Black Isle Studios
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Black Isle Studios was a division of the electronic entertainment company Interplay Entertainment and specialized in the creation of computer role-playing games. It was based in Los Angeles, California, USA. Black Isle was founded in 1998. The company is most famous for working on the Fallout and Baldur's Gate series of CRPGs.
On December 8, 2003, Interplay laid off Black Isle's PC games staff (the studio had been working on a console game too). As of 2005, Interplay has neither explained the move nor clarified what the future holds for Black Isle. Many former Black Isle employees now work at Obsidian Entertainment, a video game development company.
Products
- Fallout 2 (1998)
- Planescape: Torment (1999)
- Icewind Dale (2000)
- Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter (2001)
- Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter - Trials of the Luremaster (2001)
- Icewind Dale II (2002)
In addition to game developed in-house they have also aided in the development of several CRPGs published by Interplay; the most notable being the Baldur's Gate series for Windows and Mac OS, and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance for PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube. Because Black Isle is a role-playing game developer that published the Baldur's Gate series, many people mistakenly believed that Black Isle developed the Baldur's Gate series. This is false, and the Baldur's Gate series was developed by BioWare, a company that is sometimes erroneously credited with developing the Icewind Dale series.
Project Code Names
As any self-respecting Black Isle fan knew, the studio used to code-name its projects after U.S. presidents and vice-presidents. The system was reportedly created by J.E. Sawyer, who joined the company in 1999. Here's a list of some BIS projects with their code names:
- Project King - unknown game; confirmed as cancelled as of 2001
- Project Adams - Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter
- Project Washington - Black Isle's TORN; announced and cancelled in 2001
- Project Madison - Icewind Dale: Trials of the Luremaster
- Project Monroe - Icewind Dale II
- Project Quincy - Lionheart; this was a ruse by Feargus Urquhart, as there never was a U.S. president with that last name and Lionheart wasn't a BIS-developed title. Lionheart was also codenamed Fallout Fantasy.
- Project Jackson - unknown game, possibly an Icewind Dale 2 expansion; quietly cancelled sometime in 2003
- Project Jefferson - unofficially known as Baldur's Gate: The Black Hound; project name mentioned as early as 2001; cancelled 2003
- Project Van Buren - Fallout 3; cancelled 2003 as PC staff was laid off
External links
- GameSpot: "Interplay shuts down Black Isle Studios" (8 Dec 2003) (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/fallout3/news_6085243.html)
- Obsidian Entertainment homepage (http://www.obsidianent.com)de:Black Isle Studios