I’ve always adored Don’t Nod. From the first game I played of theirs – Remember Me – I was enamoured by their ability to craft engaging stories in well-built worlds. But Life is Strange put them on the map, a choose-your-own-adventure game where the choices truly mattered. Since then, they’ve been fearless in experimenting with their formula with games like Vampyr and Twin Mirror, though they still kept that underlying DNA of making meaningful choices intact. Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden represents yet another new direction for Don’t Nod. And perhaps even their most playable game so far.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden takes place in 1695. You play as a pair of ghost-hunters named Antea and Red. There’s one catch – the couple was attacked during their last mission, and Antea was killed on the spot. Now a spirit following Red through the haunted wilds of North America, the pair look for a way to bring Antea back while still hunting the spectres and spirits that put them in that situation in the first place. It’s a great premise I can’t wait to explore when the game releases later in November. You feel the connection between Antea and Red and get a sense of the forces that might have kept them apart as you trudge through this eerie and dilapidated wasteland. It’s early days, of course, but seeing a story in games that feels so intimate is rare.
Our preview begins a few hours into the game, where Red and Antea have been enlisted to hunt a beast terrorising a local settlement. The first thing immediately obvious to me is that the atmosphere is rife in Banishers. There isn’t a whole lot of colour, but there’re a lot of environmental effects that really sell this dreary and depressing setting. Red can question the villagers to help build the lore of this local legend before meeting with the village leader (kind of), a formidable woman named Thickskin. That’s not her real name, but we go with it.
During this moment, I realised that Antea, my companion on this journey, was actually a spirit. She’s not seen by anyone except for Red, and her spectral powers offer her some key insights into how the people you speak to are feeling. It’s a great but simple way to further flesh out the characters that Red will be speaking to on their journey, and it’s not played as a gimmick in any way. It’s purely there to help build on the already strong story and dialogue.
You then head out to meet with Thickskin’s sister, Kate, to collect a weapon before uncovering that something is troubling Kate. She doesn’t entirely give you all the info, but I quickly get moving to enter the forest and look for this beast that Thickskin wants me to murder. It’s here that I’m first introduced to the combat of Banished. Red and Antea are both playable, and their attacks are more deliberate and considered than I first expected. It feels like a more fluid Dark Souls-style of combat, though the five difficulty options offered mean that anybody should be able to enjoy Banished without feeling too overwhelmed.
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At any point during combat, Red can swap to Antea, who has different abilities. As you’d expect, her spectral skills are a little bit more abstract when compared to Red’s weaponry, but both the characters control similarly enough that switching between them is never jarring. Antea feels slightly more powerful, but to combat that, she can only be switched to when she has health (and it drains when she’s out fighting). It’s not a crazy cool down – literal seconds rather than minutes – so it feels appropriately balanced without ruining the flow.
Of course, Antea can also use her spiritual powers to reveal invisible clues or move Red to unreachable areas. If you’re playing as Red and Antea notices something, Red’s amulet will glow to indicate this to the player. While so much of Banishers is immensely appealing, I hope that using Antea to solve puzzles becomes more involved than what I saw in this mission here.
While I enjoyed the combat and switching between the two hunters to take down enemies, I am concerned about how much enemy variety there will be in the final game. I recognise this is only one mission, but given that Vampyr suffered from similar issues, it wouldn’t surprise me to see that manifest here as well.
I won’t go into spoilers, but we eventually come face-to-face with the beast as mentioned earlier. It’s truly a beast in every sense of the word – looking like a huge, bony dog-like creature but with the bodies of those that it’s slain attached. It’s a genuinely horrific sight and a fun boss battle that’s not too hard or too easy. Perhaps owing to the tools at Red and Antea’s disposal, I could down him on my first try, though the battle was still satisfying.
At the end of this fight, the Don’t Nod DNA starts to surface. Red is faced with a choice, and, to avoid spoiling it, I won’t say what it is specifically. But it indicates how the choice will affect the story of Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. One option seemed morally right, but it meant that we’d be one step closer to letting Antea move on. The other was definitely a wrong choice, but it meant that Antea would be one step closer to being resurrected.
I was amazed at how, across only ninety minutes, Don’t Nod made me care enough about these characters to pause to decide what I wanted to do. It may be a testament to their strong character building, but I’m scared to think of how involving future choice across a whole game will look.
This is easily owing to the excellent voicework behind both Red and Antea. They play off of each other so well, which is so important in a game where their relationship plays so much into the story. Amaka Okafor, who voices Antea, is easily the standout here though. She plays the role with such a solemn sense of melancholy that I can’t help but stop and listen to everything she has to say.
I come away from my brief time with Banishers equal parts optimistic and intrigued. This team is known for creating characters you care about and choices you tend to ponder. And I’m already so invested in learning much more about Red, Antea and their relationship and how that will play out. Of course, tracking down ghosts and spirits like a pre-Conjuring Ed and Lorraine Warren doesn’t sound like a drag either. So while I might be concerned about the variety of the experience overall, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is now sitting squarely on my radar. And it should be for you too.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden launches on November 7th 2023 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Amazon has pre-orders for $99 including shipping.
