Review Icewind Dale II Review at The Wargamer

[Mistress]

Tags: Icewind Dale 2

There's a new and indepth <a href="http://www.wargamer.com/reviews/icewind_dale_ii/">review</a> of <a href="http://www.blackisle.com">Black Isle Studios'</a> final Infinity Engine game, <a href="http://icewind2.blackisle.com">Icewind Dale II</a>.
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<blockquote> I can easily accept the game's premise that slaughtered monsters often have some kind of treasure or items worth taking and that players are supposed to plunder it. More puzzling to me is the tendency of townsfolk to leave gold, potions and weapons in unsecured barrels and crates around town, all of which appear to be placed to benefit the player's characters who quietly collect these unguarded possessions. Characters of Good alignment are able to pilfer these items with impunity, and I've never quite been able to logically reconcile how this is acceptable to a party composed and led alternately by a Lawful Good Monk and Paladin. Using gold to purchase more and stronger weapons, armor and magic items is such an integral part of the game's structure that I can't imagine how players could reasonably expect to play without these fits of kleptomania unless vastly different storylines were used for players of different alignments, yet this is how "good" characters are set up in the game. Ponderous though this is, the game proceeds, and so do I.</blockquote>
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Ponderous indeed!
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Spotted at <a href="http://www.rpgdot.com">RPGDot</a>

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

NWN did the same thing. It was silly in NWN and it's silly in IWD2. I have no idea why designers think crates and barrels outdoors are a logical place for people to stash their money and magic items, rather than inside the safety of their house.

 

[Flarnet]

I particularly like this sentence in the summary:

"Incorporating the third edition rules into the Infinity game engine, and allowing the single player game to be played with all six party members created by the gamer, Bioware demonstrates once again just how well they can play the role of Dungeon Master."

How nice of Bioware to let BIS take all the credit for this one. Wonder what will happen now that the cat is out of the bag...

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I particularly like this sentence in the summary:

"Incorporating the third edition rules into the Infinity game engine, and allowing the single player game to be played with all six party members created by the gamer, Bioware demonstrates once again just how well they can play the role of Dungeon Master."

How nice of Bioware to let BIS take all the credit for this one. Wonder what will happen now that the cat is out of the bag...

It never ceases to amaze me how these gaming sites don't bother checking their facts. You'd think they'd at least be able to figure out who fucking made the game.

 

[Mistress]

Bloody hell, I never noticed that one. Tssssss.

 

[axel]

RPG Is My Name, Combat Is My Game

I thought that section spoke volumes for the game...

 

[Sol Invictus]

Funny. Black Isle designs the game, it's campaign and storyline, and Bioware ends up getting the credit because it designed the engine. Whee! That's like giving ID Software multiple awards for 'best story', and 'best creatvitity' for American McGee's Alice.

"Well, he used to work there."

 

[Vault Dweller]

You'd think they'd at least be able to figure out who fucking made the game.

You'd think that but you'd be mistaken It's a very common misunderstanding, you see. Both companies start with "B". The only solution is to increase the level of generalization, something like:

Incorporating the latest edition of a very popular rule-set into the game engine we can't get enough of, the famous game making company has done it again.

....allowing the single player game to be played with all six party members created by the gamer, Bioware demonstrates once again just how well they can play the role of Dungeon Master

If you think about it, it is the stupidest sentence ever written in a game review. How exactly Black Isle aka Bioware demonstrates that they are a good DM by letting a player to create a 6-members party?

 

[Legolas]

. I have no idea why designers think crates and barrels outdoors are a logical place for people to stash their money and magic items, rather than inside the safety of their house.

That's kind of idiotic logic if you ask me. I mean, why would monsters carry around weapons and not use them, but once you kill them they drop it for you to take? And why do monsters carry around piles of cash for you to pick up by killing them?

It's a game! Do you expect everything in it to make sense in the real world?

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

That's kind of idiotic logic if you ask me. I mean, why would monsters carry around weapons and not use them, but once you kill them they drop it for you to take? And why do monsters carry around piles of cash for you to pick up by killing them?

