The Council

Few story concepts have ever made me more interested in a game. The Council is set in January 1793. You play as Louis de Richet, a member of a secret society named The Golden Order, whose mother - the leader of the French chapter of the Order - has gone missing on a remote island off the coast of England. Once upon the island, you discover that representatives of the world's great powers have been gathered there for a conference: George Washington, in the middle of his term as US president; Napoleon Bonaparte, then still just a talented general in Corsica beginning to scheme his way to supremacy; Manuel Godoy, Spanish security of state and one of the most trusted and influential members of Charles IV's inner circle; and Johann Christoph von Wöllner, the Prussian Minister of Justice under Frederick William II. Supplementing these real historical figures are the fictional characters Sir Gregory Holm and Lord William Mortimer, both members of the British aristocracy, along with Emily Hillsborrow (trusted consort of William Pitt the Younger), Cardinal Giuseppe Piaggi (acting as the representative of Pope Pius VI), Jacques Peru (leader of the Revolutionary Tribunals in France, and presumably one of the architects of The Terror), and Elizabeth Adams (daughter of John Adams, who Washington had believed to be dead). This is a period of history I have a great interest in - almost too much to fully enjoy the game at the times when it takes a little liberty with historical fact, if I'm being honest - and the idea of bringing all of these characters together in an Illuminati-style secret convention, watching them scheme against each other in a power grab as the modern world is starting to take shape, sounded great. That the gameplay leans heavily into this makes it even more appealing - the dialogue is the gameplay, conversations are the battlegrounds, the skill points you earn placed into categories that make it easier to manipulate people through various means, your 'enemies' verbal sparring partners whose strengths and weaknesses you must uncover to bring them around to your way of thinking. And then layering the missing person element over the top of it all? The sense of mystery in The Council is heavy and deeply compelling, and the tone it sustains throughout is superb.

Yet for all this ambition and all the unusual flourishes, ultimately it reminded me above all else of Until Dawn, a game that is quite different on the surface but that very much has the same spirit at its core. Both games have an incredibly clear sense of what they want to be and lean lovingly into the tropes of their genre; they're made by people who know full well they're not reinventing anything, and have no interest in doing so anyway. The Council owes a considerable debt to Agatha Christie, but why shouldn't it? A lot of great mysteries do. Furthermore, the fact that both games not only know exactly what they're doing, but also know that their audience almost certainly knows exactly what they're doing too, lets them have fun with it; The Council isn't afraid to be silly or camp when the mood takes it, and that's one of the best things about it. Had it been stony-faced and taken itself incredibly seriously, it would have fallen incredibly flat - particularly with this voice acting, which is....really not good at points. The general B-movie air (which really ramps up in the latter stages of the game as all of the mysteries start to reveal themselves) makes that excusable in context, but it's undeniably pretty ropey all the same. The story, atmosphere, setting, and veritable rogue's gallery of characters are all great, though - and I would love to see its conversation mechanics explored in other contexts. Hopefully Big Bad Wolf bring these ideas along with them into the World of Darkness with ..., a game I'm a lot more excited for now that I've seen what the team behind it can do.