Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Speculation: Comparing Solasta and BG3

So I'm curious how simular and how different Solasts and BG 3 will be?

I think mechanically they will be very similar, but I think BG 3 will focus less on dungeons, and with the bigger budget will have all the classes and PHB races and maybe more besides like Lizardfolk, Aasimar, Gith.

BG 3 "likely" will have a DM mode as well that you can host D&D games. I say likely only because 1. we don't know for sure and 2. they have already built a DM mode in DOS and to expand and improve in a D&D 5E setting would be good.

There is a chance some of the things in Solasta we may see in BG3 such as inventory (size and weight, not just weight), and creative things such as pushing/shoving both opponents and objects over cliffs etc.

Solasta will be a very focused dungeon crawler BG3 will be a huge RPG with a much bigger focus on dialogue and exploration of a world.
Though we will probably be able to play BG3 earlier since Solasta is announced for 2021 and BG3 will most likely be out by then.

The Solasta devs have repeatedly reiterated that most of their game will be above ground and not in dungeons, with at least one major city area and several smaller urban areas plus also wilderness areas. Playtime is estimated to be around 50+ hours. Release is planned for late 2020-early 2021. Funding was already set for the game, and the KS funds are only for additional features and polish.

The gameplay of Solasta is exactly what I've been looking for in a game for years. The estimated playtime of 50 hours that kanisatha cited worries me though. I want something I can get lost in for months. Being that they're a first time developer, it might be healthy to temper my excitement. That said, I'll be playing it day one. Hope it does really well so they have funds to make bigger games. Should do - It's a massive untapped market. The next best option is Temple of Elemental Evil, which is a 16 year old game with truly painful jank, only slightly mitigated by community patches.

With Swen shying away from core rules in interviews, I'm less excited about BG3 than I was when it was announced. Solasta devs aren't shying away from that. I'd be lying if I said I didn't badly want a BG sequel. But I've been dying for a pen and paper experience in video game format. Solasta is doing that. Mechanically, I see them playing very differently.

I agree 100% with this, but with the caveat that I feel certain that Solasta will get a major sequal that will likely get another at least 50 hours. Think of Solasta as half of a larger story/game. After all Solasta only goes to level 10, so a sequel getting it to level 20 seems almost certain.

Plus the Quest Item stretch goal will like push the game above 50 hours.

Best part it only goes to level 10 so no god killing bullshit.

It's almost like the whole role of stopping world ending events has been played out a little too much in the RPG genre. That narritive has its time and place as long as there is a strong story behind it with characters you care about and flaws inherent in the hero (looking at you, Enderal) , but who wants to be the "chosen one" in EVERY. DAMN. GAME.

Yeah I wouldn't worry too much about the length of Solasta. In my experience, if the content is of a high quality, you end up spending way more time with the game than what is estimated. Plus, yes there will surely be at least one expansion given how successful their KS ended up being.

Having said this, and I am a backer of Solasta, I am way more excited for Realms Beyond than Solasta. RB is using the 3.5e D&D OGL, which for me is the definitive edition of D&D. It has a party size of six, which is a major factor for me. It uses hexes rather than squares for its gridmap. And even though also TB, the devs have stated that they appreciate that there are many players who prefer RTwP and keeping that in mind are incorporating elements into their combat system to make it move more quickly and to try and make it less tedious and boring for the RTwP-preferring folks. For me, that kind of thoughtfulness and consideration is meaningful. So, all in all, RB is the better game for me.

But, there are a couple of additional games out there as well, that are inspired by the IE games even if they're not D&D-based games, which I am very excited about and looking forward to: Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness, and The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes. The HUGE plus of these two games for me is that they are RTwP. It's also why I love Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and am looking forward to Owlcat's upcoming second Pathfinder game announcement, though keeping my fingers crossed that they won't bow to the "All games MUST be TB" coercion.

I am no longer wedded to a game needing to be D&D-based. I actually see the D&D RPG system, and especially the D&D combat system as being well short of ideal and having a ton of room for and need of improvement. The only thing D&D that continues to interest me and which matters to me is the Forgotten Realms setting, because I really love that setting. As such, I wish there were an OGL for the FR setting, so that someone could just use that setting but NOT the D&D ruleset to make a game.

Quite. I find it very wearying and it just makes the game world feel much smaller. My first RPG was Oblivion (yeah I know... the genre had somehow eluded me for the first decades of my video-game playing) and I loved making someone who specifically wasn't the Doom Guy type protagonist and worse. Just some girl-next-door type who fell into a situation as events took on a life of their own. That part I enjoyed; being head of every guild, Saviour of Bruma, Hero of Kvatch, Champion of Cyrodiil etc just seemed a bit silly and was precisely not what my character was about. The Mages Guild was especially ludicrous as my character was very much a novice mage and not at all interested in the politics of the guild.

