Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is an upcoming Action-Adventure RPG being developed by DON’T NOD, the creators of Life is Strange and Vampyr, and published by Focus Entertainment.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden: Everything We Know About the Upcoming Ghostly ARPG
In this article, we are doing a deep dive on everything we know so far about DON’T NOD’s upcoming Singleplayer Action-Adventure RPG, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. If you were unaware, DON’T NOD is the same developer that created the incredibly popular games Life is Strange and Vampyr, games known for a heavy focus on decision-making and a branching narrative that determines the outcome of the story.
Much like Vampyr, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden will also feature the branching narratives that the studio is known for, while at the same time combining that with RPG elements and combat to spice up the gameplay. With a reveal trailer 7 months ago and 2 gameplay trailers from 4 months ago, we are going to be analyzing everything we know so far about the story and setting, core gameplay, RPG aspects, combat and release info. Let’s get into it.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden – Story and Setting
The story of Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is set in a fictional place called New Eden, located in North America during the late 17th century. In this world, there exists not only the realm of the living, but also the realm of the departed, where beastly and ghastly creatures exist, sometimes interfering with the realm of the living. The people who fight against the spirits of the world are known as Banishers, utilizing special equipment and special knowledge of spirits to banish them to the void.
In this world, you play as a Scottish man with a majestic beard, Red Mac and his lover and mentor, Antea Duarte. During one of their missions to banish a ghost, Antea was killed in action, leaving Red Mac alone on his path of being a Banisher. However, Antea somehow manages to return as a spirit of the dead, and now they travel together in a journey to find a way to liberate Antea from her spiritual form.
Throughout the game, Red and Antea will find different people and spirits along the journey, with different banishing quests and difficult situations being created by them. You will have to choose if you can take the guilt of sacrifice in an attempt to resurrect Antea, or if you will leave her to ascend as a spirit.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden – Gameplay
The Gameplay of Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden will take a focus on a decision-making narrative structure reminiscent of Life is Strange, paired with gameplay somewhat similar to the likes of God of War 2018, presenting an explorable open world in a third-person perspective paired with RPG systems and combat.
Core Gameplay
Players will travel through the various landscapes of New Eden, which so far has included villages and forests as well as icy peaks and eerie churches. Exploring the various locations of New Eden will involve climbing over obstacles and squeezing through narrow passages, as well as using skills and abilities to reach more restricted regions. As you progress through the game, you will unlock additional forms of traversal from skills and abilities, allowing you to explore areas that were previously inaccessible, revealing hidden locations and rewards.
The character you play as you investigate New Eden will primarily be Red, but you will also be able to seamlessly swap to Antea at any point. Swapping to Antea will reveal the “Spirit Realm” variation of the normal environment you see from Red’s POV. There hasn’t been much shown about the Spirit Realm, but environmental puzzles within the game will utilize Antea’s connection to spirit realm, like a toned-down version of the Umbral Realm in Lords of the Fallen.
Characters
As mentioned before, throughout your journey in Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden you will meet unique characters who can shape the story and change the direction it takes. Players will need to invest time in understanding each character’s backstory, personality and struggles to make the right decisions when the time comes. For example, choosing to spare or sacrifice a village leader who killed off the weak in their camp to regulate the amount of mouths there are to feed. Choosing to sacrifice people will contribute to Anteas’s resurrection, whereas sparing them will lead to Anteas’s Ascent. Leaving people alive will undoubtedly change the future for better or worse, so it is in your hands to try and make the best decision possible with the information you have. Feels a little bit like the Witcher in this regard, since nothing is ever black and white.
You will also find spirits of the dead in New Eden, and uncover their history alongside Antea to ascertain how they lived and died. Antea can find memories within objects left behind by the departed that will allow Red and Antea to determine whether the spirits should be banished to the void, eternally tortured, or ascended, relieving them of their spiritual form.
Rituals
Red will perform Rituals throughout the game as a means to summon powerful spirits, known as scourges, of specific areas. These encounters function as a boss battle, and the one shown in the gameplay trailer was known as “The Beast”, which seemed to be the amalgamation of souls who died in the forest after the Village Leader sent them in to prove their strength. We can assume that players will have to fight many more scourges around New Eden which are related to the tragedies in the backstories of the people you find.
RPG Side
The RPG elements of the game are about what you would expect from a single player ARPG. You will acquire various items from defeating enemies and exploring the world, such as crafting materials like Hoof Fungus and Wild Chervil or gear like Sabers, Rifles or Amulets.
Campfires
Campfires can be found scattered throughout the world which serve as a hub for players to tinker with these items. At campfires, you can also rest to charge the decoction, a vital healing item, fast travel to other locations in New Eden and “evolve” Anteas skills, allowing players to tailor their characters to suit their preferred playstyle.
