Game of the Month: The Council
In a bit of a change of pace, I didn’t play any dating
simulators in July! In fact, July was a bit of a slow-starter gaming wise,
though it picked up dramatically midway through, for reasons I’ll explain
later; but I did eventually settle on a Game of the Month that’s a bit
different from what I’ve been playing recently.
The Council is an episodic, narrative RPG that takes
the best decision-making elements of popular games from studios like Telltale
and Dontnod, and mixes them up with a tabletop-inspired character system. The
gameplay, however, is pure adventure puzzle game in the style of my beloved Adventures
of Sherlock Holmes (see practically every other blog post of mine for more
information!). It’s a game that mixes up a lot of genres, both in terms of its
gameplay and narrative, and twists them into something truly unique. It’s far
too ambitious and really shouldn’t work; but it really, really does.
The story of The Council is superficially simple, but
quickly becomes so complex as to be hard to describe without dropping some
major spoilers. It begins by introducing the playable character, Louis de
Richet, and his mother, Sarah. The year, we learn, is 1793; Louis and Sarah are
both high-ranking members of the mysterious Golden Order. Sarah has gone
missing while attending a private party on a remote island off the coast of
England, thrown by the seemingly benevolent (but patently suspicious) Lord
Mortimer and his close friend, Sir Gregory. Louis has travelled to Mortimer’s
island in order to look for her. He knows that Sarah’s latest mission was
somehow related to a powerful book they were searching for in their native
Paris, but both Sarah and the other guests on the island have been painfully
secretive about the nature of her work and the reasons for their gathering. The
player is tasked with discovering Sarah’s whereabouts and the reason for her
disappearance, as well as keeping a close eye on the other guests in order to determine
whether they have played a part in whatever has happened to her.
Early on in the first chapter, the player is instructed to
choose a career for Louis - the options are Diplomat, Detective, or Occultist
(one of these things is not like the others…). This choice does not impact on
the story directly, but rather determines the character’s starting skills. All
fifteen skills will be available throughout the game no matter what career you
choose, but you’ll receive a boost in the five that are associated with your
chosen vocation (starting with those skills already at Level 1, rather than
waiting to be unlocked). Skills can be acquired and improved via a pretty
standard quest completion XP system, but also by gaining Traits (granted upon
completion of important story decisions) and Talents (accumulated through
repeated success - or failure - in gameplay feats). These three ways of gaining
and losing stats are constantly feeding back into each other to mould each
player’s version of Louis into an increasingly unique personality, giving the
character building system the surprising feel of a deep pen-and-paper RPG, as
opposed to the RPG-lite XP-only systems often found in video games.
I chose to make Louis a Diplomat for my first play-through,
on the basis that I’ve played many games with detective or occultist type
player characters before, but this felt truly unusual. This granted me
immediate access to five targeted skills including Linguistics, Etiquette, and
Politics. Encouraged by the first few interactions based on these skills, I
started playing Louis as a courtly gentleman, courteous and chivalrous wherever
possible - which may have cost me my chance with the game’s gloriously buxom
optional love interest Duchess Emily (d’oh!) but has the satisfying effect of
granting on-brand Traits resulting from my character’s honesty and
trustworthiness the more I play him this way.
With the many possible paths for Louis’s character, it’s
hardly surprising that the narrative’s genre is nebulous: part alternative
history, part classic detective story, part gothic horror. “Fantasy” might be
the best blanket classification to cover them all, but that doesn’t really do
justice to The Council’s story at all. Depending on the career path
you’ve chosen for Louis, different generic conventions and tropes will feel at
the fore of your playthrough, though all will be present. If you’ve elected to
play the detective, interrogating other guests and searching for clues to your
mother’s disappearance will be much easier; but choosing the diplomat path, as
I discovered, aids in securing allies and, eventually, navigating your way
through the meetings of the titular Council, an influential secret political
society made up of the other guests on the island. And of course, this wouldn’t
be a true country house mystery in an isolated English setting without an
ever-increasing body count; in this case the murders have decidedly cultish
trappings, meaning that an occultist Louis will be in his element investigating
them.
