Warm greetings friends!
We hope this cold festive season has treated you well, for its harsh wind fell some of us for a bit. But let that not be an obstacle to our work, for Tactical Adventures is back at the office and firing on all cylinders to get our Early Access out on March 12th as recently announced! And just like most of you… we can’t wait for the day to come!
Code faster, human.
Before we start, don't forget to wishlist Solasta II on Steam - it helps us a ton!
Community Stream #13 - Friday January 16th
Wew! With all the announcements back to back, I just realized our last chill Community Stream was in September - how time flies. It’s time to take a little breather and relax around the campfire - yours truly Myzzrym will be here on Friday to answer your questions and show you the game. A little. We wouldn’t want to spoil too much before you get to enjoy the game on your own after all!
- Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tacticaladventures
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TacticalAdventures/streams
Joining Amelia Tyler in our latest story trailer are Ben Starr, Devora Wilde and Ellen Thomas! After wrapping up Solasta I, one of our main wishes was to shake things up a little on the narration side - and one thing that came up which we all agreed on was that we wanted to introduce more memorable characters to our storytelling. And more important NPCs also meant we started looking into more specific talents!
We first thought about Amelia Tyler when we were working on Shadwyn - that many may know as the narrator of Baldur’s Gate III (or more recently as Hecates in Hades II), we felt she would be perfect as our mysterious and villainous antagonist. I’m going to let you in on a little secret - some of you may remember that she was in many CRPGs in the last decade such as Divinity: Original Sin II and the Pathfinder games. Well, that’s also why her voice came to mind very quickly… Since, you know, most of us play a LOT of CRPGs in our spare time. A great vocal range, a natural ease to weave both strength and gentleness… Yep, we wanted Amelia for Shadwyn!
Ellen Thomas on the other hand was more of a “oh wait, did you watch Arcane? Wouldn’t she make a perfect Anabasia?” moment. A powerful character that commands authority naturally without having to resort to open threats, with full confidence in her own abilities - an absolute unchallenged ruler. We are excited to see how far Ellen Thomas will push her character and play around her… yet unrevealed particularities.
For the characters of Deorcas and Rickard we had quite a few ideas in mind and bounced them around until we decided to go with Ben Starr and Devora Wilde. Ben Starr because his performance as Clive in FF XVI was pretty incredible and because we knew he was a huge D&D nerd like us with Natural Six. Funny story, Rickard changed quite a bit since Ben started breathing life into the character - adding a few layers of issues such as alcoholism. Because we all love characters with problems in their lives, makes them more relatable eh?
Devora Wilde caught our attention with her role as Lae’zel in Baldur’s Gate as a very confrontational yet lovable character, with a complex story arc that could lead her to… very different and potentially tragic ends. This made her a prime candidate for Deorcas in Solasta II, a character driven by her violent bursts of emotions, lost in anger and doubt. Fun fact, we did not know about her working with Ben on Expedition 33 when we made that choice - which made them joke on site that they were once again reunited as brother and sister in another game (guess it was fate).
So, what can you expect from Solasta II at the launch of Early Access, versus what are we aiming for 1.0? Let us walk you through some of the most important points!
Character Creation & Customization
The Character Creator will be available from the start of the Early Access, meaning you can create your full party from the get-go! Worry not, for those of you who may not want to spend too much time in the Character Creator, we have also prepared one premade for each class if you want to jump into the campaign immediately.
Solasta II will start with 6 classes at first: Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Rogue, Sorcerer and Paladin - with more coming in future Early Access updates (ideally we aim to have all 12 classes playable at 1.0). Each class will feature 2 subclasses, one returning from Solasta I with some balance tweaks, and another one exclusive to Solasta II - with an exception for the Cleric, who has 3 subclasses previously seen in Solasta I instead.
Multiclassing will be available from the start, and additional class & subclass features will be added over time (same goes with spells, we’ll be adding more as time goes on). The max level cap will start at 4 and make its way over time to 10 for the 1.0 release.
The game will also feature 4 ancestries at launch: Human, Elf, Dwarf & Halfling - with more coming in future EA updates.
Content & Length
At the launch of Early Access you will have access to a portion of Act I, which we estimate might take you around 10h to 15h to complete (for a single run). Note that the foes you will encounter and challenges you will face will likely change over time as we fine tune the balancing and add new monsters to the bestiary. For this reason, make sure you send us feedback about your experience - it helps us a lot to understand what you like and what you… liked a little less, shall we say!
Some gameplay features such as flight and multiplayer are currently in the pipeline so they won’t be available in March, but rest assured that we’re working on them (and making good progress may I add). Of course, you can expect many more quests, locations, items and QoL settings to be added over time as well over the length of Early Access (and even beyond)!
If you have any questions feel free to drop by our Monthly Community Stream to ask us directly, or contact us via our Discord server. Cheers, and see you soon! Only a little more than 2 months left before Neokos opens its doors!
Article by Tactical Myzzrym
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