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The Council - episodic narrative adventure with RPG elements set in the late 18th century

Zombra

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Finished it. Got one of the good endings, although there doesn't seem to be that much variation in the possible outcomes, more in the ways you get there. I haven't measured the time it took me to finish ep. 5, but I didn't feel the first two chapters were much shorter than the rest. The final one was short, yes, but it's essentially just the ending. Three things I'm wondering about now:
1. Who killed Elizabeth and why? From the clues I assumed it was Sarah, but she seemed to be shocked at learning Liz was dead.
2. What's with the torn page from Al Azif? Can you find it and does it matter?
3. The ending slides say that Sarah never made it to France, even though I stopped Emily from shooting her. Is there any way to save her?
In my playthrough Mortimer admitted he possessed Elizabeth and made her kill herself.
Just finished the game, for perspective my ending slides were quite different:

DYI6xVU.jpg
enDBFPB.jpg

So in my version, Elizabeth wasn't killed; she escaped the island and made it as far as France before disappearing. (I urged her to flee during that big decision point.) Sarah escaped to the English Isles, though I guess she never got back to France in my game either.

Great to see so much reactivity.
 

HoboForEternity

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Chapter 3 is kinda intriguing

your mother told to stop mortimer at any cost, but during the council meeting it seems mortimer is just putting history on its track, because in his plan, making spain handing over Louisiana to french, to my knowledge, happen anyways in real life, even thouhh the circumstances is different i dunno. Edit: he also pretty much setting the Napoleon's war. I dunno. Since i am obviously biased towards my own history, i will be on Mortimer's side all the way
what could go wrong? One way to find out lol
 
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Zombra

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Well. It's not like this game is a prequel to real life history. I wouldn't go around thinking you already know how it ends.
 

HoboForEternity

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Finished the big chapter 3 puzzles on first try.

Overall, i like the puzzles of the game. They arent the hardest, or my favorite (still nothing beats La serpent Rogue from gabriel knight 3) but yeah i think they are pretty clever in implementation, and give decent challenge.

The only one i struggle with is the one early woth the Gutenberg bible and deciper the message.

Mortimer's secret studi and the way out is pretty enjoyable. Getting in took 2 tries, getting out took only once.

Garden puzzle is probably the easiest but i had assistance from skillcheck in revealing who the "just" is.

Underground puzzle is my favorite. It is a multi stage puzzle based on dechipering codes and clues and logic. I wish it was as grand as la serpent rogue, but at least the satisfaction, the tension when i muse over if my choices are right. Yeah. Feels good. I expected telltale game with skillcheck but we got some fun puzzle to solve on top of that.
 

HoboForEternity

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
finished it. episode 4 and 5 (especially 5) was a downhill in quality, but all and all i enjoyed it.

overall i am not mad about the plot twist about most of everyone being a demon. but like a poster in the page before said, the exposition concerning it could be alot better than reading a novella.
the puzzle, especially in episode 5 are lazy. the piaggi secret code puzzle was kinda fun, that in a sense it gave me AHA! moment when i got how it worked.
as for the story, i got unanimous vote for mortimer, then in the end the bastard wanted to eat me, so i stab him with his spear.
slides:
-elizabeth dead, met ashmael or whoever in the aether, but escaped
-sarah also dead
-emma dead
-napoleon went to napoleon war
-washington became hero
-von wollner bankrupt and died alone
-emily went on her way
-piaggi retire
-peru is executed
-gody is disgraced
-mortimer disappeared.

maybe Zombra was right, bad sales and cyanide buyout made them rushed the last bit of content, but i still cannot dislike the game despite the weak finale. the puzzles are one of the most fun out of the adventure game released recently, the characters are strong and the gameplay are innovative enough that i wish someone would copy the formula in the same scale of this game.
as a bonus here is emily's majestic butt finally revealed themselves to us sinners. *piaggi's breath intensifies*
zhE9EsN.jpg
o7dQJ1o.jpg
 

Zombra

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HoboForEternity Yeah! I agree the game is good. Honestly the only puzzle that disappointed me was the "match everybody up in a line" puzzle. I didn't even notice this alleged quality drop in the last two eps. Also it's very interesting to me that your report of the ending slides is completely different from what I got - I didn't see a single repeat.
 

HoboForEternity

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yeah, the variety in ending slides are pretty crazy. i see around steam forums, lots of people got totally different ones. how BBW studio can make another game in the same vein.
 

