Summary: 1.0/5.0
The Council is an episodic choice-driven narrative game that integrates RPG elements, such as XP, leveling, and a skill tree, and even divides the episode into quests to maximize opportunities for allocating points to various skills. The Council takes place on an island where a wealth eccentric has gathered influential figures (George Washington, Napoleon, etc.) for a conference to discuss global politics. The protagonist Louis has joined the other guests in search of his mother, who disappeared from the island in the days leading up to the conference.
Genre: Narrative Adventure / RPG
Platform: PS4 (Also available on XB1 & PC)
Developer: Big Bad Wolf
Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
Release Dates: March 13, 2018 (Episode 1) - December 4, 2018 (Episode 5)
The Council was interesting but unimpressive in its first episode. I was cautiously optimistic, and even hopeful that the game would improve as the subsequent episodes were released. Unfortunately, the flaws from the first episode continue and even worsen throughout the episodes, and even bigger flaws are introduced.
Narrative
The premise of this game would have been sufficient all on its own. However, in episode 3, the game introduces an absurd supernatural element that is thoroughly unnecessary. We eventually find out that Louis is a daemon. And so is… almost everyone. It’s ridiculous, and the audience shouldn’t accept it nearly as easily as Louis seems to. (Seriously, when a hundreds-year old daemon asks you to join him, you just say “okay”?! Be more skeptical, Louis!) The dialogue refers to the “natural charismatic presence” of Louis, which is laughable, even in episode 5 I had no investment in his character. The game continues to fail in generating any interest in learning about my daemon self or the plot in general after this “twist.”
In the final confrontation of the game, a previously deceased (?) character rejoins the team, in the body of a character with no facial animation (how convenient). However, they have absolutely no participation in the end sequence, even if you abandoned them and they threatened to kill you. I guess they forgave Louis in the mere hours leading up to this confrontation? Speaking of which, the characters who initiate the confrontation decide that since they’ve all been conscious of their daemon abilities for all of 1 day, they’re equipped to take down a 600-year-old daemon figurehead? And somehow, they are? And then the end credits roll and suddenly we’re reminded that this started as a historical fiction game by a string of “where are they now” snippets for the historical figures who have been mostly absent for the entire second half of the game.
Mechanics
The RPG mechanics in this game are the only redeeming component, and even those aren’t fully developed. I seemed to run out of manuscripts around episode 3, and wasn’t able to find any more. In addition, any illusion of choice in the first few episodes is totally dropped. The game feels completely on the rails. I don’t feel as though my actions as the player have any impact on the environment. I don’t feel any desire to carefully make the right decision, because it doesn’t seem like there are wrong decisions or consequences. Even when Louis loses his hand, many characters don’t acknowledge the bloody bandage. Any pressure to make the right decision comes from dialogue (more specifically Louis’s inner dialogue), and it all feels very forced. And then, just when you’ve mentally strangled Louis after FINALLY making it out of the hedge maze for the millionth time, the game adds new mechanics to supplement the absolutely absurd plot change. It feels as though the team decided the game wasn’t getting enough attention for the narrative RPG elements, so in the later episodes they started adding brand new mechanics, without giving the player a proper opportunity to use them. We learn that Louis has the ability to possess humans, but the game doesn’t really give the player agency in executing this power, which is extremely frustrating.
Technical
Unfortunately, the technical issues from the first episode were still present, if not worse, by the end of the game. I kept missing the hotspot to go up and down stairs. When I tried to pause to take a phone call, it skipped the cutscene and I missed the next objective. There were times where characters were speaking but their facial animations were frozen. At one point Louis was just tangled up in a knot on the floor during a cutscene. Transitions to cutscenes were abrupt, and each time Louis left a room, the camera rotated until it was in the most inconvenient position and I had to rotate it all the way back around so I could see where I was walking. I noticed increased audio skipping and environment clipping. I usually try to be fairly forgiving with technical issues if the content is satisfactory, but these technical issues interfered so significantly with gameplay, and some of the technical frustrations were deliberate choices. For example, when decoding a series of letters, the player is forced to listen to the same “instructional” dialogue each and every time. By the end of episode 3, I could not wait for the experience to be over with.
Conclusion
This game was ambitious from the start. Ambition can be a great way to differentiate a new game from predecessors in the same genre. However, some constraint is still required, and in this case, ambition may have caused the game’s failure. There are so many under-developed concepts in this game, it feels like a group project with no clear leadership or defined creative direction. Any one of the concepts in The Council could have been a sufficient premise for a successful game with full commitment — the narrative RPG, the historical secret society, the daemon possessions, the political conspiracy, the missing person investigation… but all of them together goes beyond keeping the player interested, and instead destroys the cohesion of the game altogether. Overall, The Council becomes increasingly disappointing with each episode, as more promising elements are introduced but not fully executed.
