Infinity and beyond
The most respected videogames in Dungeons & Dragons history are a peculiar-yet-perfect set of isometric RPGs kicked off by Bioware
Baldur’s Gate defined the shape of the Western RPG as we know it, setting the stage for Dragon Age: Inquisition and The Witcher 3 many years later. In fact, we’re so familiar with its innovations today that it can be difficult to appreciate just how strange and experimental Bioware’s pitch was back in 1998. The prototype the studio brought to publisher Interplay was an unprecedented fusion of tabletopstyle RPG stats and fast-moving isometric combat, the latter inspired by the rise of speedy strategy games like Command & Conquer.
Feargus Urquhart – then a producer at Interplay’s Black Isle division, later the head of Obsidian – took a chance. He pushed to grant Bioware the Dungeons & Dragons licence, and it proved an ideal pairing. Characters flowed straight from the Canadian developer’s tabletop sessions into Baldur’s Gate, providing the story with both its villains and memorable companions, such as the dunderheaded yet endearing barbarian Minsc, who is set to return in this year’s Baldur’s Gate 3.
Bioware worked wonders with the Forgotten Realms setting, drawing from a series of tie-in novels to spin a dark yarn about mortals vying to take the seat of a dead god. Its depiction of the Sword Coast saw magic and prophecy collide with more grounded geopolitical concerns and iron shortages. At the same time, dire warnings in dialogue mingled with Pythonesque comedic interludes.
Somewhere in that juxtaposition, the Realms began to feel real.
Baldur’s Gate was a hit, and its sequel shored up Bioware’s success. That game replaced the Sword Coast’s patchwork open world with a more curated collection of druidic forests, visiting circuses, and dragon dens. Its map was dense with chance meetings, terrifying battles and meaningful choices, and it’s still regarded as a high water mark for the RPG genre.
WIND’S HOWLING
In such glowing company, you might expect Black Isle’s spin-off series to lack lustre. Icewind Dale was made with Bioware’s engine, but without the developer’s involvement, and took a less ambitious path through the Forgotten Realms, its developers opting for linear dungeon crawling rather than freeform overland adventuring. “Chris Parker laid it out pretty clearly,” Obsidian design director Josh Sawyer recently told the Designer Notes podcast. “‘We are going to make this in 14 months. We are not going to have companions.’”
Back then, Sawyer was one of a handful of junior designers working on Icewind Dale – without the direction of a lead designer. It sounds like a project primed for disaster, but the narrow focus and deep D&D knowledge of Black Isle’s staff saw it through. These dungeons weren’t simply dank caves, but stuffed with sights pulled from the Realms’ bestiaries and lorebooks. One level of Sawyer’s abandoned dwarven fortress, Dorn’s Deep, was home to fire giants, salamanders, and pools of orange lava; another was a villa housing a master thief. A third took the player through a series of botanical domes occupied by a dark elf wizard. Meanwhile, umber hulks from the Underdark ploughed unexpectedly through the walls, like abyssal Kool-Aid Men. If the battles were sometimes too gruelling, they were correspondingly rewarding for those who’d mastered the Infinity Engine’s ruleset over multiple games.
Alas, Icewind Dale II has never made it to PlayStation – but even in its absence, you can spend hundreds of hours revisiting the golden age of single-player Dungeons & Dragons on console as enhanced editions of Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate II, and Icewind Dale came to PS4 in 2019.
“Bioware drew from a series of tie-in novels to spin a dark yarn about mortals vying to take the seat of a dead god.”