3.5/5 ★ – DaysposableHero's review of The Council.

What's the difference between a B-game and a bad game? Are they the same thing? Are B-movies just bad movies? If we're going to call major releases - those big budget, super polished games the industry marks its calendar by - "Triple-A", then it’s a long way down to "B". Unless “AAA” is a product grade, and “B” is about intent and presentation. I just finished The Council. It might be bad, but I kinda liked it. What's up with that? If I liked it, does that mean it isn't bad? In The Council, you play as Louis de Richet – a French socialite in the late 18th century. As a member of a Parisian secret society calling itself the Golden Order, you’ve been summoned to a private island off the English coast. Nominally, you are there to find your mother, Sarah, who went missing on the island some time ago. However, your arrival coincides with a conference of the major power brokers in the western world at the time - a loose affiliation of nobles and statesmen from the high societies of England, France, Germany, Spain, the United States, and even the Catholic Church. Why are they there? What is this conference about? What happened to your mother? How are these things related? The answers to these questions are what you – Louis – spend the majority of the game uncovering. I must admit that, in its measurable qualities, The Council falls significantly short of what we’ve come to expect from our modern games. The controls are sometimes frustrating. Louis moves slowly, unless you hold down or toggle the run button. And then he moves at a leisurely jogging pace. While perhaps fitting for the character and circumstance, it makes traversing the halls of the mansion where the game takes place a real chore. And traverse those halls you will. Extensively. The amount of backtracking is tedious. Almost the entirety of the game takes place in the mansion of Lord William Mortimer, an English aristocrat. You will be going back and forth between guest rooms, salons, parlors, Lord Mortimer’s office and a couple of other locations on the estate grounds. I found myself becoming impatient with Louis’ generally unhurried pace, as often I just needed to get to the other side of the first floor chambers. But I knew that it would take likely a full minute to arrive, as I would have to sit through several empty corridors and multiple loading doors. And, uggh, the staircases! I would walk through the transition prompt to go between floors probably half the time, and I’d have to back up and try a second time to enter. Louis de Richet is baffled by staircases. The voice acting is bad and the script is even worse. Characters take actions that make no sense whatsoever, and major world-shattering revelations are dropped and then immediately forgotten about. I don’t want to spoil any specifics, as these revelations are core to what the game is, but on more than one occasion I found myself thinking “What? That’s what we’re doing now? Well, okay, guess I’m along for the ride.” I think I might can blame some of this on the French translation. The words the characters say and the subtitles on the screen don’t always match. This tells me that the script was translated, and then the voice director made some vocal edits for clarity, probably. That’s nice, but then they never went back and matched the subtitles to the vocal performance. I assume that was for budgetary reasons, but it does pull me out of the moment when it becomes obvious. And there’s absolutely no consistency with the accents. The cast of characters come from all over Europe, but their accents seem to have been raised independently of the person to whom they belong. There are at least four French characters, and in the English voice cast, only one of them is speaking with a French accent. Including when they’re speaking privately to each other. It’s weird. Either all the French people should have a French accent when speaking English, or none of them. But inconsistency is the worst of both worlds. That’s quite a lot of words excoriating a game that, if the score is anything to go by, I actually liked. And I did like this game. I found the core mechanics of the game fascinating. The Council might be best described as a “social RPG.” As in, there is no combat to speak of. All of your character’s traits and skills are geared toward knowledge, investigation, and social interaction. At the outset of the game you choose one of three character “classes”: Diplomat, Occusltist, or Detective, each with its own set of skills. The Diplomat, for example, has an advantage in Politics and Etiquette, the Occultist favors Science and Subterfuge, while the Detective gains points in skills such as Investigation and Questioning. This choice doesn’t lock you out of the other skills, but rather it makes the skills in your chosen discipline easier to acquire. Almost all of the gameplay consists of conversations and social interactions with various characters. You will have opportunities to apply your chosen skills throughout. A character with points invested in Science might be able to determine the composition of a mysterious powder, while a character strong in Languages might be able to translate an ancient occult tablet. Who your allies and enemies are throughout the game, as well as which aspects of the proceedings you are able to influence are highly dependent on which of these skills you develop, and how you choose to implement them. This system is very robust and well implemented. Which is good, as it serves as the backbone for the entire narrative adventure. I found tantalizing bits of information using the skills I had developed, and I was able to see where other information was blocked from me because I lacked the appropriate skill level to uncover it. The Council does a good job of tailoring its encounters to your playstyle. I have no doubt, after seeing the system implemented, that I could have made drastically different choices and seen entirely another side to the story. Ultimately, the parts of The Council that I enjoyed outweighed the parts I found frustrating or absurd. While not an especially well polished or mechanically sound game, The Council has some fascinating ideas about narrative gameplay, and I hope that other games can build on what The Council has done.