There’s a strong and immediate sense of Elder Scrolls to Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon. In so many ways it feels like the exact same experience. First-person: check. Fantasy: check. Begins in a prison cell: check. Skills increase as you use them: check. Stealth works the same (even the icon is identical), combat and dialogue feel familiar. This is a copy of Elder Scrolls barely concealed.
Tainted GrailDeveloper: QuestlinePublisher: Awaken RealmsPlatform: Played on PC (there are reports from Jim on video that it doesn’t run so well on Xbox)Availability: Out now on PC (Steam, GOG), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X
Tainted Grail suffers because of these ill-concealed similarities, initially. Whilst Bethesda Game Studios commands huge budgets to make its games, this small Polish team, Questline (which made Tainted Grail with around 50 people) clearly does not. It’s most apparent on the faces of characters in the game-world, which look simple and dated by today’s standards, more like something seen in Skyrim 10 years ago.
To continue my mean streak, I also cringed at the story and theme: another dark take on Arthurian legend and the idea that a ‘one true king’ needs to return in order to save us all. That, and the game spells Camelot with a K. How very dark and edgy. Mixed first impressions, then. Tainted Grail seemed derivative, juvenile, and presentationally dated. But then it began to charm me.
After all, why should The Elder Scrolls have a monopoly on these game ideas? I now admire the decision to build Tainted Grail on a template that I, and millions of others, are not only familiar with but feel towards. I like that I don’t have to learn a new suite of gameplay ideas. I know immediately, when I’m poking around the prison, after I’m suddenly let out of my cell by a mysterious stranger, how this goes. I know there’ll be a backstab, I know I can parry, I know broadly how magic will work. Even cheeky skill-boosting tricks from Elder Scrolls games work in the same way. It’s both helpful and incredibly nostalgic.