The other guests on the island are all either
period-accurate historical figures - George Washington; Napoleon Bonaparte;
Prussian politician and theologian Johann von Woellner; Spanish Prime Minister
Manuel Gody - or serve a real historical function - an English courtier; an
envoy of the pope; a fanatical enforcer of the French revolution. These
characters have their own impactful personalities, communicated to the player
through Vulnerabilities and Immunities to Louis’s skills - so, for example,
Washington is unlikely to bow down before your knowledge of Politics, but the
crude revolutionary lieutenant will be helpless before your charming displays
of Etiquette. This helps enormously in making every character you encounter
feel fleshed out and making your interactions with them unique, and saves Louis
from being a three-dimensional protagonist surrounded by two-dimensional
characters.
Over halfway through the season, I’ve still got almost no
clue where this story is going. It seems designed to encourage wild
theorising - I’ve thrown out guesses ranging from Illuminati conspiracies to
alchemical cloning, taking the route via immortal demi-gods, alternate universe
doppelgangers, and actual Cthulhu. (Yes, Lovecraftian mythos really does play a
role in this game - seems to be a theme in everything I play, whether I go
looking for it or not.)
Upon the release of Episode 1 the voice acting did come in
for a little criticism, though despite my vegetarianism I personally am not
averse to a little hamminess in my video games (see, again, my evangelising
over the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series). I was disappointed,
actually, to learn that some of the more criticised lines from the first
episode had been re-recorded and replaced in an update by the time I got around
to playing. The visual style is unreasonably attractive, considering that it lacks
a Triple-A budget. The stylised, slightly inhuman-looking character models are
reminiscent of the Dishonored games; and the mansion and island of the
game’s setting are both pure scenery porn. The whole thing is so gorgeous
looking I could stare at it all day long, even if Louis’s chin alone places him
in the uncanny valley.
At time of writing, Episode 3 (“Ripples”) has recently been
released; five episodes are planned for the season, and thus far the release
dates have been reasonably consistent, at one every ten weeks or so (March
13th, May 15th, and July 25th). The schedule seems to have slipped by a few
days each time, but this is an indie studio putting out its first game, so
there have been no Rockstar level delays yet; so, hopefully, we can expect
Episode 4 by late September, and the finale in time for Christmas!
Some background on gaming things that happened in July
As I’ve previously mentioned, July got off to a bit of a
slow start in terms of gaming. I’d initially planned to cover a different game
for Game of the Month, Lust for Darkness, which was released on June
12th. I enthusiastically bought a copy on Steam and then went on holiday
without checking it. Once I got back I booted it up and… oops, my bruised and
battered but usually reliable six-year-old laptop had finally met a game it
couldn’t cope with. Totally my fault for not checking the specifications before
I bought, but even though the old boy* had been running slow for a while, he’d
never had to give up before.
I chalked it up to experience - the game wasn’t expensive
(it cost me around £10 to download a Steam copy on the week of release) and I
was glad to have supported a smaller studio whose demo I had enjoyed watching.
I started making plans to save up for a new laptop, but without any expectation
of buying one in the near future; in the meantime, I started looking into my
options to “Frankenstein” the old one into a more workable state with parts I
found on EBay. But since I have plenty of gaming hardware to be getting on with
anway, I bought some lower-spec games from the Steam summer sale, and the
season pass for The Council on XBox.
A couple of weeks later, however, I got a lovely surprise: a
shiny new gaming laptop for my birthday! (This was especially surprising, since
my birthday isn’t until early September, and this was only mid-July.) My
partner and parents had decided that, even though I was determined to save up
and buy one for myself, I needed a new laptop to carry on with my writing and
some software projects I’m working on, as well as to pursue my passion for
gaming. They had also decided that there was no reason for me, an adult of 27
years and 10 months, to wait seven weeks for a laptop I could make better use
of straight away; so I had my birthday presents on July 15th this year. I say
“presents” plural as they also bought me a capture card and studio-quality
microphone to encourage my interest in making gameplay videos. The only
stipulation was that I mention in my blog how awesome they are. They are
awesome. Thank you, guys.
Let’s (Try To Find Time To) Play Heavy Rain and Life
is Strange!
