Icewind Dale

Icewind Dale is a pair of games set in the Forgotten Realms and made by Black Isle using the Infinity Engine. As you may guess from the title, they occur primarily in the Icewind Dale region, a windy, snowing valley in an area called the Ten Towns in the Spine of the World mountain, far to the north of towns like Neverwinter and Luskan.

The first game starts off in the humble fishing village of Easthaven, where your party has Jumped At the Call of adventure to accompany the hunter Hrothgar to Kuldahar, a village settled in the soothing warmth of a gigantic oak tree that lately has been getting a bit too chilly. As you investigate the source of this, it turns out that the tree's vanishing warmth is part of a larger plot between two warring Eldritch Abominations seeking to seize control of the region. The second game picks up thirty years later and similarly starts off with the village of Targos being beset by goblin attacks, and leads into a plot about an army of monsters preparing to conquer the region.

Interestingly, Icewind Dale (and its sequel) has the player create an entire party (rather than one character), lending the games more of a 'dungeon crawl' theme than Black Isle's previous Infinity Engine titles, Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment. Plot is sparse, but not 'shoehorned in'; rather, the game is written in such a way that the player can follow the plot as tightly as he desires, or ignore it entirely in favor of some quick monster-bashing.

The games are scheduled for re-release in Fall of 2019 as an Enhanced Edition (in a set that also includes Planescape: Torment) for the PS4, XB1, and Switch.

Tropes used in Icewind Dale include:

Both games provide examples of:

The first game provides examples of:

  • Aborted Arc: The exact reason why Kuldahar's tree is cooling down is only glossed over (if mentioned at all), as by the time you get to the point you can discover the cause there's much more important things to be concerned with.
  • Artifact of Doom: Crenshinibon. Even the Big Bad can't completely control it in the end.
  • Captain Obvious: There are many objects in the scenery that you can examine by clicking on them. The appearing text will tell you most of the time exactly what you already see (see a winged statue with stretched hands? 'This is a winged statue with its hands stretched')
  • Chekhov's Army: Don't pay much attention to Hrothgar. Now, everyone else is Easthaven...
  • Chekhov's Gun: Yeah, all that stuff the priest in Easthaven says about Jerod's Stone? Totally not important.
  • Creepy Child: Yxunomei's human form.
  • Dem Bones: You'll encounter a lot of them. In the sequel, not as much.
  • End of an Age: Icasaracht mourns the death of her once proud dragon culture at the hands of man. She joined forces with Wylfdene out of sympathy for the similar plight of the barbarians.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Luremaster
  • Everything's Worse with Bears: Those darn dire bears swarming you in that tiny werejackal cave.
  • Excalibur in the Rust: Pale Justice
  • Haunted Castle: The Severed Hand, Upper Dorn's Deep and Maluradek's castle.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Both as backstory and in the ending
  • Horrible Judge of Character: Ginafae truly believes that her lover Marketh is a good person, despite having been abused by him several times. Several of Marketh's other enslaved and mutilated victims would like to disagree.
  • Large Ham: Belhifet, specifically his human incarnation, Poquelin.
  • Narrator All Along: The man telling your story is first thought to be a common omniscient narrator, until the ending cinematic where his calm and serene voice suddenly turns hateful and he reveals that he is Belhifet himself.
  • Never Trust a Trailer: The Heart of Winter trailer narrates "She is the spirit of one who died in the North long ago." with footage of an old woman. This is then followed by captions "Something wicked chills the heart of Icewind Dale" complete with dramatic music, implying the old lady is responsible for the evils in the North. In the game however, the 'she' actually refer to a huge female white dragon, while the old lady helps the party of adventurers.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: At one point, you are sent to investigate a series of crypts to find out if they are cause of the problems plaguing Kuldahar. After killing everything and reaching their master, Kresselack, you find out that not only is he is not involved at all, but you just destroyed the only defense between him and an ice priestess who wishes to plunge his tomb into darkness.
    • Another quest has you going to Dragon's Eye to retrieve the Heartstone Gem from Yxunomei. After retrieving it and butchering yet another army, you later find out that Yxunomei was Belhifet's greatest rival and killing her removed the only hurdle in his quest for world domination. Considering that the Gem was needed to find Belhifet in the first place, you pretty much had no choice in the matter.
  • No Name Given: The Luremaster.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: Icasaracht made her own unborn children into soulless vessels so that she could be reborn as a dragon again in case of death. Her mate -- their father -- naturally objected to this insane scheme, and she killed him. She blames the humans for this too.
  • Teleport Spam: The Luremaster favorite tactic.
  • To Be Lawful or Good: The party is confronted with a dilemma: kill Marketh, a cruel thief who works for the Big Bad and abuses his lover Ginafae among other things. Several of his victims will want you to deliver justice to him. However, doing so will doom Ginafae as she's been cursed with a geas. Only by sparing Marketh will the party be given the option of freeing her.
  • Woman Scorned: Icasaracht. Depends on how the conversation is seen. From one point it seems like she had Aihonen's ancestor as a lover then later died because of him, thus invoking this trope. The other, and most likely case, is that she was just doing what dragons do and then came along the Hero Aihonen's Ancestor who then killed her, depriving her of everything she ever cherished.

