Icewind Dale is a role-playing video game series developed by Black Isle Studios. It is set in the Forgotten Realms Icewind Dale region, but takes place decades before the events described in R. A. Salvatore's books which made the area a part of Faerûn. The games use BioWare's Infinity Engine, which offers a pre-rendered worldview, with sprite-based characters. This engine was also used to power the Baldur's Gate series and Planescape: Torment. The player begins each of the games by generating a party of up to six characters, but is unable to recruit non-player characters (as was possible in other games using the Infinity Engine). Also, as the entire party is generated by the player, the player-characters do not have preset personalities, and are all equally capable of assuming the role of "protagonist" with minor differences at most. In 2000, Icewind Dale was released to mostly positive reviews, although the game drew some criticism for its linearity and lack of character development when it came to the player's party. The game features far more hack-and-slash than Baldur's Gate, and has often been compared to the Diablo series of games for its combat-heavy focus. Icewind Dale The gameplay of Icewind Dale is similar to that of Baldur's Gate. As with Baldur's Gate, the game is based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition ruleset, and the combat system is a quasi-real-time adaptation of the normally turn-based Dungeons & Dragons combat system used. Dice rolling and the like are all done automatically, without requiring the player's participation, although it is possible to pause the game at any time to issue orders to the party. One of the most noticeable differences compared to Baldur's Gate is the much larger bestiary: ettins, orcs, goblins, and , for example, are all major foes in this game, whereas they were not present in the original Baldur's Gate. Some other differences include: the raised experience level-cap; bigger battles, sometimes involving 20 or more foes at once; and far larger spell selection - used by or against the player's party 6th level spells and above make frequent appearances throughout the game. Also unlike Baldur's Gate, the game makes use of a semi-random item generation system. In Baldur's Gate most items were pre-placed - meaning that the same items were in the same places every time the game was played. In Icewind Dale, however, most quest-earned items are