To Infinity And Beyond: The Infinity Engine Games

The Infinity Engine by BioWare is synonymous with great RPGs. You think Infinity Engine, you think Planescape: Torment, or Baldur’s Gate. Or Icewind Dale. All great level-grinding adventures and all published by Interplay in the late ’90s and early 2000s.

When Canadian developer Beamdog (founded by ex-BioWare staff) set out to remake the Baldur’s Gate series – and remake the Infinity Engine in the process – they set out to make gaming history for a second time, by revitalising these good old games and hoping they’d be hits again. And to all intents and purposes they succeeded. And are still succeeding.

The new engine is a veritable mouse wheel zoomfest, and having the larger play window makes the game feel so much more epic than before. Yes, there are some people who prefer the original versions – and that’s fine with me – but these newer incarnations feel sleek and modern and grand. You can see so much more of the great buildings and landscapes. It makes a difference.

There is one anomaly, though. Icewind Dale II – the only Infinity Engine game yet to be given an enhanced make-over – is in limbo (at the time of writing), apparently because the original source code is missing. Boo. Whether it will ever get an enhanced remake or not is unknown, which isn’t great because I have a soft spot for Icewind Dale II… Never mind.

Listed here are links to all the individual Infinity Engine games on this blog – plus the enhanced versions, in chronological order.