Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes - The Council

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Starting point is 00:01:16 Hello, everyone. This is Paul here for another Quick Takes episode. Before we get started, I just really wanted to thank you so much for supporting us on Patreon and Apple subscriptions. We really do appreciate the financial support, and the show is really only possible because of people like you. So thank you very much from the bottom of our hearts. Today, I wanted to talk to you guys about a lesser known game that came out in 2018 called The Council, which Wikipedia calls an episodic interactive mystery graphic adventure video game. I think I did mention this on the podcast maybe once or twice, but never went into really a whole lot of detail. And if you guys have been listening to the show for a while, you know that I have a huge love for video games that are like interactive

Starting point is 00:02:05 movies. I love movies. I love video games. You mash them together. I always find the experience to be very rewarding to have a good story that's very interactive. And the Council fits that bill to a T. Now, for my money, my favorite interactive movie kind of game will always be Heavy Rain, but the Council brings its own spin on things, and it leans a little more heavily into game than it does as a purely interactive movie. So stick with me here for a couple minutes, and I'll do my best to explain why. I do have a summary here of the game, and here's how it reads. Set in 1793, the Council follows a French man named Louis de Richet, who in search of his recently missing mother Sarah, the head of the French brand of a secret society known as the Golden Order, arrives on an elusive island near the coast of England where various influential political figures from Europe and the United States are gathering for a mysterious purpose.

Starting point is 00:03:08 Alright, now since The Council is a story-driven game, I want to make sure that I avoid spoilers at all costs, so I'm going to try to keep things as vague as I can about the actual story and really only share some very overarching things that I think might pique your interest. But basically, as you start in the story, you are Louie. You arrive here by boat to this island, and all you know is that your mother is missing. You don't know if she's alive or dead. You don't know if she ran or if she was kidnapped or maybe even murdered. And basically, you start piecing together little clues of information on the island. You are going to be finding things in the world, you're going to be talking to people,

Starting point is 00:03:51 and the story is going to start to come into focus. And one of the things that's really interesting is that the game uses a mix of real lifelife characters along with fictional ones. So with this Golden Order, it actually includes people like George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte. And so these are characters that are in the story that you actually talk to and you interact with. And all of these nations around the world have this secret society. So a lot of what you're uncovering are these deep rooted political conspiracies and things that are going on. You discover a lot of secrets as you dig in deeper and deeper. So this game, the story involves politics, religion, sex, the occult, murder, betrayal, like all of these things that make for a really interesting story.

Starting point is 00:04:46 And they're all kind of, I don't want to say mashed together, but they are like interwoven in a way that's really fascinating and really interesting as you uncover the story. Now, like Heavy Rain and games like Detroit Become Human, the main driving force behind the council are the decisions that you make along the way. And all of these things are going to impact the story and what happens to your character and what the ending will be like. And so there's a lot of options and a lot of choices that you make as the story unfolds. And whether or not you've discovered certain information will drive what options are available to you. So the more that you explore, the more you dig deep, and the more you find out about the people around you,

Starting point is 00:05:32 the more options you have for how to resolve different puzzles or different circumstances. And what really heightens the council to make it different than those interactive movies is that the game actually incorporates some RPG elements. So that's something that you don't normally see in this kind of game, and it really, in my opinion, takes it to a whole nother level. So basically, as you solve puzzles and as you complete different tasks, you do gain XP. And so your character actually does level and you get to choose between one of three classes that put a different spin on your playthrough. You can either play as a diplomat, an occultist, or a detective. And then you also have like different skill trees

Starting point is 00:06:20 and traits and things that you work through. So the game actually has 15 character skills, 44 talents, and 20 traits. And so depending on how you build your character, you have wildly different options for how your character functions. So if you have a character who you put points into linguist, then if you find a note scribbled in another language, your character might be able to read that. Or if you have a character who has medical knowledge, then if he finds like a bloody crime scene, he's going to be able to analyze the tools and kind of figure out maybe what they were doing. And so the game actually is replayable, because there are entire things that are shut off to you completely

Starting point is 00:07:05 dependent on your class and what kind of character you have built for yourself. So I think the Council is a very memorable game. It is made up of five separate episodes, and you can actually play the first one completely for free. So that's what I did. When I went through this a couple years ago, the first episode I found to be so engrossing and so much fun, I really wanted to see the rest of the story. If you do want to buy the other episodes, it does cost $25 to get all of them. So if you kind of think of it, it's like $5 per episode, not terribly expensive, and you can always try it for free. The last thing I do want to say is that I did notice that PC Gamer had a very funny headline for how they reviewed the game, and so I'll just leave you with this statement because I thought it was really great.

Starting point is 00:07:57 The Council makes conversation feel as meaty as combat. So for a game that's more of like an interactive story, it is so much more than that. The story is fantastic. The RPG and the character building is fantastic. On a downside, the game does end in a little bit of an anticlimactic fashion. I know not everyone loves the ending, but the entire experience is a ton of fun. You will absolutely love certain parts of this game. So if you want, you can check that out on Steam. I believe it's also on PlayStation. But anyway, if you have played The Counselor, have any thoughts, come let us know. We'd love to hear from you. And that's all I have here from today. So happy gaming, everyone. We'll see you next time

Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes - The Council

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