It's a game! Do you expect everything in it to make sense in the real world?

When it comes to dumping magic items for the player, which are supposedly somewhat rare, I do expect this. I don't expect things to be handed out in the manner you're talking about, where monsters are shuffling around the Dungeon of Mortal Peril with fantastic items that they don't use, nor do I expect peasants who are supposedly scraping by in life to stash their belongs where just anyone can take them.

I also expect that rummaging through people's belongings and taking their money to either be forbidden by lawful alignments or force that alignment to slip towards neutral or chaotic, and good towards evil.

It may be a game, but there should be some common sense about it.

 

[Legolas]

That's like saying you should never be locked out of a room, because you should be able to just cut the door down. Or that your character's bladder should have exploded hours ago because he/she never stops to take a leak.

I mean, some of the "silly" things are in there so the game can be played and enjoyed.

 

[triCritical]

That's like saying you should never be locked out of a room, because you should be able to just cut the door down. Or that your character's bladder should have exploded hours ago because he/she never stops to take a leak.

I mean, some of the "silly" things are in there so the game can be played and enjoyed.

No its not. Some things would just not be fun. Having to eat, and go to the bathroom is just not fun, its assumed done. Futhermore, it is not the objective of the game to simulate the more mundane aspects of life. Nevertheless, item drops and monster inventory is a key part of the game. And as far as I am conscerned logical placement of items is essential to immersion and consistency. Ooh look I found a holy avenger in this barrel. Of course you would never see this, but that is because it would be stupid.

I would say that IWD2's barrel placement is not too bad. There is not very much of it, and the things found in them are normally consistent, like cheap daggers and potions. I think the item drops and the lack of uber equipment was pretty good in that game, But in NWN item placement was horrible. You have to ask if they have QA. Bottom line, if I never see another item filled barrel again, I won't miss a wink of sleep.

 

[Jarinor]

What never made sense to me in games was the way that NPC's followed either one extreme - not caring if you took their stuff, or killing you if you step in their back room. Arcanum is pretty much the only one that followed the latter that I've played, but pretty much every other RPG (Fallout included) lets you take stuff from open containers without a worry, and if you're ever busted stealing, you fight to the death. Whatever happened to a more sensible solution of fighting until you've been knocked out? Why must all fights be lethal?

Bottom line - NPC's are suicidal. Why?

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

That's like saying you should never be locked out of a room, because you should be able to just cut the door down.

Smashing doors worked pretty well for Arcanum and Wasteland. Considering D&D even has a Strength characteristic check for smashing doors, so I have to wonder why you'd even mention this considering it's in the rules.

Or that your character's bladder should have exploded hours ago because he/she never stops to take a leak.

You can consider eating, going to the bathroom, etc. as part of resting.

I mean, some of the "silly" things are in there so the game can be played and enjoyed.

I don't see how digging through barrel after barrel in a town is considered "enjoyable". Barrel smashing/looting in a dungeon is one thing. You expect a certain degree of hording things in containers in a dungeon, because it fits what dungeons are. However, town locations are for interacting with people, not sifting through container after container.

 

[Flarnet]

The poor bastards that make action oriented crpgs.

First people started complaining about the fact that monsters dropped unrealistic items. So they had to find another way of keeping the click-happy gamers fed with a steady stream of loot while fighting non-antropomorph monsters. They started hiding it in barrels. Now people are complaining about that too. What oh what will the poor developers do?

 

[Jed]

What oh what will the poor developers do?

Start instituting other ways of making cash: trade, hunting animals/monsters for their pelts, escorting caravans, finding places for your bard to perform, joing and climbing the hierarchies of a guild, or other ideas I can't come up with right now. But then again, that would probably be a bit too much role-playing for the ph4t l3wt & b00biez crowd.

J

 

[Legolas]

Considering D&D even has a Strength characteristic check for smashing doors, so I have to wonder why you'd even mention this considering it's in the rules.
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I'm generalizing. Just because one game allows you to break doors doesnt mean they all do!