Seer - A woman knows a woman's heart, and a strange, beautiful, and cruel thing it is. But the cruelest of all is a heart of winter, for it beats not with love, but with loss, and *nothing* may comfort it.
Seer - When a human heart breaks, it may heal and forgive. When a heart of winter breaks, it is like ice... it shatters and can never be made whole again.
CHARNAME - Why does this... creature that's possessed Wylfdene... why does she want to destroy the Ten-Towns?
Seer - Her heart was broken once by a man of the Ten-Towns. A *mighty* breaking it was, for in it she lost her kingdom, her love, and her life. Now, her heart beats with the vengeance of winter.
CHARNAME - Surely she can be reasoned with. There is no need for war...
Seer - A woman's fury is a terrible thing.

The second game provides examples of:

  • Bare-Fisted Monk: The PC can choose this class. You'll eventually run into the Black Raven monastery which are full of monks.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: Ilmadia join Belhifet's army in the first game so her elven ancestral home, the Severed Hand, would be restored to its former glory. She got her wish in the second game: she gave birth to Belhifet's children. 30 years later they rebuilt the Severed Hand, only it's now a haven for Red Wizards, slavers, demons, general outcasts, and the rebuilt tower is dedicated to the worship of Iyachtu Xvim.
  • Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Poor, poor Ilmadia. Just after she gave birth to demonic twins, she was so horrified that she threw herself off a cliff.
  • But I Can't Be Pregnant: The backstory of Ilmadia, Big Bads' mother.
  • Cloning Blues: It's been revealed that the mage Mavalon the party fought in the previous game was actually a clone gone insane.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Whoever happens to be writing your journal, and possibly whoever does the talking as well.
  • The Dragon: A literal dragon. Well, half 'a one anyway.
  • Driven to Villainy: Isair and Madae have very good reasons to be pissed at the world. They were mistaken for their foster mother's murderers by the townsfolk (they were just enacting burial rites after she died of natural causes). Then they were forced to flee to Luskan, where they had the bad luck of being adopted by the Host Tower of the Arcane Brotherhood, a cabal of evil wizards who exploited their powers. At one point they even tried going to the Lower Planes to act as mercenaries in the Blood War only to realize that they didn't even fit in with the devils, and they met their father only to be used and manipulated by him. Then they return to the upper planes and try to unite and civilize other ostracized outcasts into the Legion of the Chimera, and none of the nearby towns want anything to do with them. And then some smartass has the idea to send them cakes baked with holy water as a joke.
  • Easily Angered Shopkeeper: That one bi-lady who runs the shop in Targos. No wonder she was sent far away by the family.
  • Exploding Barrels: The orcs love these. If you can sneak up on them to remove the Fog of War then you can sometimes explode the barrels yourself, kill the orcs, and cruise on through.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: Oswald's airship is prone to crash-landing. You know he is prone to crashing. You've seen two crash sites by the second game. He even warns you it's very possible. A seer outright tells you he is going to crash. Still, you are unable to warn him about it and are just forced to get on the damn flying coffin anyhow, as being stranded in the middle of nowhere kick-starts your trip to the enemy stronghold.
  • Fairy Battle: Painfully subverted. Wisps are Fairies, but God do they hurt.
  • Final Boss Preview: Twice actually, once at the Legion of the Chimera's fortress you see The Dragon, and then at the Barbarian camp you meet Isair and Madae. They don't hang around, but do kill all the village guard and raise them as undead, which you have to fight.
  • Fluffy the Terrible: One half-dragon keeps a chimera as a pet named "Precious".
  • Game Breaking Bug: The whole secret passage into the Legion of the Chimera base. The original game would lag so badly that it would take days to get through this area. A player patch fixes this.
  • Get on the Boat: Well, technically off the boat first, then technically an airship.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: Kath Soucie, who voiced Aerie in Baldur's Gate, is the voice of Narrator Maralie Fiddlebender.
