The Council - Ep. 1: The Mad Ones

The best thing about the Assassin's Creed series has absolutely nothing to do with assassinating people. I'm not in it for the weird science fiction story or the meta jokes, but rather the way the game weaves real historical events into a fictional adventure about secret societies and their long-lasting impact. In a lot of ways, the brand new episodic series The Council takes a similar approach, giving us a dinner party filled with some of the 18th century's most important historical figures. It trades stealth kills for point and click puzzles, offering up a delicious new series that hints at what Assassin's Creed might look like if it was made by Telltale Games.

This first episode of The Council is intriguing right from the jump. It's the story of Louis de Richet, a member of a secret society who recently accepted an invitation to a dinner party thrown off the shores of England by an enigmatic art collector known as Lord Mortimer. To add to the mystery, Louis' mother, Sarah, has gone missing and there are signs of occult activity. It's up to Louis to investigate the luxurious mansion, get to know the historically relevant party guests and ultimately figure out what happened to his mother.

This is the kind of graphic adventure where you'll spend a lot of time slowly walking around the various rooms picking up items and looking for clues. When you're not wandering around, you'll be locked in a series of lengthy conversations where you get to choose the response and note inconsistencies. Instead of combining items and solving a bunch of puzzles, this game is more about hunting down clues that can be used to sway the conversation in your favor or suss out liars.

The story and paths will change depending on what you say and how you act. Sometimes it's in blatantly obvious ways, such as giving us a choice between two conflicting options, while most of the time it's in more subtle ways. The game is good (maybe too good) about letting you know that you missed a conversation or a story path, since it not only alerts you through a pop-up, but also shows you what you could have done at the end of each chapter.

The Council comes to us from Big Bad Wolf, a recently formed French company made up of people who worked on games like Watch_Dogs, Styx and Rainbow Six: Siege. In a lot of ways this game feels like a response to what Telltale has been doing over the last few years. But I shy away from calling it a rip-off, because this episodic series has done a good job of adding to the formula by offering a bunch of interesting role-playing mechanics.

By choosing the right paths, being thorough in the investigation and always noticing small details, Louis will gain experience points that can be used to hone his skills. There's a skill tree that lets you plug points into everything from manipulations to logic to etiquette. He'll also pick up and read books about politics and vigilance that will improve his skills. All this is used to get more information out of the other partygoers and to make your investigation that much easier.

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Much like Assassin's Creed, a lot of the fun of this game revolves around hanging out with well-known historical figures like George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte. They do a good job of playing around with the history and giving us a compelling mystery that is filled with eccentric characters and the hint of something supernatural going on. If this first episode was intended to get me invested in the characters and the story, then mission accomplished.

Unfortunately, the execution isn't nearly as compelling as the mystery. The gameplay is slow and clunky, the acting is occasionally iffy, and the graphics swing wildly from looking great to looking awful. However, probably the most annoying thing about the game is how the developer likes to put white text over white objects, making it nearly impossible to read certain conversations. They also insist on constantly popping up information on the screen, which I found to be a little distracting. Oh, and did I mention that nobody changes clothing between days? That's weird, but probably not the most pressing concern.

The Mad Ones is a good pilot episode that eases us into the period, introduces us to a lot of colorful characters and hooks us by spinning an intriguing mystery full of secret societies and occult activities. It's a little on the unpolished side and the gameplay is a tad clunky, but I liked the role-playing elements and was hooked by the story. The two hour run time flies by and left me excited to see what happens at the next meeting of The Council.