V_K

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The AdventureGamers review complains that puzzles don't solve themselves:

One puzzle forces Louis to decipher a date in order to access a secret room. Although using your skills can prompt Louis to provide a few hints, you’ll need to use your own smarts to actually overcome the obstacle. While I had absolutely no issue being required to solve this and other hit-and-miss puzzles on occasion, it felt entirely counterintuitive. If you’ve made the most logical choices in your area of expertise, why not allow Louis to crack the code using the skills he’s learned and enhanced? It seems pointless to build up relevant skills when you’ll need to solve things the same way regardless of your approach.
:retarded:
 

HoboForEternity

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regarding the plot twist, i found some interesting sources about the interpretation of the antagonists
the Demons in the game is more closer, to ancient greek interpretation of daemons/demons whatever than the christian one (just like mortimer said, they aren't fallen angels or goat hybrid creatures and stuff). i was reading Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World, and it provide quite alot of information regarding demonolgy mysticism.
some excerpts :

Belief in demons was widespread in the ancient world. They were
thought of as natural rather than supernatural beings. Hesiod
casually mentions them.
some musings by socrates about demons and their nature
Socrates described his philosophical
inspiration as the work of a personal, benign demon. His teacher,
Diotima of Mantineia, tells him (in Plato's
Symposium)
that
'Everything demonic is intermediate between God and mortal.
Plato:
He stoutly denied that demons were a source of evil, and
represented Eros, the keeper of sexual passions, as a demon, not a
god, 'neither mortal nor immortal', 'neither good nor bad'.
which is Plato's interpretation is probably the closest i feel about how demons are portrayed in the council. they are still prey to mortal's emotions that influence their thinking, but isn't exactly mortal as well. i think they still use some artistic license, to portray the demons in the game, but it feel close enough to me regarding Mortimer's big question he wanted to answer.
 

StaticSpine

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I have mixed feelings after completing Episode 1.

I like the dialog&skill systems. Also I like that you can fail something and continue playing.

On the other hand, :prosper:character models, clunky animations, and occasional questionable VO ruin the serious tone. And the whole gameplay process feels rather boring.
 

Zombra

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You'll get used to the character design, and you'll stop noticing the acting (I think it gets better in later episodes; at least I stopped noticing it). But whatever you do, don't pay attention to the fact that every character whose shirt has a collar clips horribly 100% of the time they are on screen, relentlessly throughout the game. You'll never stop seeing it and you'll never not have it ruin the drama. So don't think about it. Concentrate very hard on not thinking about it.
 

Alpan

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Pathfinder: Wrath
I'm currently playing The Council, and in the middle of Chapter 4. I appreciate that this adventure game has real puzzles in it, but the actually interesting ideas involving skill trees and talents are executed poorly. In particular it is rather unfortunate that the player can grow to be proficient in every skill -- I already had Level 2 in everything by the beginning of Chapter 4, and that more or less means that with consumables you can succeed in any interaction you want without regard for C&C. A less generous skill point scheme and perhaps mutually exclusive skills would have served the game better and made it the replayable experience it is intended to be.
 

ebPD8PePfC

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I really liked the way RPG mechanics are incorporated into to conversations. Having some way to win or lose conversations without completely losing the game should be an important goal for RPG designers, who usually treat conversations as divorced from the gameplay side, or at best as a way to skill check characters. That said, they were poorly executed:
- Skills only have three levels, and the third is useless, so as Alpan said it is too easy to max out.
- The best skill to level up whatever skill you can with no regard for what it is (every skill is almost de facto equal to all other skills).
- Leveling up gives energy points, which are the main resource. This makes no sense, and makes balancing harder for no reason. It should have been tied to finishing a chapter, which is when leveling up happens anyway.
- the immunities and vulnerabilities system is good.

The game also treats the game space quite poorly. It's clearly an issue of budget rather than design, so I can't really blame the devs for it, but they spent so much time creating an elaborate and beautiful 3d space, only to turn exploration to a menu with floating blue dots. The optimal way to explore is by going room by room looking for new blue dots. It is essentially identical to 80-90's Japanese adventure games, but with backtracking taking way too long as your avatar has to actually walk from place to place. There's no hidden spaces to find, no hidden objects, you can't manipulate anything, it's just... an elaborate menu.

The game also has no french voice acting, which is a shame.

Complaints aside, the plot and characters are interesting for the most part, and that's 80% of the game. The game as a whole is far from a perfect, but it's better than most RPGs in how in treats conversations, and better than most walking simulators in how it integrates mechanics other than walking. The first three episodes vary from good to great, but sadly the last two take a nosedive in quality. It's definitely worth buying on sale.
For some reason the devs decided to enable skipping dialogues only after you finish the game, so playing it for the first time can be a bit of a pain in the ass for fast readers. If you buy it load a save file of someone who already finished the game.
 