  • Hide Your Children: Subverted. The barbarian village has the children gone missing. A local sorceress stole their life force and turned them into minks, which the village hunts.
  • Holding Out for a Hero: The above village.
  • Inconveniently-Placed Conveyor Belt: Stairs, actually.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: Yes but, War-Bears? And they bear collars?
  • Infinity+1 Sword: You can follow a sidequest to retrieve Light of Cera Sumat, a holy avenger that only a paladin can yield. You just to make it alive against six revived followers of Bane.
  • Interspecies Romance: The Legion of Chimera encourage this: Saablic Tan and Dracein. The former is a human Red Wizard and the latter a half-dragon. There's also a half-goblin who hooked up with, yet another half-dragon.
  • Lampshade Hanging: The opening scenario could belong in the Deconstructor Fleet. Nearly all the quests in the first town don't just parody computer RPGs in general, they actually specifically skewer quests in Black Isle RPGs. One character has basically no other purpose but as a lampshade salesman.
    • To drive the point home, after you defeat the initial Goblin raid on the docks, your character can comment on how surprising was it to get thrust right into action, as opposed to being walked through a series of meaningless small chat and fetch quests. Which is exactly what you go do AFTER the raid.
    • During the introduction you can come across a dead cat. Any experienced player would probably pick the thing up and keep it with him hoping it's be the solution to some quest and he'd get some easy experience. After solving the, err, "mystery" of how the cat died, the "culprit" asks you why the hells are you carrying a dead cat around, to which your response is that you were kind of hoping it'd be the solution to somebody's problem and that I could learn something from the experience. It's not, and you don't. And sure enough, the cat's owner is wondering about what happened to it, and you can get 300 XP for bringing the carcass to her and telling her who the culprit is after you have obtained his confession.
      • If for some reason you carry the cat during the entire game, a Barghest Whelp near the end is squicked that you carried around a dead cat all this time and asks what the hell is wrong with you.
    • There's a barrel atop the wall just to the north of us. You might not be able to see it at the moment with that strange fog that comes up, but it's there.
  • Let's Play: "Urggzob is TEN playthroughs!"
  • Nerf: The druid spell Static Charge which shock all opponents in the room every round. In the sequel, it only shock one random monster per round.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the backstory, it's explained that a priestess from the previous game, Mother Egenia, buried EVERYONE that were killed in the first game. However, she resurrected Ilmadia, one of Big Bad's general's, out of sorrow. This led to the birth of Isair and Madae, the Big Bads for this game.
  • Shout-Out: Most obviously, you will find plenty of leftover stories and tales about the original party in Icewind Dale I.
    • Firtha Kedros mentions that in her dreams, she's seen visions of what is clearly meant to be Sigil, more noticeably ?a brambled garden, blacker than ink, and even goes as far as to unknowingly imply that she may be another of Ravel Puzzlewell's avatars. The latter was confirmed by Word of God.
    • A monk in the Black Raven monastery sells a book called How To Be An Adventurer. Its index titles, besides blatantly mocking pretty much the entirety of D&D and fantasy adventure as a whole, includes a peculiar entry under "Dungeons to Avoid Like the Crotch-Rot: Dominara the Erinyes Nine-Layered Brothel of Violent Emasculation (No Slating... Or Slaking... allowed)".
    • One random item found is "The Death Adder's Dragon-Shield". Its description matches story elements from Golden Axe and The Revenge of Death Adder.
  • Spider People: Driders.
  • What Could Have Been: The designers initially wanted the game to follow the 2nd edition rules. In the end, they changed it to the 3rd.
  • What the Hell, Player?: This can happen in Targos and can lead to an Unwinnable situation. See, you can pickpocket, but if you get caught then everyone attacks you. If you kill a plot related charater?
  • When Trees Attack: Evil ents. Best way to rid of them is using fire.
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