Tag: The Council

The Council: Finale

Izlain

Earlier in the month, developer Big Bad Wolf released its final episode of The Council. “Checkmate” picks up where the prior one left off, in which you had found out that you yourself were related to Lord Mortimer, and as a result, a Daemon too. Definitely an interesting turn of events, and in this final showing things go from interesting to downright weird.

As the episodes before it, the series has continued with the narrative adventure style game play. You’ll run about the island and solve puzzles while having confrontations with various guests. As a “choices matter” style of game, it’s clear that there are multiple endings and various things that occur throughout the episodes might be different for you than they were for me. For instance, I never had an issue with one of the puzzles in an earlier episode, so I retained both of my hands, but watching some other videos of the game made it clear that you could indeed lose your hand if you had guessed wrong. There was also a bit where you had to choose a spear during a puzzle, and it was revealed that I had chosen correctly. Various people can die, and in my case, there were a handful of them that did. The result most likely changes only minor details, but the ending was most assuredly altered on my path.

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I failed one of the confrontations during this episode, and if memory serves me, I hadn’t failed one prior to this. The Cardinal proved to be a worthy adversary, but it did little to effect the rest of the episode. I was sent to go ahead and try to convince anyone who was going to vote against Mortimer (thereby stopping the Louisiana purchase by America) to change their minds, and he was the only one who resisted. There were some annoying puzzles this time around as well, and a trip into “the Ether” which took the game from a normal political romp into a supernatural realm that I didn’t capture here in screen shots. Once all was said and done though, we killed off Mortimer’s brother (Sir Holm) and then Mortimer turned on me as well. You can see my results of each chapter below:

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I didn’t see that coming. Being Lord Mortimer’s son and gaining some supernatural powers seemed pretty awesome, and though Holm said with his dying breath that Mortimer was mad and that I would turn out just like him, I didn’t realize what he meant until after the conference. It turns out being just like him was more like being him. He told me about how I was his chosen one and that I was one of the best children he had ever had, but this also meant that he had chosen me to be his new body, as he says he only changes bodies via his own children. This didn’t really mean that I lost anything though, as the game simply ended and I was presented with a little epilogue about the remaining surviving members of the Council:

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It doesn’t seem that much detail was put into this section, we’re just told that each person goes back to their home countries and does things that would be fairly historically accurate. The only entirely fictional character is Mortimer himself, and we just learn that nothing is heard from him again, but in my case that means that he took over my body and that would explain why no one knows what happened to him. Whatever the case it was an enjoyable romp through historical events, and I rather enjoyed it. It set itself apart from series that TellTale have made, and I hope to see them create something else in the future. I’d take a second season where you can see what happened to you (Mortimer) and where your choices in this season affected the next. I’d also take a whole new game series. Since we know that TellTale is defunct, I need someone else to give me this style of game as I do enjoy them. They’re relaxing and don’t require twitch skills to run through. I also enjoy the episodic nature where you get to play a game like this throughout the year a little bit at a time.

Anyway, I’d recommend it if these sorts of games are up your alley. I’m sure the complete edition will be around soon and likely will go on sale during Winter events so keep an eye out for that.

The Council: Episode 4

Izlain

The other narrative adventure game that I’ve been playing for the last few months is The Council. Episode four of this five part series released last week and I played through it a few days ago. With this particular title, there is no such thing as action, just a bunch of running around this island manor and discussing things or solving puzzles. It’s more about the political intrigue than anything else, or at least it was up until this episode. Before I go any further, this post will be spoiler heavy so avoid it if you’re still playing through.

You’ve found your mother and she has discovered that the spear that pierced Christ’s side by a Roman soldier hidden in the catacombs below the manor. You had opened this new section during the last puzzle of episode three, the same puzzle that cut off your mother’s hand. She also reveals to you that Mortimer is a Daemon. This Council of men is actually headed by a Daemon who is trying to sway humanity’s fate. An interesting twist, and a new take on history and the supernatural. Something that is almost believable given the current political climate of my country. But I digress.

