How we relate, share and cooperate is central to the human experience. Without these connections most of us can’t function, and the resulting loneliness and isolation can often only have one outcome. That’s a bleak start for a video game review, but Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a bleak game. It’s one that’s built upon human connections, but where there’s love, there’s also manipulation, where there’s care there’s also control, and where there’s life there’s also death. While there’s love, affection and tenderness here, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden certainly has more than enough death to balance against it.
A Banisher is, in essence, a ghost hunter. Their charge is to help spirits move on from the mortal plane when they’ve found themselves trapped here after their death. They don’t tend to be trapped on Earth unless their death was violent, unfair, or corrupt, and that, in turn, tends to make them angry, aggressive and unthinking. It’s a terrifying job, but narratively speaking, it’s captivating.
You play a pair of Banishers, Red MacCraith and Althea Duarte. Called to America by their mentor Charles Davenport, they find themselves embroiled in the curse of New Eden. A town on the coast of New England, the settlers here initially found much to love about their new surroundings before a Nightmare – a ‘super ghost’ – took hold of their meetinghouse and slowly started to poison the minds of the people that lived there.
Unfortunately, upon your arrival you find that Charles decided he could wait no longer, and tried to face the Nightmare alone, unsurprisingly ending in his own death. At this point you discover the importance of rituals to the Banisher, and you’re able to call forth Charles’ ghost, helping you to deepen your understanding of what happened.
You also get your first taste of the narrative choices that Ghosts of New Eden will lay at your feet. Ghosts can be banished or they can be convinced that their tie to the world is no longer necessary. Banishing is a violent and painful act, while releasing them for their Ascent is gentle and forgiving. Here, it seemed only natural to go for the gentler option, but as you progress these decisions become more difficult and more meaningful.
That sense of choice is integral to Banishers, not least because it’s the way that you forge your own tale through the atmospheric setting that Don’t Nod have created. Ghosts of New Eden is relatively linear, so while areas allow for some exploration and alternative pathways open up as you gain new abilities, there’s a main route through the game that you have little control over.
However, you have a huge amount of control over how you behave, and how you respond to the residents of New Eden and the surrounding area has an integral effect upon the outcomes for Red and Althea.
Much like Charles, Althea finds herself drawn into conflict with the Nightmare, and she too dies at its hands. Red, in turn, is thrown out of a window into the sea, and only survives through the timely assistance of a witch’s apprentice, Seeker. In a twist of fate, Red finds himself haunted by Althea, as their love, their connection, keeps her tethered to the mortal plain. Unsurprisingly, Red finds himself unable to Banish his partner, and they soon discover that Althea’s ghostly powers are essential to surviving the murky woods, swamps and byways of New Eden.
You can switch between the two characters at the push of a button, and you’ll need to use both of their now strongly contrasing skills to beat an increasingly tough array of spectres who just won’t stay dead. Red carries a sword, firebrand and latterly a rifle, while Althea deals out punishment with her fists. Red handles much like a character from Assassin’s Creed, while Althea’s otherworldly powers mean she can zip about the battlefield and use powerful spiritual blasts to decimate groups of enemies.
It’s a very enjoyable pairing, and switching between the two keeps combat fresh and engaging throughout the game’s runtime. There’s a shared skill tree, with each character gaining different kinds of skill token, and some abilities for one character are locked behind those for another. Interestingly, you can change these skills at any point, meaning you can alter buffs and boons depending on how you play, or the enemies that you’re facing. It’s a fantastic design choice, and one that makes sense both narratively and mechanically for this interconnected pair.
As you progress through the main story, which centres upon returning to New Eden to face the Nightmare once more, you’ll come across various characters and locales that would benefit from a Banisher’s special skills. What you come to find is that the people of New Eden are beset by both ghosts and moral corruption, with many of the people you encounter operating in a murky moral grey area. It becomes integral to the tale that you pass judgment upon both the ghostly and the corporeal residents, and Don’t Nod have done an excellent job of making these choices difficult and thought-provoking.
My partner sat alongside me as I played through much of the game, and it started some very deep and meaningful conversations, not least when she was particularly taken aback by a crucial decision I made that she didn’t agree with. Players are going to come away from Banishers with their own tale, and their own outlook on the characters they encounter, and that’s a remarkable achievement for what could otherwise have been a more prescribed adventure.
This narrative is ably sold by some fantastic voicework by the varied cast, and as a period piece it errs just on the right side of archaic language sprinkled with a wonderful helping of British swear words. Despite the piety of these puritanical settlers they don’t mind a bit of godless language, though when there’s a surprising amount of demonology and the occult for these misguided people to get involved in, the odd swear word is perhaps warranted. You may well leave Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden with a certain level of despair – there are few pure souls to be found here – but I found the entire expedition enthralling and excellently told.
It does affect the pacing though, and you’ll go between exploration and the brisk third-person combat to lengthy periods where you’re chatting to the various settlers. From there you’ll be trying to fathom what evil has befallen them, but there’s little in the way of true detective work which feels like a missed opportunity. Largely, a good search of the area you’ve been sent to will unveil the next step, and while it remains interesting to dig into a bunch of different mysteries, it would have been welcome to have had to spend a little more brain power to puzzle them out.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is an attractive game, but it’s one that has few ‘wow’ moments barring the odd vista and some pleasantly surprising locations. Much of the world is draped in mud, trees and rock formations, and thanks to the curse that’s afflicting much of the land that never really changes. The characters are the true stars of the show, and Red and Althea in particular are brought to life – or is that death? – in vivid relief.
That’s in Performance mode on Xbox Series X. I played much of the game in this setting as Quality mode suffers from a frame rate that is just about playable, but doesn’t feel particularly pleasant. Performance mode can still have the odd judder here or there, and some of the later, more detailed areas, seem to be particularly susceptible to this, but overall it’s smooth, responsive and it still looks good while doing so.
