Thoughts On “The Council” —Full Game Review
A lot of mysteries in this modern era adventure game.
This is probally a work of fiction…
In 1973, Louis de Richet, a member of the Golden Order, is just invited to a meeting in a island owned by the misterious Lord Mortimer. Sarah de Richet, Louis’s mother, also a member of the Golden Order, has disapeare in that very same island a week ago, after received the same invitation.
In order to find his mother, Louis has to accepted Mortimer invite, once there, he will discover that there are other guests as well, one of them can be related to Sarah de Richet disappearance.
Among the guests there’re very important historical figures like George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte. Besides looking for his mother, Louis will soon discover that the other guests also have their own secrets and motivations. It’s up to you, as the player, to discover who Louis can trust. Also, who’s Lord Mortimer?
And what is the role Louis should play in all of this?
The Council, from Big Bad Wolf and published by Focus Interactive, is a adventure game with RPG mechanics. This 5 chapters adventure takes place inside Lord Mortimer’s mansion, where the player will be engaging in conversations with others Mortimer’s guest during most of time, but there’re also some exploration and awesome puzzles. The player will also decide how the story will end as Louis uncover the secrets from the other guests and the host himself. The intriguing plot will certainly hold your attention in the first chapters, but is it worth to the end? Let’s talk about some good and bad stuff from The Council in this spoiler-free review.
— And you, good sir, what brings you here ? Asked cardinal Piagi.
Louis looked at him and then at Lady Hillsbrown, and at Piagi again.
— Lord Mortimer invites me, we have some bussiness to attend to. He anwser after a brief moment of silence.
— Oh how mysterious, you adapt quicky, my son. You’ll get along here like a fish in the water. Would you believe that we are all here hoping to solve our personal issues? You’ll see.
“Right, I doubt you’ve came here looking for your mother, your Eminence” Louis thought, but he anwser with nothing but a smile.
— Anyway, consider yourself fortunate, young man, because there’re many who dream of simply one day setting foot on this island.
“How to influence others and make friends “— Presenting the game design
It’s hard to make a game where “talking” is just fun as “shooting”. There’s no action here. You’ll not get “addicted” to talk as you would get to hit, hide and shoot. That said, is important to understand that The Council pacing is not for everybody. The two people interaction is the biggest game design here, and it works pretty well.
The game design is based in three comum RPG mechanics: Classes, Skills and Effort Points. A skill represents what a character is trained to do, so it will require less effort points to perform it, or none at all depeding on how trained the character are.
You use your skills to investigate guests, letters, paintings, books and other things. During a conversation the game will display free actions and actions that require a certain skill, each skill are part of one of the three classes we have in the game, they’re: Detective, Diplomat and the Ocultist. The role you choose are important because there’ll be things you can not do, understand or say during the first half of the game based on the level of yours skills. As you progress trough the game and finish quests you’ll get XP and each new level provide more skill points, so you can either improve your class base skill or accquire new skill from other classes, but you’ll spend a lot of points to become a specialist in skill you didn’t had at the beginning. Choose wisely your initial classe because the first parts of the game will be slight different, but by chapters 4–5 you already earned enough skill points to accquire almost every base skill level, not only that, you’ll find several books that may help Louis to improve skills.
Even the skill you posses have a cost of “effort points” to use, and you don’t have many in the beginning. To improve the “talking game” we also have character traits and itens. Each character can have immunity or vulnerability to some of Louis skills, hitting a immunity means you’ll get the worst response, but hitting a vulnerability means you’ll get the best possible outcome. As you progress to game each guest traits will be discovery by conversations and exploring guests rooms. In this game “talk” is like fighting in a turn-based RPG game, is essentially the same thing (discover a vulnerability then explore it as much as you can). You also can prepare youself for a “battle”, or as the game call a “Confrontation”, by gathering itens that will help to recover effort points, temporaly display a character traits, give you a free use of any skill or heal your negative stats. If you have one of each of this itens you’ll almost certainily “win” any confrontation, wich here means you’ll turn someone into your side or extract the best possible information. The higher your level, more effort points you’ll have.
Another great thing to do here are the puzzles, there’re some awesome puzzles in this game, one in particular, makes you feel like a real Nathan Drake. Because it’s up to you to gather the information and research topics like “what month is Abril in a Hebrew calendar?”, giving you the feeling of a actual research and investigation.
A good start to the possibly disappointing end.
The main plot twist is poorly builded and from there everything is linear until the rushed end.
With all that, in the end, what will really hook the player to the end — in this kind of game — is the story. I’m certain that The Council plot will hold the players to it’s end. But that doesn’t mean it will end as good as it started. The game designers and writters decisions for the end differ from what I expected from a investigation game. Chapter 4 will simple throw away all investigation you gathered during first three chapters when the solution literally knocks at your door with answers the player would never have discover alone. The main plot twist is poorly builded and from there everything is linear until the rushed end.
Not only that, chapter 4 introduces a new mechanic that simply remove any tension from any conversation. These’re the biggest fails in The Council, in the end you will fell like a puppet more than a agent driving the events of the game. While I was hoping for the moment “Colonel Mustard in the Kitchen with the revolver”, the game become something new, in wrong ways, and everything else looks like decoys. Is the perfect definition of anti-climax.
Is that for you? Veredict.
The Council do some great things when dealing with the challenge of make a “conversation” something more playable. There’re some awesome puzzles. The voice actors did a great job and I love stories set on the victorian age. The visual design are simple but good. The manor and the paintings are awesome and it’s like visit a art galery, be prepare to learn a lot of things about art while exploring Lord Mortimer’s humble castle.
The game design could be better with more freedom and rewarding exploration, as some of the sections in the manor are closed depending on the quest, the loading times for every door and stairs doesn’t help either, so the player may lose the eager to do opcional exploration.
The main plot twist may not please everyone because some things in the game will lose meaning. If you don’t like to read and does not have patience for long dialogues, The Council may not be a game for you. The pacing may be slow and if you’re not really interest in the characters and the plot, you’ll quickly get bored with the repetition, as the only real challenge here are some puzzles, but the puzzles are amazing.
8/10 game design, 6/10 story
The RPG and puzzles are excelent in this modern era adventure game, making a conversation something little more challenger and puzzle solutions more rewarding. The story will certainly hook you in the early chapters but the plot twist feels out of the place, changing not only the story but also creating mechanics that hurts the gameplay, it’s hard to tell if you’ll like it or not because the game experience is heavily dependent on how much you’ll like the story and it main plot-twist.
Adventure Game
10–12 hours to beat
No difficulty settings
RPG skills mechanics
Big Bad Wolf ( http://www.bigbadwolf-studio.com/)
Focus Home Interactive ( https://www.focus-home.com/)
