Sound

Majestic Sound, Painfully Flawed Implementation

The sweeping, orchestral soundtracks that accompany Black Isle games could easily be heard accompanying something like The Lord Of The Rings Movie. Baldur’s Gate II: Throne Of Bhaal, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment have indisputably some of the most luminescent, vibrant PC RPG soundtracks of all time, and Icewind Dale II, just possibly, trumps them all. Inon Zur, the composer of Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, returns in IWD2. Upon entering the first town in the game, the subtle, mourning tones of violins gradually cascade into a mournful, yet resolute dirge of horns, restrained choral work, and measured drumming.

Forbidding Architecture

Unusual Humor

Yes you are

It’s the superb work of Inon Zur that only makes the way the game developers implemented music into the game even more deplorable. When you enter any sort of building, the music cuts off abruptly. Unlike LucasArts’ old iMuse system used in the Monkey Island games, the music doesn’t even attempt to reach some sort of short conclusion... it simply stops, dead in its tracks, mid-beat, mid-measure. When a battle is completed, the music stops just as ignominiously.

Not only that, Inon Zur’s soundtrack is on such a grand scale that the traditional Black Isle ‘atmospheric’ sounds, such as birds chirping and leaves rustling, only grow all the more annoying since the music is far preferable to these tired old reused effects. Game Developers seem to be listening to the clamor for neoclassical, orchestral soundtracks from PC RPG gamers with only one-ear. While the quality of game soundtracks have undeniably increased, gamers have been short-changed one way or another, from criminally short Jeremy Soule soundtracks (Morrowind) to the complete lack of attempts to harmoniously mesh game environments with lush soundtracks.

Reused Sounds

In a similar trend with the graphics, there are approximately a dozen new speech effects for the player-controlled characters. Black Isle, characteristically enough, chose to simply throw in Icewind Dale and Heart of Winter’s character voices, with the seeming assumption that gamers new to the series would marvel at the seemingly large options available to them. The voices, while not bad, are typically cheesy, though the drow voice acting is actually quite good... it’s quite satisfying to hear your Wizard hurl out some epithet in drow while hurling a fireball into a nest of goblins. The sound effects are typical high-quality fare we've seen from Black Isle (and BioWare) in the past. They’re nothing terribly new, but they get the job done well.

Or perhaps not

Overgrown insects

Breakable Objects

While the narrator for Icewind Dale II is quite good (as they are in all Black Isle games), one significant criticism is that the narrative detail in between the chapters have very little to do with the story. She relates her future experience with the region the next chapter partakes in, but there is no immediate relevance to your party’s next task at hand. It’s almost like giving away the punch line to a joke before knowing what the joke is. As a result from this poor decision, the nature of the narration lacks the urgency exhibited in BioWare's competing titles, like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights.