it's in the mid range games where you'll see a lot of interesting ideas and experimentation that you'd hope to see more of. a lot of interesting mechanics here, with the skill checks turning this visual novel esque game into a sort of rpg, where your character's abilities matter.
the story starts strong, and the voice acting is pretty solid. however, as is to be expected, full 3d facial animations from a small studio can't do the proper job of delivering the emotions you hear, and that breaks the immersion. also, as is the case in these types of games, a few paths of dialogue aren't as well connected, and thus some information just comes out of left field or your character reacts in a way that is just unexpected. most of the choices you make are somewhat relevant to the way the story unfolded, but, upon a deeper look, a lot of the events are fixed and there are very few possible conclusions, despite the wide array of choices.
i also didn't enjoy the final twists, even though they were not unreasonable. i feel like this game showed promise and structure that would make me curious for a sequel, spin off or whatever by the studio.

Kujme pikle, kujme pikle, obvyklé i neobvyklé. Co zaujme/odradí na první pohled, je stylizace obličejů do protáhnutých dekadentních grimas. Hned na ten druhý, že se autoři snaží adresovat problémy "Telltale like" adventurně-interaktivních seriálů. Nejsou první; zkoušeli to mnozí, nejčastěji skrze posílení adventurní složky. Zde na to však jdou od lesa; respektive od Quest for Glory syžetu. Zapracovávají RPG prvky, které přímo ovlivňují "jak to budete hrát a jak se budete dostávat k informacím". Navíc je zde značná volnost v tom, co jak řešit čili je to plné rozhodnutí a cest, které přímo ovlivňují dění. Nevýhodou tohoto přístupu je, že klasické adventurní prvky v podobě puzzlů, inventáře, předmětů apod. takřka zcela absentují a nahrazuje je "inventář znalostí". Co o kom víte, co na něj víte, co od něj vědět chcete. Postupně si doplňujete jaká agenda danou postavu zajímá, na co slyší, co chce prosadit, co skrývá a přes co u ní nejede vlak. Dle toho pak upravujete přístup k ní, abyste dosáhli kýženého výsledku.

K tomu vám slouží dovednosti a talenty. Ve stylu Quest for Glory si na počátku vyberete povolání diplomat/detektiv/okultista, které vám dá výhody v jednotlivých liniích. Získané zkušenostní body můžete udělat kam jen chcete, ale musíte mít na paměti, že není dobré umět od všeho něco. Právě dovednosti a jejich úroveň určují, co je vám umožněno. Jste-li zruční v páčení zámků, tak se můžete dostat do truhly, kde najdete černou perlu. Akorát nevíte k čemu slouží čili ji můžete zkoušet na blind ukazovat což se vám může vyplatit i nevyplatit. Pokud se vyznáte v okultismu, tak můžete na někom černou perlu zahlédnout a víte, že je příslušníkem řádu XY čili to v konverzaci můžete využít, ale zase se nemůžete danou perlou prokázat.

Abyste pouze neexploitovali vylevelované dovednosti, tak tvůrci přišli se systémem „akčních bodů“, se kterým se inspirovali na poli papírových RPGček. Máte zásobu několika mála bodů a je na vás, jak s ní naložíte. Naleznete knihu v latině, pokud nemáte příslušnou dovednost, tak si ani neškrtnete. Ovšem i pokud ji máte, tak to neznamená, že z ní informace vydolujete. Může jít o obtížnost vyšší než na jaké danou schopnost máte čili by vás to stálo příliš bodů. Je jen na vás, zda je chcete obětovat, protože i případná zjištěná informace může být k ničemu. Za body se tu dělá skoro vše čili musíte prioritizovat. Je způsob jak je navyšovat, doplňovat (či přebít), ale ani tak to nestačí na vykonání všeho. Doplňování skrze lektvary sebou hrozí předávkováním, které vám znemožní přehlednější quicktime efekty, při nezdařilém „výslechu“ si bod na čas zablokujete. Mechanik a pravidel kolem bodů je pěkných pár a zpočátku mohou působit zmatečně. Ovšem sedne si to a jde o vynikající, jakkoli mechanický a otrocký, způsob zakomponování RPG prvků do žánru, kde nejsou doma.

