You know, go to the extinct volcano, retrieve the sacred gemstone, save the villagers, kill the lizard men. All in a day's work. Then comes Heart of Winter, Black Isle's expansion pack for Icewind. There are the obligatory tropes about your party's coming being foretold in a vision, but the characters you meet are interesting enough to carry this dusty technique, and the voice acting is, as always with Black Isle, superb. What your party has been seen doing in these visions is helping the inhabitants of Lonelywood deal with the growing menace of a barbarian encampment just outside of town.
Tensions are mounting.
The barbarians have severed communications between the village and the rest of the Ten Towns, and rumor has it that their leader Wylfdene has risen from death to lead his people. Reclaim their ancestral grounds and drive off the encroachment of so-called civilization, which every year brings their culture closer to extinction. It's a good story, one that Americans should relate to since it resonates so clearly with our history, and Heart of Winter serves up the conflict without making excuses or offering cheap solutions. The line between good and evil gets suitably blurry. Mages can now memorize eighth and ninth level spells, too, rendering that cheat mod unnecessary.