Over the last decade, Beamdog has released what they call Enhanced Editions of the Infinity Engine RPGs. Somewhere between a remaster and an in-engine remake, the first two Baldur’s Gate games and their expansions, Planescape: Torment, Neverwinter Nights, and the first Icewind Dale. However, only the first Icewind Dale. The source code to its sequel was lost, and the game was trapped in its original release or direct ports of that version.
At least, Icewind Dale 2 was trapped until now.
The Red Chimera Group, a self-described “team of modders, coders, artists, and other contributors” rebuilt Icewind Dale 2 from the ground up with WeiDU code and hex editing.
Calling their resurrection Icewind Dale 2: Enhanced Edition, the game runs on modern hardware and in modern resolutions. It loads much faster as well. The mod, well, modular; stopping there with an otherwise vanilla experience is possible.
But while the team was remaking the game, they added more than 110 completely new spells, 170 new magic items, and 30 new feats. They made it possible for several NPCs to become party members (including Veira the ghost, Vrek Vileclaw the river troll, Xhaan the white abishai, Zack Boosenburry and his spider mount, Aocha). They’ve also introduced quality of life improvements, which include quickly looting.
They give players the option to make even greater changes to the story progression and gameplay.
This mod also fixes the major issues many players had with the original Icewind Dale 2: you no longer have to solve tedious, cryptic puzzles to complete certain areas, enemies in Heart of Fury Mode are empowered in interesting ways rather than just having lots of HP, and you can revise the experience system so you won’t get zero experience for killing enemies late in the game…
Several of IWD2’s complex mandatory questlines have been tweaked to reduce the amount of backtracking required, or to allow alternative solutions. The final level of Dragon’s Eye, Lord Pyros’ Domain, is now a single boss fight rather than a long, cryptic time loop questline.
The Red Chimera Group
Instructions for installing Icewind Dale 2: Expanded Edition can be found here.
Source: Beamdog Forums
Featured Image: Beamdog Forums
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