Having set my sights on an ambitious project - a double Game
of the Month feature for my birthday month in September; and having chosen the
games I’d most like to cover - Detroit: Become Human and Life is
Strange: Before the Storm; I set myself what felt, when I decided to do it
back in May, the very moderate goal of playing Heavy Rain, Life is
Strange, and Beyond: Two Souls in preparation. (I quickly jettisoned
Beyond: Two Souls for reasons of time and its lukewarm reception
compared to the other David Cage games on my list.)
Well, as it turned out, July was pretty busy. I managed to
play another ten chapters of Heavy Rain - during which time, as I’ve
just now discovered, I managed not only to avoid the first deaths for both
Norman and Madison, but apparently managed a tricky perfect run on one of
Norman’s chapters - but I’m only on 36/53, so still only about two-thirds of
the way through overall.
Needing a respite from the high-stress intensity of Heavy
Rain, I also started playing Life is Strange this month - a game
I’ve co-played with someone else, but never been in the driving seat for
decisions. I played the whole first episode in a single sitting, which is a
testament to how thoroughly entertaining I find this franchise, even if I
haven’t managed to pick it back up yet for Episodes 2-5. Incidentally, as might
be expected I’m making a concentrated play for all the Max/Chloe romance
options in this story, even though I ship Chloe/Rachel (and can’t wait to play
the prequel for that very reason).
Early this month, I also dropped everything the second I
could in order to put an afternoon aside for The Awesome Adventures of
Captain Spirit, the playable teaser/free mini prequel to the upcoming Life
is Strange 2. I had such a strong reaction to this little two-hour slice of
superpowered angst that I’ve written a separate review of it here.
Summer of live gaming experiences: CoxCon and The
Crystal Maze
One of the many, many things that’s kept me very busy this
July was CoxCon 2018! It was my first ever gaming convention and it’s not an
exaggeration to say I had the time of my life. My comprehensive two-part
ultra-fangirl review can be found here and here.
July has also involved a fair bit of live gaming, both at
CoxCon and later on. The last Sunday in July saw me and seven of my university
friends meeting up in Manchester for The Crystal Maze live experience.
We did not do terribly well but it was incredibly good fun, and once my work
friends heard about it they got quite excited, so a repeat visit may be on the
cards!
Miscellaneous gaming moments: July edition
It’s been such a fun-packed month that there hasn’t been a
lot of time for miscellaneous gaming, but so help me, I managed a bit!
The Steam summer sale, as it always does, encouraged me to
break my vow to only buy one game per month. I picked up last year’s indie
horror games Simulacra and Morph Girl; the Portal and Portal
2 bundle; and classic ’90s point-and-click sci-fi nightmare I Have No
Mouth and I Must Scream - all for under £10 in total, so it’s not really
cheating on my diet, right? I even started a playthrough of Simulacra
for Game of the Month before settling on The Council instead.
My partner and I finished our playthrough of Prey:
Mooncrash with 27 hours and 20 minutes on the clock, not at all bad value
for a £13 DLC. The only thing we can’t believe is that none of the YouTube
gaming channels we follow seem to be talking about it yet. In fact, I have the
strong suspicion that my new recording equipment is going to be put to use
attempting to rectify this situation soon.
When I have just a few moments to play I like to hunt for
Trophies/Achievements, and I spent a short but happy amount of time in Thimbleweed
Park going for the Bookworm achievement (reading 100 books in the Mansion
Mansion’s extensive library of texts written by the game’s Kickstarter
backers). I’m now at 40% and looking forward to getting another 60 in when I
get the opportunity.
To my much-touted favourite mobile game ever, Lara Croft:
Relic Run: I am still enjoying you so much, but trying to acquire some of
your collectables in order to 3* a level is a grind. Yes, I understand that
this is how you monetise a free-to-play game, but since I can’t buy a 3* rating
on a level there’s no need to make gems in-game so rare. I’ve decided: I’m
moving on. I’ll take the 1* and go just to feel like I’m making some progress.
Do you see what you made this completionist do?!
* All my laptops are named after characters from The Three Musketeers; the casualty in this case was Porthos.
