A tale of ice and wind
Two classic Dungeons & Dragons adventures, and two games almost diametrically opposed in their focus and concentration, are launching together onto console for the first time in a new package from Beamdog Interactive. Planescape Torment: Enhanced Edition and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition are lashed together in a new release, launching at the same time as Beamdog’s other new D&D console collection of Baldur’s Gate I and II. While the two games are very different in terms of story focus and gameplay style, they will both provide hours of classic RPG fun for new and old players alike.
Planescape Torment is the real winner of this package as it’s one of the most unique and well told RPG stories from the last 20 years of the genre. Players play as the Nameless One and are awoken in a mortuary, scarred, tattooed, and with very little memory of themselves or their surroundings. Over the course of a 50+ hour adventure players will slowly piece together the mystery with a very heavy emphasis on dialogue and party interaction. This game has some of the best dialogue ever written in the western RPG genre and it focuses the player’s attention there intently. There is less of an emphasis on combat in the game, as a matter of fact most combat can be avoided almost entirely.
MSRP: $49.99
Platforms: XB1 (reviewed), PS4, Switch
Icewind Dale tells the story of a group of adventurers (either pregenerated or created by the player) who set out from the town of Easthaven on an expedition to investigate a local town. Things quickly go south, and the party is forced to confront an evil force and save the region. Contrary to Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale focuses heavily on the combat side of the equation and contains larger and more frequent combat interactions than either of the two Baldur’s Gate games. The story here is a prequel of sorts to R.A. Salvatore’s classic Icewind Dale series of novels and is very well-paced and solid in its own right, but it doesn’t hold up as well as the two Baldur’s Gate games or Planescape Torment. Unfortunately, the game was originally released the same year as Baldur’s Gate II and was consequently somewhat overshadowed.
In terms of content in the package players get slightly less for their buck here than in the Baldur’s Gate package, but a good value nonetheless. Icewind Dale also includes two expansion packs, The Heart of Winter and Trials of the Luremaster, but unfortunately does not include the excellent Icewind Dale II, a tremendous game that is the better of the two. It seems the source code for the sequel was lost at some point and thus hasn’t been rebuilt in an enhanced edition as of yet. Fingers crossed we’ll get that at some point down the line. Planescape Torment by itself is among the longest of the Infinity Engine games (second only to Baldur’s Gate II) and its length and quality adds considerable value to the package.
Visually the games look the way your nostalgia remembers them looking, not the way they actually looked. Icewind Dale shares many visual cues with the other Infinity Engine games and shares a similar visual contrast between pixelated characters and higher quality backgrounds. Planescape Torment, by virtue of its unique setting and art style, looks tremendous still and the enhanced edition upgrades to resolution really work their magic here. The environments in Planescape are immediately visually appealing and each of the party members are visually distinct enough to stand out.
The series has adjusted its controls to adapt to console and I’m pleased to report that the adjustment was relatively seamless. Players can use the left stick to control whatever active group member they have selected at any given time, or to control a group of characters if they have more than one selected. The pathfinding can be an issue at times (something that was a problem in the original games as well) but it isn’t overly distracting. Left Trigger pulls up the character select menu, right trigger the menu selection and the bumper/shoulder buttons allow players to quickly switch between party members. The set-up is similar in many ways to the control scheme of Divinity: Original Sin on console. The one flaw that I ran into was difficulty selecting the various interactive objects that are around you on a constant basis. I found the stick was often a relatively finicky way to select which object I was interested in interacting with. Thankfully pressing right on the d-pad allowed me to switch to a mouse like cursor style control which I could use for more detail-oriented work.
Combat is intricate and, at times, punishingly difficult. Each game features the active battle system from Baldur’s Gate that allows players to pause during combat to give specific orders to each of thier party members (something that later Bioware games like Dragon’s Age have carried on the legacy of). Players will absolutely need to use this function on any difficulty level higher than the Story difficulty. For those who just want to experience the story without any frustrating clashes with enemies, this difficulty setting removes nearly all of the challenge of the battle system and allows players to basically just click “attack” and let the game mow down everyone in your path. It also eliminates the ability for party members to die in combat, making things even more accessible for those who are put off by the demands of the combat engine. While Planescape Torment, because of its priority on dialogue and story works perfectly for a mode like this, the combat heavy nature of Icewind Dale means players get much less out of that game if their intention is to plow through on this difficulty.
Performance of the games is mostly solid but does have its issues. Players will get slowdown on occasion, which speaks more to the legacy and underlying age of the engine than anything else. It varies from minor to major depending on where you are and what’s happening on screen. I didn’t have this happen frequently, but it did pop its head up more frequently than I would have liked on modern hardware.
This package is worth the price of admission for Planescape Torment alone. It’s a true classic of the genre and something that every western RPG fan should play at least once. Icewind Dale makes for a worthy counterbalance to the package overall and is certainly worth your time if you’re a fan of the Infinity Engine games, particularly if you enjoy the combat. All in all, I can definitely recommend this package for fans of this genre.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
