Avalon

If you are in the mood to play Skyrim or the recent Oblivion remaster, but you don’t want to play a Microsoft-backed game for, oh, any number of reasons, the word on the grapevine is that open world RPG Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is pretty decent. We don’t have a review as yet, but Khee Hoon Chan called Questline’s previous Tainted Grail: Conquest one of the best games you missed in 2021, and The Fall Of Avalon is currently humming along with an Overwhelmingly Positive Steam user consensus as it prepares to leave early access today. The Steam page also harbours a demo, plus the below, moderately thunderous trailer’s worth of first-person spellcraft, shattered cosmic castles and fishing mechanics.

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The Fall Of Avalon is set in another dark reimagining of Arthurian myth, one less abundant in beauty influencers than Tides Of Annihilation. It takes place about 600 years after King Arthur’s fall, in a realm of “unending strife” and plague that is divided into three zones.

The game is said to span 50-70 hours, with over 200 sidequests and an assortment of miscellaneous activities such as decorating your house, farming and “sketchbook journaling”. I sincerely hope that last one is a fully fleshed-out illustration subgame, or at least some kind of fantasy photography mechanic. We need more virtual idylls like Eastshade.

One overarching device is that the world worsens at night – that’s when the Wyrdness, “a chaotic primordial force”, comes out to play, making foes tougher. I too experience Wyrdness at night, but this is generally because I have decided to eat a family-sized bag of Flaming Hot Wotsits. The Fall Of Avalon’s Wyrdness is a touch less gastric in origin. According to the backstory, King Arthur actually ousted it many centuries before during his conquest of Avalon. Now, it’s back with a vengeance.

Fortunately for Avalon, you are an omni-capable RPG everyperson who can go about wyrdo-murdering using any combination of stats, perks and equipment. “Want to be a crazy alchemist-berserker punching enemies to death? Sure,” promises the Steam blurb. “A mystical blacksmith-mage summoning undead hordes? We’ve got you covered. A stealthy archer lurking in the shadows? Say less – this is the game for stealth archer enthusiasts.” Cry more, Thief.

I’m not keen on everything I’ve read about the game. There’s talk of a “mature, morally grey story”, for example. “Mature” and “morally grey” are terms used by rosy-cheeked children to describe the act of lying about whether they’ve brushed their teeth. Between that and the boilerplate industry talk of “limitless playstyles”, “meaningful choices” and “love letters” to the Elder Scrolls-style RPG genre, I doubt this will be very surprising on the whole.

Still, I quite enjoy the art direction’s core theme of “everlasting autumn”, and I like the environment design’s somewhat Fromsofty sense of rot. Did I mention there’s a plague? It’s called the Red Death. A bunch of priests are searching for a cure by means of torturous experimentation upon victims who are slowly transforming into monsters. Perhaps it’s the Flaming Hot Wotsits talking, but that sounds like just the thing for a Friday night. Let us know if you’ve played this and Have Thoughts.

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