Smoker

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I'm shocked how many endings there are. Also sucked they didn't show the buried ending. Loved the foreshadowing in the art. Really didn't think about it until it happened.
 

Tigranes

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Okay, so I got this couple weeks ago, and now I'm done.

I love the style, despite the obvious imperfections around VA, etc. I just love how they've done the rooms in particular: it really is akin to visiting some of the surviving European palace rooms today, and the paintings they've strewn throughout. The atmosphere and story and characters were engaging. The way skills, confrontations, etc. play out is done very well. Really enjoyed first 3 eps.

Yes, the gameplay is a bit limited, and the big issue is the Oblivion like generosity in character points - I don't think I'll bother with a replay because of that.

More significantly for me, though, I lost interest after the big reveal - why couldn't the game stay focused on the personal intrigue with the political background + the mansion mystery? Analysing and watching the bickering characters was the best part of the game, and that is all washed down the drain in favour of Deus Ex Machina everywhere. It doesn't help that plotting and sequencing is sloppy in Ep4/5 throughout - often you can see grating inconsistencies and jumps.

Demons, really? I know some people like that stuff a lot more than I do, but the next time I see yet another game/film/etc sweep away all of its own edifice with "oh gais it was demons with superpowers they can read minds and do ANYTHING you know lol" i'm going to stab somebody. And despite all the other puzzles and scenes being so carefully derivative of Biblical passages, Greek mythology, etc., these demons are just your regular trash pop culture "lol mind read immortal". Boring. And then every 5 minutes there's a new macguffin. First poison blood in the tea, then devouring souls, fucking resurrection, Jedi powers, blah blah, who cares? The fucking dragon ball standoff at the end took the cake.

Anyway, in my playthrough, first I get a choice of calling Mortimer daddy and I choose not to - but 5 minutes later I'm calling him daddy everywhere. I choose to 'forgive' mom, but apparently that suddenly means you're sending her off to Paris. You go through all that effort to find the Lance, but apparently it doesn't matter because now you're a vampire demon too and shit. All the interesting conceits and little questions and relationships built up earlier on just get forgotten because whatever, you can now possess people and do whatever you want and then daddy will cast TIME STOP.

Puzzles weren't very difficult even for a Bad Adventure Gamer like me, in the sense that I think the Ep3 wheel puzzle's difficulty is down to how confusing the instructions about the moon are. I do like how if you've read the Bible a fair bit you can use that knowledge to do the Bible puzzle, and if you know your Greek mythology you can use it to solve the garden puzzle. Here, too, I thought later puzzles were boring - Ep5 ones are easy and pointless.

The ending slides -

In my case, Sarah also failed to return safely to France, so I don't know if you can help her with it. I also never found out about the missing page in Azif, though I did learn Mortimer engineered Elizabeth's death.
 

V_K

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I don't know which ending you got, but actually finding the lance - the right lance - matters a lot.
Sarah's fate is a bit of a bummer, but the alternative is that she dies right on the island, either shot by the Duchess or in some other way, I don't remember
 

V_K

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I don't know which ending you got, but actually finding the lance - the right lance - matters a lot.
Sarah's fate is a bit of a bummer, but the alternative is that she dies right on the island, either shot by the Duchess or in some other way, I don't remember
Come to think of it,
Sarah lost a hand in the Longinus puzzle. If Loui does that, he dies in the end, because the trap is poisoned. So logically, Sarah was doomed either way from the very beginning.
 

Smoker

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the big reveal
Yup totally unnecessary I liked just the theory of it better. Imagine if
Mortimer denied it until the end and when he came for you - you used the real spear and killed him and all his servants dropped dead too and they explained nothing.

Also Sarah had the worst voice acting I've ever heard lol - I'd rather hear her french VA.
 
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Tigranes

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I don't know which ending you got, but actually finding the lance - the right lance - matters a lot.
Sarah's fate is a bit of a bummer, but the alternative is that she dies right on the island, either shot by the Duchess or in some other way, I don't remember
Come to think of it,
Sarah lost a hand in the Longinus puzzle. If Loui does that, he dies in the end, because the trap is poisoned. So logically, Sarah was doomed either way from the very beginning.

Oh, that is quite interesting - how do you find out that fact in-game?

I did pick the right Great Macguffin (at least, I'm pretty sure), so I understand things might have gone differently otherwise, but fuck me there's no excuse for the dragon ball standoff either way.

The prominently placed one in the altar surrounded by fire, spear-shaped, copper rimmed, fish. My guess was boar spear detail was a red herring like gold. Although I thought it was a bit buggy: I read Piaggi's notes claiming boar-spear shape, but my notes said a spear-shape, and then Piaggi talked to me about some other detail, but then my notes now said boar-shape AND spear shape...
 

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