~ Review ~
As an adventure game novice, I didn't really know where to start. Point and click games? A new Monkey Island did just come out, after all. Visual novels? I listened to an excellent podcast about the best of those. I'd enjoyed a couple of walking sims, but wasn't sure how much more that particular subgenre had to offer. The thing is, adventure games have a tendency to cross-breed. They are rarely what you'd call 'pure'. It makes little sense to pursue one subgenre or another when most games are a mash-up of different mechanics and styles. It makes more sense to pick out specific characteristics - for example, The Stanley Parable's sense of humour or the vignette structure of What Remains of Edith Finch. But how to collate such different qualities into something that helps me discover more adventure games? Over Christmas I took a punt on Danganronpa, a mix of visual novel, dating sim and detective game. If I had to call it one thing, I'd say sleuth-'em-up. It's a series of whodunnits interspersed with social sections, in which you get to know the other characters. Investigating, conversing and building relationships all take relatively typical forms - the uniqueness is found in the trials. This is where I found myself shooting clues in the form of "Truth Bullets" at witness statements and breaking down defences in a rhythm shooter. Pretty wild ideas! It was easy to identify the specific characteristic of Dangonronpa that I loved the most, which made me realise something. My way into adventure games isn't via a certain kind of gameplay feature, it's via novelty itself - unusual and imaginative mechanics. Searching for novelty not only provides a way into adventure games but also broadens my experience of what video games are capable of representing. Enter The Council.
I learned that Big Bad Wolf Studio's debut would be leaving PS Plus in January. Its not a game to which I'd paid any heed but I was aware of their follow up, Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong. Both games are narrative and investigative adventures. (That's right, more sleuth-'em-ups.) Your dialogue and action choices shape the story as well as your character (to an extent). Both games feature a unique system that underpins those choices: effort points. Perfectly suiting my quest for novelty, effort points are the key to The Council. When extrapolated, they tell some quite funny stories about the protagonist. But first, let's set the scene. The year is 1793. Louis de Richer is a member of an occult secret society known as the Golden Order. In a brief prologue, Louis and his mother Sarah are introduced as renaissance-era espionage aristocrats. Jumping forward, Sarah has gone missing while visiting the mysterious luminary of geopolitics, Lord Mortimer. Louis is invited to Mortimer's private island along with a number of real-life figures such as George Washington (also a member of the Golden Order) and Napoléon Bonaparte as well as fictional characters such as the exaggeratedly corseted Emily Hillsborrow. As head of the French branch of the Golden Order, Louis' mother has personal histories with almost all the NPCs, which Louis uncovers during his stay at Lord Mortimer's opulent house. He may forge alliances or cultivate animosity, intentionally or through Confrontations. Confrontations are the battlefields of The Council, on which you must fight with all your effort. Effort points, that is. Louis begins the game with seven effort points. He also has a skill tree, broken down into three classes: Diplomat, Detective and Occultist. You chose one at the outset, which gives you a head start in those skills. When a skill reaches level 1, it unlocks dialogue and actions related to it. For example, your Etiquette skill grants you access to polite and deferential responses, whilst your Linguistics skill enables you to translate found items or heard speech. The twist is that all actions and responses that use a skill require a certain number of effort points.
Here's where we can enjoy the stories the game tells with its effort points system. Louis might be a natural when it comes to detection, which means he can Question (skill) a servant to uncover more about his mother's disappearance. Natural or not, that still took a fair effort. Phew! He might then use his skill in Psychology to turn Emily Hillsborrow's inquiry back on her, before attempting to corner her with Logic. And with those three choices, Louis is exhausted. No effort (point) remains in our over-exerted hero. Later, he shall need to recuperate (perhaps by eating some honey, which restores effort points) in order to recall a Greek Myth (Erudition), or examine some chocolate peanuts (Science). However silly this system might sound, it's arguably a pretty reasonable reflection of the requisite effort of living. In any day of mine, it does indeed require effort to communicate, to engage in discussion, to remember stuff and yes, to examine chocolate peanuts (should the need arise). Representing interaction in this way is neat, thoughtful and kinda funny. Representing conversation and disputes as dynamic systems, on the other hand, is always tricky business, especially when win/lose states are included. The Council is full of reactive dialogue but the stakes are highest during Confrontations. Skills and effort points are in play as well as immunities and vulnerabilities unique to each NPC. You are permitted a certain number of blunders - use them up and you fail that Confrontation. This can result in the game's most incoherent exchanges in which a success-blunder-success pattern can elicit rather unconvincing, pendulous reactions. Someone will soften to your defence, before spinning on their heel and showering Louis in vitriol, before finally deciding that actually Louis, you're a fine chap - forgive my indiscretion! Luckily, these moments are never too egregious. For the most part, Big Bad Wolf have done an outstanding job of accounting for the huge number of narrative branches whilst keeping the story feeling whole and NPCs acting coherently (even in spite of one's best role-playing sabotage). Seeds of friendship or animosity sown in earlier encounters usually mete out consequences down the line (or else you are left wondering) and there is a constant sense that Louis is caught in the middle of a mystery. Try as you may, this is not a game in which you will follow a linear path of success.
