Icewind Dale 2 Forum Update

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(Originally posted by TBR)

First news post here on SP. Heh.

Here's BIS high-up J.E. Sawyer, on why Icewind Dale II hasn't met its expected release date, the "state of the game", and other issues.

J.E. Sawyer, Lead Designer

Spells: Banishment is an anti-summoning spell. You cast it at summoned monsters, and they whoosh away unless they make a successful Will save (I think it's a Will save).

Vipergout turns the caster into a snake-vomiting machine. Though he or she can't cast spells, she spits forth a poisonous snake every round for a brief duration.

Flensing (actually Flaying in our game) does 1d4 points of slashing damage per level of the caster (no cap) to one target. The target gets a Fortitude save to halve the damage and resist getting bleeding wounds that do damage over time. It's a very good spell for killing mages, sorcerers, and rogues.

Aegis is a 9th level abjuration spell that instantly summons up several defensive effects. It grants 15 points of resistance vs. all elemental forms of attack, +5 deflection bonus, +3 SR, +2 to all saves, and the effects of Minor Globe of Invulnerability, Stoneskin, and Freedom of Movement. It lasts 10 rounds.

All spells in 3E have a saving throw DC that is determined by their level and the prime ability score of the caster type. For instance, a 7th level wizard spell cast by a wizard with a 22 Intelligence would have a saving throw DC of 10 (base) + 7 (spell level) + 6 (Intelligence modifier). On top of that, you can also stack Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus for even more difficult saves.

Circle of Death and Cloudkill only kill monsters with X amount of HD or less. If you try casting those spells against the higher level summoned monsters in our game, you're not going to have much success.

The "state of the game": Hello. Since no one believes we are actually doing any work anymore, I figured I'd fabricate a small list of things that we're tackling at the moment to give the illusion that we're busy.

* 7 Blue Stars -- There are seven quests in the game that currently cannot be completed as written. All but one of these stars are in the last chapter of the game.

* 81 Green Stars -- There are eighty-one quests in the game that need to be soundly throttled to make certain they cannot be broken in any way, including multiplayer. Most of these 81 green stars are in the second half of the game and deal with puzzles or other particularly complicated quests.

* Spell DCs -- There are currently problems with the way saving throw DCs for spells are being calculated. The game is deriving the wrong ability score bonuses. This is a big bug, and is eating much programmer time.

* Item Descriptions and Useable By Flags -- These are being double-checked. The rules for using scrolls and wands in 3E is very wonky, especially with Use Magic Device involved. Also taking a lot of time.

The shot has gone across the division. Absolutely nothing gets added to the game unless it is of critical (read: fix a broken part of the game) importance. Many of the artists working on Jefferson have been asked to play through IWD2 for a few days just to give a fresh perspective on it. Kihan Pak and I have reached the final chapter of the game through more or less legitimate play (had to set a few Global variables now and then when a quest was broken). The Hands of Fury are now level 14, and fights are still challenging without being ridiculous. The final area of the game should be a lot of fun for players, I think. It has a very nice balance of fighting, talking, exploration, ROELEPLAYEINGE, and puzzle-solving.

On IWD2's delays: You know why the game isn't done yet? It's pretty simple. Right before we made the massive 3E push, I sat down with Darren and the programmers to schedule each of the individual changes and everything that they would entail. When we collectively were done with that, I asked Darren if the amount of time required to implement, test, and bugfix all of those changes, times two, would still fall before our release date. We believed it would.

In fact, the changes took more than four times as long. Every time something seemed to be implemented without error, a bug would appear that required backtracking and revision. Often, these changes required modification of the file formats. When file formats get changed, crying occurs. Designers typically have to spend time double- or triple-checking their files for shifts in data that may have occurred. That's time they aren't spending on fixing their areas themselves. Sometimes, this affects script-folk as well.

The biggest problems were changes to how saving throws worked and how spells were classified and cast. This, combined with the known time-sink of free multiclassing, still haunts us today. So, if you want to blame someone for why the game isn't done, blame me and/or Darren for making poor estimations for implementation. There are no excuses for it. Quite simply, we just believed something could be done in a given amount of time and were incorrect. Three big things were more complicated than we initially thought, and the level of complication was far greater than we initially could have safeguarded against.

As for why there is no release date. Man -- no one in this division can get a release date. Our distributors and their buddy retailers get told so many bizarre final dates from people in development, marketing, public relations, and management that it's no wonder the thing floats around so damned much. Blizzard is a few miles from us, with ex-co-workers a-plenty, and we have no real idea when WC3 is coming out.

Last year at E3, I was demo-ing Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. During the course of the show, I saw people who ostensibly work for Interplay (or some satellite Interplay company) give out a variety of release dates for the game that seemed to be pulled out of a hat. Even for people that I know were discussing North American release dates, the dates varied by as much as six months. I see these people once a year at E3. Who knows to what corners of the globe they travel when it all gets packed up? Who knows where/what/why they have the dates they do? The publishing and distribution side of the computer game industry annoys me greatly, because it's so detached from development -- people are basically playing Release Date Tetris between developer, publisher, distributor, and retailer. I can try to give a good estimate of when the game will be finished and mostly bug free, but as for when it will be released -- man, I really have no idea.