‘Burning Bridges’ is the fourth—and penultimate—episode of The Council, and is set for release on September 25.

This fourth episode of Big Bad Wolf and Focus Home Interactive’s narrative adventure will see “allegiances explained” and “rivalries come to a head”, as the story unfolds for the inhabitants of the island. 

Set in the 18th century, The Council focuses on you, Louis, and your part in the dealings of a secret society. A whole bunch of political maneuvering as members try to outdo each other, means that the RPG-like character classes and skill trees really come into their own.

The game has so far succeeded in giving players “meaningful choices with impactful consequences”—something that seems sure to continue in this episode.

You can check out three new screenshots below, showing Louis as he ventures into the catacombs beneath Mortimer’s island. 

The third episode of neoclassical narrative adventure The Council will arrive on July 24, Focus Home Interactive has announced.

Titled “Ripples”, the third episode will continue the story of Louis de Richet, who belongs to an 18th Century secret society whose members include George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte. Its heavy emphasis on dialogue and player-choice is similar to DontNod’s Life is Strange, only with less teenage angst and more powdered wigs.

Alongside its heavily caricatured look, The Council aims to stand out through is “Social Influence” system, a complex network of skills and abilities more in-line with an open-world RPG than a tightly scripted adventure game. Using this system, Richet can attempt to manipulate other members of the society as he investigates the fate of his mother, who vanished somewhere inside the society’s island mansion at the game’s commencement.

PC Gamer contributor Phil Iwainuk compared The Council’s dialogue to most other games’ combat, stating the system resembles the “insult sword-fighting from the Monkey Island games, multi-stage affairs that require you select just the right response or line of questioning depending on the context of the dialogue.”

According to the publisher, the already tense atmosphere of the council will grow more unstable as “Plots are laid bare, characters reach their breaking point, and an unexpected, terrifying truth is uncovered.” Hopefully the third episode will also address the quality of the voice-acting.

Focus Home also released three new images showing off The Council’s third episode, which you can view below.

The Council is a vaguely Telltale-like adventure about a secret society in the late 1700s whose members include George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, a Papal legate, an English duchess, and you, a reedy, nondescript John Constantine type who's trying to find his mother. The first episode came out on March 13 and it was really quite good, and today Focus Home Interactive announced that episode two will be out on May 15. 

The biggest knock against The Council (so far, anyway) is the voice acting, which ranges from passable to just... not good. But the conversations themselves are remarkably deep and varied, thanks in large part to an RPG layer that incorporates distinct character classes, traits, and a skill tree: Your knowledge of obscure history might serve you well in a conversation with the Prussian Minister of Religion, for instance, but it won't do you any good when you need to pick a lock.  

The abundance of unpredictable consequences is what makes The Council so interesting. In my own ongoing game, Napoleon thinks I'm an idiot and I got my ass beat by a member of the French Revolutionary Tribunal for mouthing off; the good news is that for reasons I won't get into here, my iffy standing with the French is the least of my problems.   

(It's not actually good news, by the way.)

We took a closer look at how The Council "makes conversation feel as meaty as combat" last week. You can find out more about the game on Steam or at thecouncil-game.com.