Na podobném principu tu funguje vše. Čím více se vyznáte v politice, tím lépe rozumíte drobným nuancím a zdánlivým tlachům o ničem nad šálkem čaje. Charismatický svůdník/zloděj bude mít jiné způsoby "jak někoho zpracovat" než manipulující analytický detektiv. Hlavní postava je „v základu“ poněkud studený čumák a ryba hozená do osidel vysoké politiky s vizáží křížence Davida Tennanta/Adriana Brodyho, ale sedne to ke zvolenému stylu, kdy postavu formujete svými rozhodnutými a činy čili jednoznačně vyprofilovaný charakter by byl na obtíž.

Dějově se jedná o okultní intrikárnu, plnou tajnějších než tajných organizací a jedinců potají ze stínů tahajících za nitky, které rozhodují o osudech národů. Zasazeno je to do období Velké francouzské revoluce, kdy Napoleon byl ještě neznámým vojákem, kdy se Británie s Pruskem rozhodovali, zda jsou pro ně turbulentní události ve Francii hrozbou či příležitostí, kdy v Americe začíná Washingtonův ústup ze slávy a nástup Johna Adamse. Je to "alternativní historie očima Dana Browna tvořená několika málo vyvolenými", ale napsané to je vesměs dobře (ano, plné nesmyslných okultních blábolů, ale to k žánru tak nějak patří), postavy jsou zajímavé a dialogy tu a tam drhnou, ale nic vyloženě tragického; tedy až na moderní výrazy, které do 18. století padnou jako nožka Helenky Růžičkové do Popelčina střevíčku. Zklamáním je snad jedině překlopení konceptu ve čtvrté epizodě a především překotně uzavřená zkratkovitá závěrečná epizoda nenabízející katarzi.

V žánru je zásadní i větvení průběhu. Můžete jít na posezení v salónku, kde si všimnete, že dvě postavy se k sobě mají více než by se slušelo či že se jedna z postav zmíní, že bude po večeři v zahradách čili toho můžete využít k pozdějšímu soukromému rozhovoru. Nebo místo salónku zamíříte někomu prošmejčit pokoj a zjistíte, že má slabost pro laudanum (vymyšlená situace), což můžete využít tak, že mu ho nabídnete, když od něj něco potřebujete či ho naopak začnete vydírat. Možností je celá řada, ale nelze být na více místech zároveň, nikdy nebudete o všech vědět vše. Slepá ulička tu není, ale každá z cest je dostatečně jiná, aby nepůsobily jako nerozpoznatelné variace téhož. Není to jako v podobných titulech, kde když zvolíte možnost jít za postavou A či B, tak bez ohledu na to co zvolíte, výsledkem je stejná/obdobná informace a když ne, tak k vám přijde postava C a řekne vám, že jí postava B řekla to a ono. I takové situace tu jsou, ne že ne, ale o poznání méně často než je zvykem. Volby tu mají následky, projevují se a nemáte pocit, že vám hra předkládá "pocit rozhodování bez důsledků", ale že opravdu určujete "co a jak činíte". To se vztahuje k dílčím událostem. Zásadní dějové body jsou až na detaily velmi obdobné pro všechny cesty. Vždy za vámi přijde ta která postava a sdělí vám ty které informace, ale na vašich volbách záleží, kdo přijde a co vám sdělí. I tak je možnost ovlivnit dění oproti žánrovým souputníkům spíše nadstandardní.

Nevýhody to sebou nese. Tím že nikdy nevíte vše, se lehce ocitnete v situaci, že se nedostanete k informaci, díky které by vám zdejší politické hrátky a okultní tlachy do sebe jasněji zapadly. Má to problém s kolísavým tempem a hluchými místy. Nejen mezi epizodami, ale i v jejich rámci. Jsou tu pasáže, které by zasloužily vystřihnout. Kdyby výsledným zeštíhlením prošla každá z kapitol, tak by výsledkem byla čtveřice dobrých epizod namísto solidní pětice s občasnými silnými pasážemi. Mnohdy trávíte dlouhé minuty deduktivní činností, kdy si prohlížíte předměty, vyvozujete hypotézy, zkoušíte něco rozlousknout a bez varování přichází quicktime pasáž. Ty nejsou časté, a fungují jinak než u Telltale, ale jsou často právě v pasážích, kdy jste nalazeni na rozvážný postup a ne honem-honem-mačkej-mačkej. Dále nevíte kde leží hranice "spustím postup bez možnosti návratu, aniž bych ještě chtěl" a tak se mnohdy posunete v ději proti své vůli. Příkladem budiž, že v devíti z desítky případů se posunete po aktivování rozhovoru. Jednou za čas to je ovšem na just jinak a děj se posune vstupem do místnosti jako je daná postava. Ani technicky nejde o žádný výkvět; sice to vypadá k světu, má to jasně rozpoznatelnou stylizaci, ale dabing je u mnoha postav zbytečně afektovaný, přízvuky nesedí původu postav, lip sync si dělá co chce a i na dobré sestavě počet snímků v některých scénách neopodstatněně skáče nahoru dolů, občas se vyskytne bug typu kolize objektů či kamera v nesmyslném úhlu apod.