No its not. Some things would just not be fun. Having to eat, and go to the bathroom is just not fun,

Umm..duh? That was my point. If you try and make the game overly realistic you lose some of the fun!

Anyway, maybe I'm a crazy minority here, but I don't mind monsters dropping rare items and things being stored in odd places.

Throwing items and cash in people's houses makes plenty of sense too, but giving the cash to the monsters makes it easier because when you need more money you can just go fight. If you had to go looting through people's houses the money would eventually run out (unless you plan on stealing a million dollars from some guy. And in that case, who's gonna have that much money anyway?).

I suppose some people just look for different things in their games! Just because lack of realism doesn't bother me doesn't mean I can't see why some people would appreciate more realism. :D

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I'm generalizing. Just because one game allows you to break doors doesnt mean they all do!

Well, in a D&D game, they probably should allow you to break down wooden doors, since there are rules governing that type of thing. Really, about the only thing they bother to impliment in most D&D CRPGs are the combat things, and how much loot you can pack around.

I'd much rather see them impliment other things tha are in the rules as well, like bending bars, kicking in doors, climbing, and things of that nature in addition to the combat rules.

Umm..duh? That was my point. If you try and make the game overly realistic you lose some of the fun!

Actually, his point was that you can make areas and loot drops realistic without going totally overboard. Like I said, when you're resting, you can assume that your party is eating, taking care of their bodily functions, and so forth. However, I fail to see how making poor peasant keep thier things inside has to do with pointless micromanagement, which is what forcing the player to eat and take a crap is.

It's even more funny when the peasants talk about how they can't afford to give you much in the way of a reward for something, when they keep their money outside the house where anyone can take it. If you're going to have poor farmers in the game, they shouldn't have a barrel full of healing potions at 150 gold a pop outside their living space.

There's a difference between realism and plot/setting continuity, after all. I don't expect to die from a sword hit in a CRPG, but if a small village is barely scraping by, I don't expect them to support a magic item shop with +4 armors lining the walls. It's things like that which is what triCritical was talking about, because it goes from the claim of "small village" to "loot central".

Anyway, maybe I'm a crazy minority here, but I don't mind monsters dropping rare items and things being stored in odd places.

I think Fallout did this well. Whatever the enemy was packing was what you found on their corpse. They also had access to use whatever was in their inventory. If they were packing stimpacks, they used them. If they were packing a 10MM SMG with 30 rounds of ammo, that's what they used. If they ran out of ammo, they switched to a knife or their fists.

If an orc has a +5 Sword, he should be wielding it.

Throwing items and cash in people's houses makes plenty of sense too, but giving the cash to the monsters makes it easier because when you need more money you can just go fight. If you had to go looting through people's houses the money would eventually run out (unless you plan on stealing a million dollars from some guy. And in that case, who's gonna have that much money anyway?).

There are better ways of doing this. Have human enemies with loot, for example. After all, it doesn't make much sense that a rust monster has a platemail on him. Have people who are willing to pay for pelts or other useful parts of an animal, like previously mentioned. Have someone follow you who pays you for killing a vermin infestation.

It's also kind of hard to justify needing that money by just killing random encounter monsters in most CRPGs when you typically end most CRPGs with more money than you can spend.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Yeah, having all kinds of stuff scattered about bothers me, too. I kind of get tired of it when the game and everyone in it seems to assume you're going to be a thief and there's nothing whatsover wrong with that, it just makes you feel like you have to powergame to play the game as it was intended and your image of your character be damned. I think there should be real consequences for being bad, though, that's the main reason you're invited to steal everything in sight. If you're caught, often everyone hates you and you can't finish the game, so just reload.

What I'd like to see is you start to get a general reputation that things seem to go missing when you're around. Even if nobody catches you, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. When the armored adventuring party barges into your house and six hours later you find out grandpa's heirloom sword is missing, it shouldn't be too hard to put two and two together. Also, shops should go out of business if you steal too much from them, and other people should get poorer and possibly starve if you keep robbing them. It might not sound like that bad of a consequence to the player, but merchants are generally much more useful to you when they're in business, if they're gone, you're never going to see new inventory from them and that's less people to offload your loot on. Keep it up too much and you might find word getting around and the remaining merchants refuse to do business with you after there seems to be a trend of people going bankrupt after dealing with you for very long.