Equipment/Gear
Equippable gear will include an Outfit for armour, a Saber and Firebane, a Rifle, an Amulet, a Wristband, a Brooch and a Bane Ring. On the bottom left there is also a slot for decoctions, so maybe you will find other possible decoctions that don’t just heal Red, but empower him in combat in some form.
All gear will have rarities as well as suffixes which add to Reds attributes or the effectiveness of the equipment. For example, the Ruaidhrigh Saber and Firebane have a Melee Physical Damage stat and a Blocked Damage % Stat. It also improves the attributes Wisdom and Vitality, and contains a special suffix highlighted in yellow, which seems to be a special effect that can only be found on specific equipment.
Stat/Attributes
The attributes and related stats shown include commonly seen attributes such as Strength, Dexterity, Willpower, Wisdom and Vitality, as well as new attributes Wrath and Persistence. Underneath the attributes you can see the survivability stats that likely build off of attributes, Health, Spirit, and Physical/Spectral resistance. We can guess that to gain attributes naturally, you will have to level up by defeating spirit enemies and scourge bosses.
Materials you find in the world like the aforementioned Hoof Fungus and Wild Chervil can be used to summon the Scourge in rituals, as well as upgrade your equipment at a campfire. Upgrading equipment will increase its rarity by 1, improving all suffixes on the weapon except for the special passive suffix highlighted in yellow.
Skills Trees
The last RPG aspect is Skill Trees, which unlock new spirit abilities for Antea. The trailer has shown 4 different abilities that Antea will unlock; Ensnare, Outburst, Leap and another unnamed ability. Each ability has its own tree with different unlockable talents that upgrade Red and Antea in combat, such as by restoring 10HP when Red defeats an enemy, or increasing the damage of the subsequent attack after a parry. With only 4 abilities in the game, it seems likely that as you progress you will find and unlock these abilities, like how you would unlock abilities in a Metroidvania.
Combat
The combat of Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden can be best described as a dance of blades and sorcery. When fighting enemies and bosses, players will be able to swap seamlessly between the physical and spiritual realms, embodying both Red and Antea, a unique approach to combat that seems fluid and engaging.
The basic combat system incorporates the standard trio of blocking, parrying, and dodging, providing players with the basic range of defensive options. You can attack with either Antea or Red between physical realms using their respective powers while at the same time using your defensive options. However, some attacks cannot be blocked or parried, such as the grab attack we saw from The Beast Scourge which seemed to emit a flash of white light before passing through Red’s block, and dealing quite a lot of damage.
Red, the physical combatant, wields the weaponry that you equip at campfires, namely the sabre, firebane and rifle. Swapping to Antea enables players to transition to using her supernatural spiritual powers, which can include abilities like teleportation and a circular forcefield which deals damage. Most of the time, you will be in Reds form in the physical realm, as there is a limitation on how much you can use Antea.
Spirit Bar
The spirit bar on the bottom left, represented in blue, determines the number of attacks players can execute in Antea’s spectral form. This resource is consumed upon using her attacks and abilities, and charged by attacking with Red actions. Above the health bar is the Banish gauge, depicted in red, which also charges by attacking enemies with Red. Once fully charged, Red can execute an enemy using his Banisher Rings for a swift instakill, or massive damage against a boss. This system seems to very much encourage players to be offensive in their fights in order to utilize Anteas’ powerful attacks and Reds execute as much as they can.
Enemies
Enemies Red and Antea will face have been shown to be quite diverse; there is of course the Scourge Boss, but in the lands of New Eden you can find many different types of Ghosts. There are animal ghosts such as wolves, skeletal ghosts and large mutant ghosts that probably used to be human, and something resembling a Banshee in the Church scene. It will be interesting to see how different enemies will change the approach to combat; perhaps some Scourges will require investigation on weaknesses and resistances before fighting them in order to have the upper hand.
Release Date & Platforms
Previously, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden was supposed to release about 3 months ago on the 7th of November 2023, but it was delayed in September and will now be releasing in a few weeks on the 13th of February, with a total of 5 years in development. The game will release on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and on Steam.
Final Thoughts
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden seems to combine some the best elements of narrative-driven gameplay that DON’T NOD is known for while mixing in classic RPG customization and interesting combat using a dynamic character-switching system. It is a bit worrying that there was a delay which was said to avoid an “intense” release window, but nevertheless from what’s been shown so far, I think it’s safe to say that the concept and the vision is definitely there.
If you enjoyed this deep dive be sure to check out more upcoming games in Avowed – What We Know So Far and Cryptmaster a Unique Spelling Dungeon RPG and our latest review Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Review.