Výsledkem je solidní, byť poněkud pokleslý, okultní politický thriller, který má výhodu v tom, že zdařilých dospělých žánrových alternativ se na herním poli nedostává. Když se k tomu přičte nedotažený, ale funkční a mrtě lákavý koncept „ryze adventurního RPGčka“ i volnost při řešení dílčích situací, tak to dohromady dává zajímavý a dobře hratelný titul pro specifickou (čti velmi úzkou) skupinu. Škoda jen odfláknuté finální epizody.

Played on PS5
Playtime: 8 Hours
Play Status: Completed
Completion Date: January 7th 2023
No Spoilers

Ruined by Ambitions and Reality
If you don’t know, The Council is an interactive movie type of game following the path laid by Telltale Games and the Life is Strange franchise. But it tries to add some gameplay and RPG elements into the mix as well to come up with a familiar but still distinct feeling. While the first two episodes of this five episode journey accomplishes this, the later 3 episodes kills the momentum by including filler after filler, big story changes and terrible backtracking.

To start from the beginning, The Council is about, a council. A secret council that consists of important figures from around the globe like George Washington or Napoleon Bonaparte. These important figures comes together in a distant island under the direction of two very rich people to decide on the fate of the world basically. We play as Louis de Richet and come to this island to search for our missing mother who was last seen here.

While the story starts out good, some questionable plot twists that happens in Episodes 3 and 4 breaks the momentum of it and derails the plot out of it’s path. Trust me it’s very very ridiculous. But the problem isn’t the fact that it’s crazy, it’s the fact that the team clearly did not have the budget to take the story to that place.

I will come back to this again in the gameplay section but the whole 8 hours of the game is spent in the same mansion. Which consists of like 8-10 rooms. You never leave this mansion. It’s crazy. And while this makes sense for a game about super secret council gatherings, it does not make sense for where the game goes in it’s later stages.

As an interactive movie, a bad story takes away a lot of the game. But The Council is a bit different. It has much more of a gameplay focus than any other title I mentioned. In The Council, you will mostly explore, make choices and solve puzzles. Exploring starts off great. But, we come back to the same issue. 8-10 rooms. I looked at everywhere very closely during the first half but in the second half, I just rushed through the spaces because I didn’t want to look at them for the fifth time.

Making choices is a bit more interesting. We have the classic important choices that affects the story while we also have the other classic, your other choices doesn’t matter. But here is a very interesting thing. There are things during the exploration you can do that does not look like choices but they actually are. That might have seemed a little complicated.

Let me explain it like things. You need to be careful with every move of yours. Where you go, who you talk to. If you just explore and click on everything you see, you might close off some paths you didn’t even know if they existed or not. Basically, you need to watch your every move. This thing mostly happens while solving puzzles actually. You know, in some other games, you can eventually come up to the solution of a puzzle by just trying every possible option.

Not in this game, you need to be careful about what you choose because you might decrease your in game reward if you don’t. I think this explained what I was trying to say better. As an example, you have a page and you believe something is written on it. In order to reveal what that is, you need to do somethings. If you do a wrong thing, you might cause some of the writing to get damaged and you might not get the whole message once you solve the puzzle.

There is also a level system. And skills. Ok so, you get XP by completing objectives, finding collectibles or talking with people and discovering their weaknesses. Manipulation, politics etc. When you level up, you get skill points and you can use that skill on one of those abilities like manipulation or politics to reduce their cost of using. You have these points and whenever you want to make a special action, it will cost you these points. So giving skill points to the skills you use most will make the most sense.

Example, let’s say you found a very old artifact. If you have Level 1 Archeology skill, you can use 5 of your points to inspect that item archeologically. But if you make it Level 2, you can use the same skill but for 2 points. If you make it max level, Level 3, you can use it for free. It’s a nice system that awards good skill distributing. And that’s it on the RPG system of the game. Some of your choices are locked behind this skills and their costs mechanic.

