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What the hell kind of game is this? No guns!? Oh... it's an RPG.
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Sadly enough, assault rifles will not be allowed in Icewind Dale. While it's always fun to play "Surprise the half ogre with a stream of high powered bullets" in large groups, I'm afraid Black Isle decided to not go in that direction. Those of you familiar with the Forgotten Realms universe may wonder why I specified Easthaven as the town from which assault rifles were to be banned. You can keep wondering. Or just move on to the next paragraph, it's your choice really.
Parker told us only the town of Easthaven would be presented in Icewind Dale, as the majority of their work is being put into dungeon levels. He went on to say, "There will be a reasonably large amount of time spent in towns and such, but our focus is more on combat and exploration." Honestly, as long as I get to cast spells and poke at enemies with a sharp sword I'm content, but it's still good to know there is focus on exploring towns and interacting with NPCs.
Just because you can't pickup an assault rifle and pepper giant rhino beetles with bullets doesn't mean you won't get the chance to toy with some really neat weapons. In fact, Black Isle is going to add many new magical weapons to play around with, and even a large amount of magical items to use.
Black Isle may have decided to use the BioWare Infinity engine for Icewind Dale, but that doesn't mean they cannot tweak the engine to suit their game. Although the basic usage of the interface will remain the same as in Baldur's Gate, we were informed by Parker that, "We are essentially giving the interface a facelift just to make sure the artwork matches the feel of the game." Phew, for a minute there I thought I might actually have to learn a new interface and be forced to engage in that whole "instruction book reading" thing.
The most notable changes in the engine, however, include the addition of 3D acceleration. Although the character models are still composed of sprites, the game is much less likely to slow down in heavy combat scenes like Baldur's Gate was occasionally prone to doing. I always found it kind of neat to see a fireball hang in mid air for a second as the game loaded the next frame, but apparently this is considered a "bad thing" and Black Isle saw it fit to change. Aside from just keeping the frame rate up, the use of 3D acceleration should allow for better terrain effects. Again, Chris Parker of Black Isle explains, "We are able to do some cool background effects with transparencies that weren't so easy before."
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