I don't know about IWD2 since I haven't played it, but in IWD monsters did use their equipment. If they had a potion or a scroll, they'd use it if they had the chance. Don't know about weapons and armor, though, I really couldn't tell you if they got equipped. I remember in BG every third gibberling or kobold had a scroll with a first level spell for no discernable reason, but I think things are getting better overall in this regard. I think the trend towards random treasure, which I don't like, will probably make it harder for the developers to make monsters to use the equipment they have, though.

 

[Jarinor]

It's also kind of hard to justify needing that money by just killing random encounter monsters in most CRPGs when you typically end most CRPGs with more money than you can spend.

IWD is the perfect example of this. I bought maybe 2000 gold worth of equipment throughout the entire game. This included my starting equipment, a few spell scrolls for my mage, and healing potions (which I never used). I had incredibly amounts of +1 equipment at the end of the game, and realised that I would NOT be finding any convenient merchants, so I dropped it all. I also realised that I had 70k gold - where did I get this from? I sure as hell didn't sell that much to the fellows in Kuldahar (hell, if they had the resources to by 70k of equipment, why are they in Kuldahar?) and it wasn't like I came across stashes of significant sums of money often. This money just appeared in my inventory for no real reason. I sure as hell wasn't going to spend it, but I had it.

Which leads me to my next point - what the hell is so special about me? I can apparently take six people into the wilderness for a month, come back, and have enough general stuff to sell and live off the profits for the rest of my life for, but why can no one else can do this? Why hasn't everyone made themself a hero yet? It's not like it's hard, just get some fellows from your village, go kill goblins until you get 'better' with weapons (i.e. gain experience) then move onto bigger and badder things. Not the biggest challenge I would think.

Still, if everyone could do this, the game would be far less interesting, because instead of six people taking on the Big Bad Guyâ„¢, there'd actually be a realistic amount of people fighting evil.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

That's really why it'd be better for these games to start with a reason why the characters are better. Maybe they start proficient in level, say level 4 or so, then make the game shorter. Perhaps they have some special thing about them that allows them to go out in the wilderness and survive whereas the other people in town don't have this, like an immunity to a certain poison the orcs or whatever monster type use in that area.

Perhaps the concept of Level 0 should be used more in CRPGs, where the player is a Level 1, and therefore has had some training in the area they're specializing in.

In Fallout, you were special because you were forced in to travelling and experiencing the harsh world around you. The other vault dwellers didn't want to leave the security of the vault, so that made sense as to why you were the hero and no one else(Disregard Talius) were the heroes.

Geneforge also passed this test well, since you were an apprentice <class> who was ship wrecked on the way to get more training, but you managed to find canisters which could elevate your abilities. You could bypass that training with genetic augmentation.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

The rules for 3E actually have that kind of idea. There are actually somewhat weaker classes for ordinary people. Most people are assumed to be either a commoner, expert, aristocrat, or warrior. Someone who's been around a while or gets into lots of trouble can actually gain levels in these classes, but they won't be quite as potent as their professionally trained equivalents. It makes sense that all the training involved just to be 1st level should be accounted for, but it kind of falls apart when you kill a few monsters and then decide to multiclass. They've never really come up with a good reason for that.

Really I think games mainly need to cut down on all the ph4t l3wt, though. It really makes no sense all this stuff is just there for the taking. Even if I was just Billy the unskilled farmboy, I'd be making traps and training animals to go take out some goblins if vast wealth was available to anyone who could manage to kill a few monsters. I think another alternative I don't see is just to make the game world fabulously wealthy if you must put in all the goodies. It would make more sense why most people don't feel the need to risk their necks to find a king's ransom for a few weeks of work.

 

[Section8]

On shopkeepers:

I think an effective system is to actually simulate some form of economy, difficult though that may be. Rather than having a shopkeeper whose inventory is automagically refreshed every week, why not have an NPC that has a finite purse, a finite range of items available for barter, and then add some traders into the mix. Trying to simulate trade on an individual level would be too much development time for little reward. If trade caravans arrive regularly, effectively "refreshing" the shopkeeper's purse and inventory, but doing so in a plausible manner, then you've got the bare bones of an economic system.

Now when we consider player characters' influence, they can steal from the shopkeeper, which will deplete the purse, as a commodity has left the possession of the NPC without remuneration. If the player is even nastier still, they could raid caravans, which cuts the supply of a shopkeeper, and also takes away some paying customers who would otherwise be contributing to the purse.

This also introduces some poignance to questing. "Something out there is raiding caravans" suddenly becomes fairly critical as opposed to being somewhat FedEx. Especially if there are other quests that involve aiding the nefarious scheme to raid caravans in their efforts to weaken the town in order to take it over.

If it were to go further, you could also have certain exchanges scripted at the town level. Farmers provide food to the town, but if the tradesman can't afford to buy the food because their purse has been depleted, then the farmer doesn't get the money required to sow a new crop, and the distribution of food in the town is also affected, causing either population decline, or weakening the townfolk. Quests can then be generated to try and get the town back on track.

There's a lot that could be explored, at a great deal of time and effort on the developers behalf. While I think that htis level of detail isn't really feasible for a fairly traditional RPG, I'm very interested to see what Goldenland is like.

On item drops:

I don't see why item drops can't be completely realistic within the context of the game world, just like Fallout. Uber items should be something you have to work for, and so providing an enemy with the benefits that weapon provides when you try to defeat them makes perfect sense. Also in the context of most RPG game worlds, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that powerful items are unclaimed by somebody, especially considering the so very typical "quest for ultimate power" bad guys we see in most CRPGs.

Even if the game is nothing more than a mostly FedEx action RPG, then it makes sense that most of the "bosses" you kill are bosses either because of the power imbued in them by ph4t l3wt, or that as the boss, they get the pick of any ph4t l3wt their gang of cronies might come across.

On item placement:

I don't see why things should be stored in strange places, unless there's some form of plausibility to that strangeness, like some money saved for a rainy day stored in a tin in the top cupboard. If the developer feels the player needs minor monetary rewards, then allow them to sell mundane items that they find in mundane places. It then makes such an act much more convoluted, and so the stigma becomes, "do it if you're desperate, but don't feel obliged to check every barrel just because that's what the developer intended.

On wealth and GNP:

"I think another alternative I don't see is just to make the game world fabulously wealthy if you must put in all the goodies. It would make more sense why most people don't feel the need to risk their necks to find a king's ransom for a few weeks of work."

Well put. If there's one thing the rich like doing, it's paying other people to take care of business they don't care for. It also takes away the all too common stigma of "Even though you can't afford to pay me, I'm going to do it anyway!" an attitude that can still be RPed, but it's not forced upon the evil or neutral types like we've seen too often in recent times. It also provides a great deal of scope for evil quests based on jealousy, public image and status symbols.

 

[Spazmo]

"do it if you're desperate, but don't feel obliged to check every barrel just because that's what the developer intended."

I remember on my first playthrough of Fallout 1, when I found that Scout's Handbook on the bookshelf in Shady Sands, right at the beginning of the game. After that, I compulsively searched every container in the game hoping for a little loot, only to be constantly disappointed (except for lockers, which were always strangely abundant with cool stuff). But just when I tell myself I'll stop doing that, I find a stimpak or a little cheap ammo in somebody's footlocker and it starts all over again. It's kind of wierd how that one occurence created such a Pavlovian response in me. "You see a bookshelf." Must... search... container!

 

[TimCain]

Stimulus, response, Spazmo. It's all about basic psychology.

A good read on this subject is "Mind at play, the psychology of video games" by Geoffrey R.Loftus & Elizabeth F.Loftus. It's a bit dated, being published in 1983, but heck, our brains are still the same. Just expect a lot of PacMan references.