyline.There's loads of non-linear stuff out there, like the Tortured Hearts mods for NWN, and Morrowind, etc., so some linearity won't hurt once in a while.

But the IWD concept requires patience, pause, strategy and imagination... given the fact that you are creating 6 different characters from scratch to adventure with.I just hope the view perspective is high up enough, bird's eye view, to capture the breathtaking scenery, variety, and massivity (the Severed Hand environment was awesome).The final battle of IWD2 was doubly epic.
 
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