The Council is not a pretty game. It came out on 2018 but it looks like a PS3 era game. Frame rate is solid most of the time but there are some glitches and bugs. Nothing game breaking though at least. Music, I don’t remember anything. It has an easy platinum, 1 playthrough. You might look at it if you want to have a platinum I guess?

As a lover of The Walking Dead, Life is Strange, Heavy Rain, Detroit and many other games like these, The Council was a huge disappointment. Story went to weird places, gameplay became very repetitive and boring and technically the game is weak. It has some good ideas but it fails to use them as well. I don’t recommend it, in fact, I recommend you to stay away from it. It was a waste of time for me.

Actually pretty good, which was surprising. It's a neat little spin on the TellTale formula, although it also suffers from the same technical issues and graphical hiccups. The characters are also not as consistently written as in a TellTale game, however, with many of them seeming to change their motivations, reactions to you and personalities on a whim according to the story and the conflict at the time. The last 2 episodes are also very weak, especially the ending itself.
Overall, I had a good enough time with it though.

Общая бюджетность, странноватый визуальный стиль, злоебучий бэктрекинг. И в середине игры шокирующий "вот это поворот", убивающий весь интерес. А начинали неплохо, в духе "что за херня здесь происходит?" и "кому верить?". А вот из хорошего (и важного) тут механика разговоров. Хоть сейчас бери и вставляй в любую рпг. Вообще, игра выглядит как игры Телтэйл здорового человека с загадками из олдскульных квестов. Загадки хорошие, логичные. И решения в диалогах будто бы действительно влияют на историю. Короче, допроходить или переигрывать я вряд ли буду, но за попытку - зачет.

An interesting adventure game, driven mainly by dialogue, and with just enough of an RPG infusion to give the illusion of character customization.

The use of historical figures creates some easy buy in, limiting the sense of being out of your depth as you are forced into a tight political battleground. Trading barbs with Napoleon and George Washington adds some weight to nearly all of the critical scenes in the game.

I'd have been happier with the game if I hadn't felt compelled to comb every inch of every chapter out of fear that I'd miss some crucial detail. The end result is, more often than not, running all over the map through empty hallways with nothing to show for your exploration.

Overall a solid little story, with an pretty good array of puzzles and some snappy writing, held back by uneven pacing.

Novel little historical Telltale knockoff that starts engrossingly but goes nowhere fast. As someone who's kind of over these episodic, choice-driven narrative-focused games I actually don't mind at all that most of the choices don't really amount to anything here - but out of all the places you could have gone with this genuinely mysterious premise and enticing cast of morally questionable characters (most based on famous real life figures from the time)... THAT'S the conclusion you decided to settle on? Really? That? Bummer, because while there's noticeable hiccups along the way (some weird pitch issues, a few bugs, and the occasional clumsy voice performance) this actually adds a lot of new elements to what I consider (at least in 2018) a rather tired genre. It's clear that a lot of brains went into developing the lore and puzzles, as if it were tailor-made exclusively for history geeks - which I am not, though I still admit that's a nice niche to fill. And idk about you but the locales in this thing are graphical beasts, anything made out of marble is pretty much guaranteed to look divine on PS4. Play the first two or three episodes then just use your imagination, trust me it's better than where this anticlimactically ends up.

The Council starts off strong, with an intriguing story and the exploration mechanics. It's very satisfying to find things and piecing the stories of each character together. The replayability of the game really depends on how good you are at this type of game because yes some things you won't get to see if you do them instead of missing them but it's just makes the game harder (because your character knows less) and you don't really discover anything new. Except at the end but I won't spoil it because I recommend playing it. What you upgrade also changes the gameplay in an interesting way because choices do matter. The only issue that this game has is that the plot twist is quite disappointing, it deviates a bit too much from the original tone of the game.

The Council is an extremely underrated gem that deserves more love. Throughout my two play throughs I really enjoyed upgrading my character differently so I can approach this interactive mystery game. The story is great and the way you can approach it is interesting.

If you love the TellTale style games, this game does it on a bigger scale with decisions that really matter and you will have to find a way to progress through your failures with the skills you chose to upgrade. I highly recommend it.

The year is 1793. Mom and son duo Sarah and Louis De Richet, members of a secret society, are hot on the trail of the Al Azif, a mysterious grimoire said to hold secrets of the occult. They discover that a prospective buyer will attend a conference held by the mysterious aristocrat Lord William Mortimer on his private island, and Sarah sets off alone to find them. Weeks later, Louis is summoned to the island to help search for his mother, who has disappeared. There, he discovers there's more to this case than he first thought.

