The Council

Developed by a French studio called Big Bad Wolf, The Council is a 5-episode third person mystery adventure game set in 1793. You play as Louis de Richet, a member of the Golden Order, a secret organization interested in the occult and such. You have been invited to the private island of enigmatic Lord Mortimer somewhere off the coast of England: your mother Sarah de Richet -- also a member of the Order -- has gone missing.

At the location you discover that there are other guests, some prominent people of history such as George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte. Your invitation may have been about more than just finding where your mother is hiding...

A detective game with a lot of potential

The Council's premise certainly is intriguing. There is a lot of mystery and weird stuff going on. Your investigation is aided by a seemingly broad skill system that you get to utilize in dialogue, exploration, and puzzles.

At the start of the game you choose one of three classes that each govern a third of the game's skills. The chosen class's -- Diplomat, Detective, or Occultist -- skills begin at rank 1 (which allows their usage) and makes the following ranks cost fewer points to upgrade. Rank 2 in a skill reduces its effort cost and rank 3 makes it free to use.

Early on you will inexorably miss on dialogue choice etc. but eventually, by spreading your points around, nothing is barred from you, even if it might cost many effort points. And I don't think rank 3 is worth to rush for any skill -- it costs so many points and it's just one skill among many.

There are consumables to restore your effort and even to make the next skill use free. There are also perks unlocked by your choices, and between quests you get to read books you've found for additional skill points.

Choices matter (not)

I was enjoying the game but somewhere around episode 3, The Council starts falling apart, both mechanically and narratively. The starting class choice became pointless as I could make every skill check, exploit every vulnerability I wanted no matter the cost. I was constantly topped off on consumables to restore effort points and remove debuffs. There may simply be too many items scattered about the mansion.

Then again, not every player keeps searching every corner like I do -- or looks up at bookshelves: there are often items stashed away at the top (usually requiring an agility skill check to grab). My constant foraging also netted me with a bunch of collectible coins whose only purpose appeared to be to increase the number of coins found. There isn't even an achievement tied to them. Why are the coins a thing?

There's also an extra dialogue ability introduced late into the game. However, instead of making things more interesting, it just feels superfluous. I suppose its purpose was to tie the unfolding narrative to gameplay but it felt an unnecessary addition on top of the skills.

Your decisions throughout the game tend to matter very little. You'd think something like saving a character from dying would make a huge difference but then they get removed from the game regardless. I bet you could stumble through The Council making all kinds of worst possible choices until the final episode and still get the best possible ending. In fact I'm pretty sure that is the case.

According to the quest summaries I missed a thing or two every now and then but that appeared to change barely anything. One thing I failed big time on was getting on the good side of Ms. Hillsborrow. That resulted the game's big council decision not going the way I wanted. Even that didn't matter a single bit however: the narrative continues the same way regardless of what happened. That is disappointing and off-putting too because I was abruptly just flipped to play for the other team with no questions asked.

Along the way there had been a couple of other instances where my choices hadn't been properly considered. Like referring to an event I definitely had missed.

I wonder how much of an effect the writers thought all the little revelations towards the end should have. Different characters revealing that they're actually related to Louis and I'm there thinking that these twists don't actually change anything. Would've been better to leave them out, I feel.

And why are there no global decision stats like in Telltale's games? I feel like those are a must-have in episodic, decision-heavy titles like The Council.

Divisive presentation

About The Council's voice acting I've seen a number of negative comments but I personally found no big faults in it. Music is undeniably of good quality however. Olivier Deriviere (Remember Me, A Plague Tale: Innocence, GreedFall etc.) seems to be the go-to-composer for French game studios.

The game's visual representation can be, I'd say almost revolting when it comes to the characters. The style brings to mind like stop-motion puppets or something. They don't look proper humans. It must have been an intentional decision; I don't think the developers could have failed that badly at modelling and texturing them. It certainly gives them a distinct look but just isn't very pleasing to look at. I got used it pretty soon though.

Otherwise The Council's visuals are more than adequate. Well, anti-aliasing could be better, but the environments are highly detailed. The game engine however seemed to be a mess. Graphics options menu doesn't really exist and the game ran at a stable 42 FPS according to Steam's counter -- a curious number for sure. It may be related to vsync: the in-game option doesn't work and I had to try few different ones on Nvidia control panel to get the framerate above 42. (I think it was the fast setting that did the trick.) It seemed to have no actual effect however; the game still appeared to run at 42 despite the counter reporting it being way past it.

Big Bad Wolf had Cyanide Studio collaborating with them on the technical side. Looking at the game's files, it appears that The Council uses some custom engine by the latter, which is odd: the two Cyanide games I have played (the Styx ones) both use Unreal Engine. Thankfully that is what Big Bad Wolf evidently decided to use on their next project too. I seriously hope they can pull that off.

A Council style game set in Vampire: The Masquerade's world sounds like a perfect match and Swansong's trailer at least looks cool but of course doesn't show the actual game. But with the depth of the setting and its systems, Swansong will be at least interesting if nothing else. I'd imagine this kind of choices-matter game is hard to balance. Staying with nothing ultimately matters is tempting because the other end of the scale is a massive undertaking where every decision branches the game more and more. There must be a good balance somewhere in the middle though. Where you get distinctly different playthroughs yet the scope doesn't get silly wide.