While the studio's previous Fallout games were in 2D, Black Isle wanted to bring Fallout into 3D with this new project. "Now 3D was the cool stuff. So we were going to move from being a 2D engine and be a 3D engine, and so we actually started working with this 3D technology called NDL," he said.
While the studio was making progress on the game, it was during a time of financial trouble for the studio's publisher Interplay. So instead of releasing as Fallout 3, the project led to the creation of Icewind Dale. Urquhart said he saw this as an opportunity to develop a dungeon-crawling RPG that would serve as an excellent "counterpoint" to Balder's Gate, so "the Fallout 3 team became the Icewind Dale team."
Interestingly enough, Urquhart then went on to note that the aforementioned 3D engine NDL ended up getting bought by Gamebryo, which coincidentally was later used to power the Bethesda-developed Fallout 3.For more fascinating stories from the man behind a number of other beloved RPGs, including Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II and South Park: The Stick of Truth, stay tuned for our full interview with Urquhart when this month's episode of IGN Unfiltered goes live next Tuesday.