The Council is a narrative-driven experience that promises a fresh take on the genre by throwing RPG mechanics and character building into the mix. Unlike many of its genre peers, The Council has no combat mechanics of any sort, nor does it have QTEs. Instead, Louis can have up to fifteen different skills which he can use during conversations to persuade others, as well as during investigations to uncover clues.

Backing this system are the effort points, a limited resource which is expended during skill checks according to the difficulty of the check and the current level of the skill, thus making the player consider when to better employ their unlocked talents. Skills can be unlocked and leveled up at the players' discretion with exp. points accrued at the end of each of the game's fifteen main quests.

A lot of people seem to compare The Council to TellTale's games, but I find that comparison inappropriate for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that The Council is a lot more elegant about how it handles player choice. Instead of bombarding the player with cynical "x will remember that" prompts in a desperate attempt to make them care about what they're doing, The Council keeps its cards close to its chest: does this moment matter in the long run? Maybe it does, maybe it does not. You'll have to live with the anticipation, now, won’t you?

Plus, in The Council, there is no failure state. The game never reaches a Game Over screen and keeps going regardless of how badly you mess up. Apart from just making wrong choices in general, the game features complex puzzles in which the player may come to the wrong answer, as well as confrontations, which are heated dialogues where Louis must talk a person into or away from doing something, and can only pick so many wrong dialogue options before they become angry or lose interest. Interestingly, each character has specific weaknesses and immunities to your skills, and it pays off to discover them beforehand.

All the while, the game is quietly noting down the paths you take. Every so often, the choice legitimately doesn’t matter: it will be acknowledged in dialogue, but mostly forgotten. Sometimes, information or items obtained will open up new possibilities in the future, like new dialogue paths that would otherwise be grayed out, but other times, events will leave lasting marks: Louis will be left scarred or maimed, or a character will die and be absent for the rest of the game. And among all of these, there are moments that decide the game’s ending, a handful of situations that, even if you don’t notice at first, will shape the story’s conclusion, both for Louis and the supporting cast. There are a surprising number of ways in which the final scenes may resolve, depending on how resourceful Louis proves to be during his quest and who he chooses to side with.

The game takes place in a singular location, that being Lord Mortimer's island-mansion, and allows the player to more or less free roam around it searching for their next objectives instead of taking them from scene to scene, which enhances the sense of freedom even though, apart from a couple of forks in the path, the story plays out in a linear fashion. In fact, I almost wish it was more linear: sometimes, the game will allow you to pick one of two scenes to experience – it does so four times in the first episode alone – but it’s but a contrived choice, and if one were able to experience both scenes linearly, their understanding of the narrative and characters would have been enhanced.

Mechanics getting in the way of storytelling like that are the main issue I see in The Council. The biggest offender is the exp yield: exp is earned from finding items in the environment and completing predetermined objectives in each scenario. The former will have you combing each room obsessively trying to hoard as many items as possible, but it's when exp gain becomes the driving factor behind your choices that enjoying the narrative becomes harder. You can miss out on a lot of exp by not making the correct choices and/or not having a necessary skill unlocked at the right time, the latter of which, granted, is more common during the beginning hours than anywhere else.

The character builds and roleplay, as enticing as they are, also feel janky at times. During the opening moments, there's a choice of character class for Louis that determines his starting skills. Never mind that there are clearly superior choices of character build due to the uneven opportunities to use each skill, but it's always better to make Louis a jack-of-all-trades instead of specializing in a particular archetype: there are few cases where a skill check can't be bypassed, and in most of those, if you plan carefully, having a Lv1 skill is enough to get the full benefits.

Still, as flawed as the game may be, it doesn’t take away its successes: it presents a fascinating framework for a narrative-driven RPG, one that can and should be studied and iterated upon. Mechanics like character weaknesses and vulnerabilities, opportunities, confrontations and even parts of its skill systems are exciting ways to solve problems without combat, and the game still boasts an entertaining narrative that, while a bit convoluted by the end and not entirely spotless, presents an unusual setting and compensates for its less than extraordinary budget with smart art and scene direction.

All in all, The Council is a novel, fascinating game that has been on my mind since I finished it. It’s easy to see why it’s such a controversial experience, but for fans of narrative-driven experiences, it’s a definite recommendation.