The very fact that failure is never the end is perhaps The Council's crowning achievement. I made several choices throughout the game that I either regretted or felt deeply unsure about for a long time after. Sometimes, I acted in haste. Other times, I had all the information but I used it incorrectly. There was only one (rather significant, Episode 3) puzzle that felt unfair. The challenges presented are not straightforward and require you to spread your attention across multiple systems. After one or two episodes, managing resources and using them appropriately - to replenish effort points, reveal vulnerabilities or cure negative ailments - becomes natural. Importantly though, it's not a system that lends itself to min/maxing - it's unlike other games that prefer you to continuously grow in power. The Council wants you to feel like you are in collaboration with its storytelling, losses and shortcomings included. Choices that regard preference or opinion (rather than challenge) are satisfying in their ambiguity. The moral choice is never easy to spot, for example, and the ramifications of your decisions are skilfully concealed. These too, often left me agonising for some time after. You may find yourself tempted by a second playthrough if only because your choices locked you out of alternative (fully animated and voiced) cutscenes. There are detailed aspects of each character that you know you missed. Once you begin making poor decisions you can't take back, Louis begins to reflect your imperfect play in a way a more developed protagonist never could. There are aspects of him too that you will never express in one playthrough. The downsides to this are that the base Louis is irritatingly plain and that, as you make more choices, he will invariably lack consistency. For these sins he remains the least gratifying character. I'm interested to see how the developers handle three protagonists over a larger game in Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong.
The rest of the cast are much more colourful and all grew on me, especially once they start bouncing off each other in later episodes. Their personalities are introduced and then brought to bear on a variety of topics. It is bold to push so heavily into the realms of hand-wringing diplomacy of alt-history but it is a gambit that pays off. Hearing George Washington demure about the issue of slavery whilst the cardinal defends the practice is thought-provoking and feels like well-researched insight despite the more occult and conspiratorial aspects of the plot. Unfortunately, two characters are problematic. Emily Hillsborrow betrays a glaring misogyny by being consistently underdressed in order to set her up as Louis' potential romance. Elizabeth Adams' storyline does not do any favours for the presentation of mental illness, veering from genuinely upsetting mistreatment to somewhat justified vilification. The story holds a substantial twist, which could be divisive. Personally, I was impressed that despite the tonal pivot it avoided undermining the political machinations that had thusfar defined the plot. It does provide the final episodes with a sense of escalation, which is useful in expanding the scope of gameplay, although the narrative still struggles to find scale or spectacle with which to conclude. The Council was probably best enjoyed in 2018, when it was released in instalments, one episode every 2 months. When played continuously, it can feel like a lot of backtracking. The value of resources is always apparent and their relative scarcity means exploration is generally rewarding. Every episode, a few new items crop up in previously visited locations. To get the most out of The Council, it's worth leaning into resource management in order to use them more judiciously, which does mean backtracking. Again, I'm interested to see how this changes in Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong, which was not released episodically. The novelty of effort points may not be as wild as the trials of Dangonronpa, but it certainly allowed Big Bad Wolf to flex their muscles. It is a system that certainly opened the gates for me. Navigating the reactive story of The Council is interesting and rich. Managing Louis' effort and skill is gratifying to learn and sometimes funny in practice. There is certainly room for development (a truism for reactive storytelling, admittedly) and characterisation that could be fortified with more nuance. There is, however, so much to love here that I am incredibly excited to move on to the next game from this talented studio.
