Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden /IMPRESSIONS
In these dark times for the gaming industry, when thousands of game developers are losing their jobs — despite their companies reporting record revenues and spending billions on studio acquisitions — it’s hard not to think how AAA game budgets are ballooning beyond any common sense.
And it’s not just their budgets that are rising, but risks of their development as well, which is why I’ll always be thankful for any and all mid-budget titles that do something interesting. Especially if they do it well.
And Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden falls firmly into that camp.
Banishers first caught my attention with one of its recent trailers, showing some intriguing spectral creatures, promising combat and a captivating premise — it’s the end of 17th century, and our heroes, Red and Antea, are a couple of ghost hunters in love, who arrive to New Eden to investigate a mysterious haunting. Not long after, Antea dies at the hand of a nightmare that haunts this small town in New England, which is when the game lets players choose if they want to help local townsfolk with their ghost problem, accepting Antea’s death along the way — or if they prefer to sacrifice some (potentially innocent) people so they can bring Antea back to life.
Choices with meaningful consequences, atmospheric setting and a talented team of developers at Don’t Nod standing behind it all — I guess you can see why I was immediately sold on the idea.
Basically, the game is an action RPG with mostly linear, but somewhat interconnected levels, sprinkled with some hidden treasures and metroidvania elements. And those, as you might expect, enable you to access previously inaccessible areas once you unlock new skills for your characters. Yes, characters in plural — in Banishers, you play as Red mac Raith, but at the same time, you can switch to the ghost of his dead girlfriend, Antea Duarte, at any moment, gaining a totally different set of skills.
What’s more, you will have to switch between them during both combat and exploration — for example, Red will be able to shoot enemies (or certain locks and barricades) with his musket, while Antea will be able to teleport over short distances (either to close in on enemies or to cross chasms in the environment). Add to that a simple loot system and resource gathering required for upgrading your equipment, and a skill system that will make you choose between different active skills and bonuses that suit your playstyle, and you will get a game that’s quite engaging to play. At least during combat, since platforming and climbing are as basic as it gets, with coloured ledges and passageways, as well as invisible walls making it impossible to fall to your death. And no, I didn’t mind that at all — after all, the focus of the game is on its combat and moral choices (more on those in a moment), and not on any kind of skillful or precise platforming.
During combat, your typical enemy encounter will have you slashing at them with Red’s sword and shooting distant ones with his musket, while leaping between them using Antea’s skills. Meanwhile, you will also be trying to prevent enemy ghosts from possessing corpses of soldiers and animals lying around — because, if they do get to do that, you will have to defeat the reanimated enemy first, before dealing with the ghost itself. And reanimated enemies have a totally new set of abilities, depending on the corpse in question…
With gameplay systems like these, Banishers kept reminding me of the recent God of War titles, both due to the structure of the game’s environments, which encourages you to go off the main path and explore (but never for long, although opportunities for short detours are plentiful), and due to you having to utilise skills of two different characters during combat, as well as exploration. Oh, and due to Antea punching enemies to death, just like Kratos does after he throws his Leviathan axe into some poor draugr’s face.
But, unlike God of War, Banishers lets you shape the fate of main characters. which brings us to the core of the game. During key points in the story, you will investigate certain curses and hauntings, which will end with you having to choose between banishing the ghost, or sacrificing a living member of the New Eden community (with hopes that you’ll be able to revive Antea with their life essence). And don’t worry, choices will rarely be simple, usually falling somewhere in the morally grey area, and making you reevaluate Red’s oath to Antea, whatever it is. For example, I swore to her that I will do everything in my power to revive her, and I was ready to do that… until I encountered a ghost of an abusive husband haunting his wife.
Where it all leads — I have yet to see, since Banishers is quite a long game. Some 40 hours in, it seems like I have yet to approach the final stretch of the main story, with who knows how many side quests waiting for me all over the game’s map. And that’s kind of a problem, if I were to be overly critical — a somewhat shorter game, with less opportunities for exploration (of, admittedly, very atmospheric locations), and one focusing more on its best aspect (which is haunting investigations and making some difficult choices), would have been a bit better. Even with those occasional moments where Red and Antea overly quickly decide that sacrificing someone is a good idea, or when they accuse someone with absolute certainty — instead of opting for a more human — and more believable — approach, which would include some more doubt and second guessing their choices.
Yet, even with those minor issues, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden managed to impress me more than I expected. Its rendition of 17th century America looks beautiful and inviting for explorers of the occult, its combat with ghosts and spectres is engaging and fun, while its story lets me make some difficult choices with which I have to live — at least until the credits roll. And even then, I won’t rule out returning to the game one day, so I can do it all over again and see the other side of its ghost love story.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden | developer: Don’t Nod| publisher: Focus Entertainment | platforms: PlayStation 5 (played), Xbox Series, PC