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Your mother sends you on the mission to figure out which spearhead is the correct one, and there are an assortment of clues you’ll need to find around the island. I’m unsure if you have to be correct with this choice, or if it will only allow you to pick the correct one. I cheated a little because I knew I would be annoyed with the running around for these clues, so I looked up the answer and picked what the general consensus was online. As such, it shows that I failed to find them all in that chapter’s summary which you’ll see below. People in the comments on one post I was reading were saying that the story takes a turn after this, and some people even quit when they got to the twist. Having finished the episode myself, I can say that picking the spear I chose didn’t affect anything in this episode, but I also believe that it won’t make a difference until the finale. So are you ready for the big twist?

You’re a Daemon too! Mortimer is your father, and Sarah isn’t really your mother. She’s technically your sister, as she is also Mortimer’s daughter. Obviously you’re a little taken aback by this. The other face painted gentleman is also his brother, your uncle. Mortimer reveals that Daemons have been around for centuries, and that there are several families that still exist, but yours is the most powerful, hence this whole council thing. He wants to sway the countries of the world towards democracy, yet your Uncle believes monarchies are easier to control. However, Daemons aren’t supposed to outright control humans, yet Mortimer teaches you how to read thoughts and later how to possess bodies, which they call “envelopes.”

I’m skipping over much of the plot here, but that was enough to make me much more intrigued by the whole thing. You have various confrontations with the cardinal (including possessing him to forge a letter), Napoleon (he believes you’ve stolen something — it’s the spearhead) and Emily/Sarah (turns out I got the real Emily shot and her sister wanted to kill Sarah — I also got pissed at Sarah for hiding so many truths from me and somehow made a selection where I killed her). Here are my results from the chapters:

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It appears that the story will conclude in episode five but I have no idea where its going to go now. I look forward to finding out.

The Council: Episode 3

Izlain

The third episode of The Council released this past week and I missed the announcement, but managed to get it installed and completed by yesterday afternoon. Picking up right where the prior season left off, we have entered the catacombs in search of our main character’s mother. She ends up not being around, but one of Mortimer’s henchmen has been killed. President Washington finds you with the dead body and for whatever reason doesn’t immediately believe you to be the murderer, but wants you to attend the big meeting the entire story is centered upon, since your mother is still missing. Here’s where the meat and potatoes of the episode gets going.

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Without being too spoilery, the meeting starts off with a fairly split group and only a few days to reach a conclusion via vote. You’re tasked with swaying some of the members’ votes, and then things go from bad to worse. A couple of main characters die. You finally find your mother. The supernatural is brought into question and sort of threw me for a loop. See, I was enjoying the fact that this was a political drama and though there are many religious and mythological references throughout, it was still seated in reality. It’s reminiscent of films such as The Da Vinci Code. At a certain point in my playthrough, supernatural forces are revealed to be at work (or perhaps the character making this revelation has gone mad) and this nearly lost me. I’m still suspending my disbelief, but I think the political intrigue and mystery elements were enough without introducing “demons” as a motivating factor for bad things to happen. How 18th century. Nonetheless, I’ll save my judgement for now because perhaps the person talking about demons is just crazy and we can get back to a more realistic viewpoint of the game. Here are my results through the next three chapters:

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Overall I’m still enjoying this narrative adventure. Again, I’ll save my judgement until I can judge the series as a whole, but I do hope that it steers away from the lazy, supernatural answers it posed to give during episode three. Time will tell.

The Council: Episode 2

Izlain

The second episode of The Council released last Tuesday, and I managed to complete it over the weekend. Fair warning, there will be some spoilers in this post, so if you’re playing the game you might want to see things through before reading on.

