I've long felt like Don't Nod is the video game studio equivalent of M. Night Shyamalan. The highs--like Life is Strange 2 or Vampyr--are really interesting, and the lows--like Twin Mirror or Remember Me--are usually at least weird, even if they're ultimately not so good. With the studio's next game, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, coming out early next year, I've been hoping to find out more about this new IP. What would Don't Nod do this time, and how might it come together? As it turns out, Banishers isn't as weird as some of the team's other games, at least not at first glance. With time, my hope is this ghost story can stand out from the shadow of its blatant inspirator.
I got to play about two hours of Banishers recently, and after an introduction that begins in a small New England village, the game's focus quickly came together: Banishers is Don't Nod's take on an action-adventure game in the mold of 2018's God of War. This becomes evident in how you move through the world with an ally, collect ample crafting elements, upgrade your gear and weapons, solve environmental puzzles to get past obstacles, and routinely slice apart fantastical monsters with colorful combos, both figuratively and literally--even God of War's favored use of bright orange is repeated.
When it occurred to me that Banishers is Don't Nod playing it safer than it has with games like Remember Me or Twin Mirror, I was a bit let down. I thought I was getting something weird and novel, not a familiar action romp where I fling bladed weapons around to dispatch vile creatures while my NPC ally jumps in to aid me in battle. But by the time the demo was over, I started to notice and appreciate Banishers for the things it does do differently.
Though Banishers repeats God of War's use of an Atreus-like ally, here the character of Antea is also fully controllable. With the press of a button, I'm able to switch between Red and Antea, the former's spectral lover. Antea still interjects herself into combat when summoned a la Atreus and his arrows, but I can also embody her instantaneously, opening up totally different attacks and combos. Because she's a ghost, she inhabits the same space Red existed in just a moment before, making the transition seamless and combat-efficient. It's a neat evolution of what came before it, and that building on a familiar foundation carries into other parts of the game.
Outside of combat, Antea acts like Red's alternate vision mode, seeing things in her ghostly realm invisible to Red's corporeal eye. This means some puzzles demand I go back and forth between the characters to ultimately get where I need to be. In the story, Red and Antea's objectives are not always aligned, and I saw both little and big ways I could affect the story, sometimes with a dialogue option that might pop up as I was roaming the mystical woods, but sometimes by making tough choices with apparently very different outcomes for both Antea and others in the story.
My demo started me off at level 7 in the game's RPG-lite skill tree, which meant some story beats were also absent, but from what I gathered, it's Red's mission to somehow save his love, and my decisions will play into her eventual outcome. At major narrative forks in the road, I could elect to help Antea be resurrected or help her "ascend," which gave me pause given I didn't yet have all the context of what these divergent paths involve. If my love is a ghost, what benefit might there be in keeping her that way and refusing her resurrection? It became a narrative hook that I held onto, wishing I could learn more before I play it again in November.
Above the God of War-like gameplay mechanics and the New England setting that I find innately interesting, what piqued my interest most is this dynamic between the co-leads. God of War tells a story of fatherhood. Banishers uses familiar gameplay language and similarly wretched monsters in a setting brimming with mythology, but does it all while swapping paternal love for romantic love, an alteration I'm excited to explore.
In the demo's biggest branching moment, I picked what I felt was the ideal peace offering between feuding sisters, hopefully bringing them closer together and ending their struggle for good. Instead, my good intentions only made things worse in a way that seemed reasonable but still took me by surprise. Taking down a massive hate-fueled four-legged ghost named The Beast gave the game's combat a sense of scale after two hours of picking apart lesser spirits, but it was these conversational parts that followed that really opened my eyes to the potential of Banishers.
As Red and Antea work to banish ghosts from the lives of those around them, somewhat episodic tales like the one I saw will collectively reveal a lot more about the pair, too. I'm eager to see where Red and Antea's story goes, and how my choices can affect both Antea's fate as well as those around the two characters. If Don't Nod can inject the game's familiar setup with tough decisions and a meaningful love story, that may be enough for me to feel like this journey will have been worth it on its own.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden comes to PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on February 13, 2024.
