Games - Black Isle Studios

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	Games - Black Isle Studios

Black Isle Studios was a division of the electronic entertainment company Interplay Entertainment that specialized in the creation of computer role-playing games. It was based in Los Angeles, California, USA. Black Isle was founded in 1998. The idea for its name came from the Black Isle in founder Feargus Urquhart's native country, Scotland . The company is most famous for working on the Fallout and Baldur's Gate series of CRPGs, though it published Baldur's Gate.

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)
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II (2004)

In addition to games developed in-house they have 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

The studio used to code-name its projects after U.S. presidents and vice-presidents. The system was reportedly created by Josh Sawyer (aka JE Sawyer), who joined the company in 1999.

A list of some BIS projects with their code names:

Project King - Stonekeep II, cancelled in 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 - Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II 2003
Project Jefferson - unofficially known as Baldur's Gate 3: 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

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Black Isle Studios ]

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