Yet that is something that more games get even more badly wrong than get it right. I'm reluctant to even mention "The W Word" because "The Witcher gets everything right" is a bit tired but actually, Geralt was very much like that. Yeah, he may have been involved in some serious stuff, but Geralt is just Geralt. People often don't like him much, but most don't know or care who he is. Greedfall (also at risk of over-doing it) being a more recent example, as much as the PC may as well have carried business cards with "de Sardet, Legate of the Congregation" printed on them she wasn't even the most important person from the Congregation on the island, and again, plenty of people didn't care for her nor about her.

But too many others just go for the "climb to the top of the guild's greasy pole! Even though you're head of the other guilds! Have fame or infamy! Everyone loves or fears you! Be a leader! Be the leader! Be a god!" No. Just let me be me.

There are 3.5e games already and honestly 5e is a far, far better rule set and that is back up by it's massive success compared to 3.5e, it's eclipsed 3.5e sales by alot, it fixes big problem within 3.5e and it has a lot of enhancements. And Solasta is one of the first games to use it (as is BG 3 of course).

From my experience, the only people who prefer 3.5 over 5e are those who have never actually played 5e. At least I never actually met someone who wanted to go back, even Pathfinder 1.0 is better than 3.5 IMO.

Perhaps, because yes I have not played a TT game using 5e rules because I have not had a gaming group to play with for quite some years now. It's what happens when you and your friedns all become middle-aged and have careers and families. I have only read up on 5e, which I have done quite a bit of, and what I see is a much more accessible system with more streamlined and simplified and easy to understand rules. Nothing wrong with that, and that is what explains 5e's huge popularity, but I am one of those people who likes complexity and yes even number-crunching.

Hawke id definitly play 3.PF over 5, but i would rather DM 5 than 3.5.
Personally i got my issues with both. Id rather play ADnD or 4e than either of em.
PF is still soemthing i havent gotten to actually play, its much the same as 3.5, tons of builds, most of them shit.

3.5 people realy are grognards that didnt move on. If they did, theyd play Pathfinder which is the exact same game, its even compatible but it gets new content.
So someone who clings to 3.5 realy is someone who deliberatley wants to live in the past.
Not that theres anything wrong with that. i personally prefer outdated editions myself, but i dont think a lot of them have any expirience with newer versions of DnD; let alone different systems alltogether

As for complexity. 5E is about as complex as 3.5. Its just less bloated.
Both systems arent terribly complicated, which is one of the reasons they realy only do one thing very well, which is DnD, and in the case of 5e id argue its not even very good at that.

I agree 5e is as complex as 3.5e, maybe even more so, it just appears that it's not, because its so well put together, fewer petty choices, yet more meaning full choices. It's a less messy complexity.

this wasnt an endorsement of 5e, i just dislike that people act as if 3.5 was very complex.
Its not, it just has a lot of options and splatbooks.

5e is about as complex if you add feats (which i dont think anyone doesnt).
as for choice, idk. Theres certainly some streamlining, the problem is that that while 3.5 has a lot of options, about two thirds of these options are trap options that 5e doesnt have thankfully

I personally prefer PF or 3.5 in a videogame precisely because you have lots of options, lore, classes, feats, backgrounds, etc right now (It has years of development. 5e does not even have epic levels now). You have lots of kits, feats and builds, prestige classes. etc.
I think I spent more time planning and trying builds in PF or NWN2 than anything. I fully embrace restartitis.

But for a TT its 5e hands down. Mechanics and calculations are far straightforward and simple to explain to newbies. You have more options outside combat and plenty of time to RP things. I usually like low level-low magic worlds and in 5e the chars are not that uber-powerful past lvl 10.

i personally never understood this.
Builds in RPGs are cool if you develop them as you go.
I like to try out wacky builds in RPGs, tanking with a dagger, two shields when the game lets me do it, a melee caster in FFT, a jumping build in morrowind.

BUt i never understood the fascination 3.PF players have with opitmization. Maybe its because im a DM in real life but it realy takes me out of it. Optimization is for pvP, for PvE it feels masturbatory, i dont think its a good thing to have a game where you start doing your build before you start playing the game.

Ideally you want lots of viable builds. For DnD 3.5, this is not the case. Hell, 3.5 bareley has any classes that are viable. It has a tier list of classes, that should never happen in an RPG, ever.

the problem with 5E in tabletop form is that you cannot realy gradually increase the challenge.
If youve got a simple system, what usually happens is that the group upgrades to a more complicated system once the players are familliar with it.
Which is not ideal since 5E characters dont translate well into any other system

There are different reasons for play a game, being TT or Videogames, all of them respectable.

Lore?!?!, because after over 300 books, dozens and dozens of Dragon and Dungeon Magazine articles, like a over a dozen video games set in it, the Forgotten Realms has a shortage of Lore.