The Council - Episode 4: Burning Bridges | Xbox One | Review

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Burning Bridges, the penultimate episode in the debut season of The Council, arrives at a tumultuous time for narrative-driven adventure games. Telltale, a company synonymous with popularising the genre and its incremental release format, are in the midst of a heartbreaking majority closure that’ll see many of the studio’s ongoing projects never reach their conclusion. This has, understandably, sewn doubt amongst the community as to whether investing in episodic games ahead of their completion is a good idea. In a case of bad timing, where developer Big Bad Wolf could have lain claim to the mantle with this latest release, it instead fuels the flames with their sloppiest technical work yet.

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by Sam Sant

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@SlamShotSam

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Developer: Big Bad Wolf
Publisher: Focus Home
Interactive
​Platforms: Xbox One,
​PS4, PC
​Players: 1

Picking right back up where things left off in Episode 3, there’s once again the potential to very literally wear the consequence of your actions, should you have reached the suboptimal conclusion. Having undergone a blatant physical change, protagonist Louis should face constant difficult questions, really hammering home your failure, but, whilst he admittedly does on occasion, just as many characters pay the fact no attention. This isn’t out of politeness, instead only serving to make it transparent that they’d have delivered the same lines either way.

These narrative inconsistencies are forgivable to a point, but a worsened technical execution is hard to overlook. Performance across previous episodes already wasn’t great - clunky controls, choppy frame rate, bad animation, missing lip-sync, questionable scripting and delivery - but those not-insignificant issues are now compounded by further errors. The visual model for a sarcophagus was clearly open, yet dialogue referred to it as being closed, even requiring effort points to be spent on “opening” and further interacting with it, while at different stages throughout the episode characters became stuck in T-poses and couldn’t be interacted with as a result. On a personal level, as a completionist, perhaps most annoying of all was the achievement for hitting level 15 failing to unlock.

Still, as a game squarely focused around its story, none of this is reason for a complete write off. Gameplay is simply a means to an end here, and the fact that we pondered what might happen next after stepping away to go about the day is testament to the fact that Burning Bridges succeeds in embedding its narrative hooks. Mostly, at least.

“Aha!” moments start to bring things full circle as we approach the finale, now fully committing to the occult where the the previous episodes gradually began to lean in. Each outlandish revelation injects a hit of adrenaline and the result is a faster, often more engaging pacing without as many filler moments. Unfortunately, this does backfire in one pivotal scene that caps off the second of three chapters. The segment in question had the scope to be intensely raw and emotional, dramatically concluding an arc between Louis and the two characters to which we’re the closest, but instead falls flat due to feeling monumentally rushed. Things could likely have played out very differently, so your mileage may vary, but nonetheless all outcomes should at least feel whole.

Each outlandish revelation injects a hit of adrenaline and the result is a faster, often more engaging pacing without as many filler moments.

A replay to see what might have been may be in order, so it’s a good job that feels justified now more than ever as The Council loosens the buttons on its ruffled collar to have a little more fun. Less po-faced politics doesn’t mean that diplomacy is out of the window, however, rather that it’s now waged on an even grander and more bizarre stage than merely influencing world events.

Previously we’ve said that the series’ micro choices prove more affecting than macro-scale decisions, but here that sentiment is flipped on its head. Many character decisions are arbitrarily black and white - good or bad - and underbaked this time around, whereas choosing how best to govern humanity, through equal moral greys that hold a mirror to modern society, is perplexing.

Throw in an elaborate new location and a couple of exciting abilities that’ll help to decipher even the most secretive guests, for a cost, and it’s commendable that Big Bad Wolf aren’t afraid to mix things up a bit at this late stage. The team of former Ubisoft developers also settle on a nice middle ground when it comes to puzzle design, having historically either spoon-fed answers or left players a little in the lurch, here uniformly making them taxing whilst allowing for a degree of circumvention through sleuthing or the smart investment of effort points/use of consumables.

​With an abundance of problems both old and new, Burning Bridges is an undeniably messy experience. If you’re a purely mechanics-focused gamer, there’s absolutely naught but a veiny, enraged brow in store, but, that being said, you probably don’t fall into that camp if you’ve made it this far. Anyone that can forgive the many foibles in favour of being spun an intriguing yarn should still apply; we’re certainly eager to see how things conclude when the finale (fingers crossed) launches later this year.

Pros

• Finally lets loose & goes a bit bonkers
• Moves at a fair clip, nixing filler
• Makes you care about events outside the manor
• New abilities are rejuvenating
• Gathers loose ends in preparation to tie them off

Cons

• Significant scenes can play out with a squib
• Established relationships fall by the wayside as priorities shift
• Significant technical issues

6/10