Similar to the first episode, you’ll run around as Mr. De Richet still looking for clues as to your mother’s whereabouts, and performing various tasks in the interim. During the course of this episode however, some bad things are afoot, and your detective skills will come into play. We finally meet the owner of the island manor, and the final guest (the leader of Spain) arrives. One of the women you met in the first episode is brutally murdered, and what appears to be some sort of pagan or satanic ritual has transpired. You are charged with finding out who killed her, and at one point are able to give your opinion as to who might have done it. I threw one guy under the bus, only to need his help in getting out of a locked room later on. Further clues seem to point towards your mother’s involvement with thing going on around the island.

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The gameplay is identical to the first episode, though my play through featured less confrontations during dialogue. Most of my time was spent examining the crime scene, questioning guests, and exploring the manor, including a portion of the exterior (garden) all the while picking up consumables and books to earn skill points, along with solving a number of different puzzles. At the very end of the episode, I had just opened an underground passage leading under the garden hedge maze, where I found the body of one of the manor’s servants. A cliffhanger ending, we’ll have to wait a while to see what happens next. Here were my results from the three quests in the episode:

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Overall I still really enjoy this game. It’s a little slow paced, but it is engaging in a way that most games aren’t these days. I look forward to the next episode!

The Council: Episode 1

Izlain

I didn’t hear about The Council while it was in development. I didn’t even know it had released, but spotted it on the Playstation Store recently, and was intrigued by this lead photo. Clearly there are some historically impactful people in that picture, and I was interested to see what it had to offer. The description of the game led me to believe that it was a “choices matter” style of narrative adventure, and this is what you can expect. You could point to similarities between this title and the variety of Telltale Games’ well-known series, but honestly it’s more akin to Monkey Island than any of their recent titles. Still, it can be said that if you enjoy Telltale’s narrative style you will probably enjoy this game and  your choices do matter. However there is a bit of depth added to this game that wasn’t present in many of TTG’s. First of all, you’re given the ability to choose a class:

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I rolled with becoming an Occultist because it sounds rad, and honestly it doesn’t really matter which one you choose due to the fact that your gameplay (choices) can open up the other options. Furthermore, you’re presented with a set of skills based on your class, all that will start at level 1. You can further level these skills using points granted to you as you gain experience. Different actions you take within the game accrue this experience, and it is given to you when you complete “quests.” These are quests as you would think of them in the RPG sense, because you are only walking around from room to room scavenging for clues and having the periodic conversation with the other characters. But things are tallied up at the end of these quests and you’ll gain more points to acquire more skills. Some can be later unlocked by reading books and performing actions so then you can put your leveling points into those as well to open further actions and dialogue options. The game will point out when you lack a certain skill and you’ll know that you’ve missed a certain path that could have been taken if you had it.

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There are parts that require your attention, such as puzzles and conversational battles of wits. Confrontations only allow you to make so many mistakes, and your dialogue options will change as your skills do. You have an effort bar that will be used to perform certain actions or use dialogue options that pertain to skills and there are consumables to refill this bar (and remove negative conversational effects). I guess this is starting to feel more like an RPG after all! Opportunities are more like the QTE’s you’d be familiar with from Telltale games. They do help you on your way though so you should be paying attention while you play this game.

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At the end of your missions, aside from gaining XP and being able to spend your points, you’ll also get a breakdown of ways you succeeded and ways that you failed during that quest. Alternative pathways are also presented, presuming you’d want to play through another time. I was halfway tempted once I saw the trophy list, as many of the achievements will require additional playthroughs, but I believe I’ll wait until I’ve played through the additional episodes. It’s an intriguing political romp, where you’re rubbing elbows with the people who rule the world in their day and age. I won’t spoil anything as this is a fairly new title, but it was very enjoyable and I look forward to more! It’s unclear at this point as to when episode 2 will release, but if we typically expect episodic content at a fairly rapid clip I expect you’ll hear more about it from me within a couple of months. The Council is also available on Steam.