They said they took the easy road in their interviews throughout the pre-EA marketing period.
I don't have a link immediately handy, but there are several interviews where Swen and others say they went with the DOS model because "it's what [they] know". They openly decided not to take risks with their own formula of RPG. They also said in the same interviews that the decision to go after the BG IP was because BG had more name recognition, and that they could use that to show more people "their own formula of RPG" ... meaning they never intended to do anything but copy/pasta DOS and graft 5e wherever it could fit.
Solasta may only be SRD, and the team small, but at least they had the guts to build a 5e game.
Hmm, we really need links for the interviews with those statements. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but considering the way you formulate it, had the same sentences been written by an official spokesperson, the PR/Media Manager would had gotten a severe headache as that can come off as near fraudulent behavior and if it's true, is not the way it should have been laid bare for the public. So I kinda need to watch/read the source/s myself so I can draw my own conclussions.