Emotional material in a rather grim universe
“The concept of this new franchise initially rose from our wish to create the spiritual successor to Vampyr, our previous project, with the same grim and supernatural twists applied to a historical background,” Beauverger says. “But with more time and budget to craft a better and more ambitious project.”
If you’re unfamiliar with 2018’s Vampyr, it’s a third-person action-RPG set in 1918, during a time when the Spanish Flu is ravaging London. You play as Dr. Jonathan Reid, who after contracting Vampirism, rushes to find a cure while battling his newfound hunger for blood. Compared to the memory-hunting action of Remember Me and the fantastic episodic story of Life is Strange we had seen from Don’t Nod before, Vampyr switched things up by throwing us into a dark foreboding world to battle with our own demons.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden may switch vampires for spirits, but it seems that Don’t Nod intends to have us journey through another nightmare as our characters grapple with their morals, the righteous path, and the dark reality they find themselves in.
“Since Banishers is the descendant of Vampyr, I suppose the very first idea was to determine which other popular supernatural themes would provide rich and exploitable lore and game mechanics,” narrative director Stéphane Beauverger explained. “Ghosts quickly appeared as a great theme, able to carry almost infinite possibilities of unending guilt, unexpressed and lingering feelings, unfinished goals, and inextinguishable rancor. Add to this the strict religious credo of early Puritan colonies, and you have all the ingredients for a great and sad story.”
Since its establishment in 2008, Don’t Nod has been a developer unafraid to test new waters or tackle new genres. We’ve seen the studio develop games like Remember Me with third-person action platforming, and episodic narrative-driven adventuring in Tell Me Why, and while Banishers belongs to the action-RPG genre along with Vampyr, we were interested to find out if there have been any new challenges for the team when making the upcoming game.
“To craft the love story of Red and Antea, and to let the players experience the dilemma of a dead Banisher (Antea) coming back as the thing she hates the most — a freaking ghost! — to haunt her beloved Red, was probably the biggest challenge, story-wise,” Beauverger said. “True love is quite an uncommon theme in RPGs, especially when players are invited by the game to decide the lovers’ fate through their actions in the game. That was a challenge for our team, to deliver such high emotional material in a rather grim universe.”
If you’ve played any of Don’t Nod’s games before, you’ll likely have noticed that they tend to tell emotionally provocative stories. It’s an experience we’ve come to expect from the developer’s games, and it sounds like Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden could fall into that same category. However, Stéphane Beauverger tells us that it’s not an intention Don’t Nod sets out with when developing a game, and is instead the byproduct of good character design.
“That’s for the players and critics to decide. At Don’t Nod, we generally prefer to focus on the characters’ authenticity, not on their provocative side. Everybody can feel provoked or triggered by different themes. As a narrative director, I believe that the more authentic and multifaceted a character is, the less they will appear like a ‘token.'”
If the RPG genre wasn’t packed full of amazing experiences already, 2023 saw a plethora of fantastic games break into the best Xbox RPGs lists, from vast adventures in Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 to more action-focused fun in Diablo IV and Hogwarts Legacy. With so many experiences, settings, and styles on offer, we were interested to see what Don’t Nod would be bringing to the table with Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden.
“As a Don’t Nod game, our action-RPG is a very narrative-driven experience. We put a lot of effort into telling great ghost stories, whether it be our duo of Banishers, their compelling relationship and how the choices that the players make will impact their storyline, or all the “Haunting Cases” (AKA the side quests) which are crafted as unique investigations to lead,” creative director Philippe Moreau said. “All of them eventually end with a morally ambiguous choice, where the fate of both the living and dead lies in your hands. It’s important to note that all of the NPCs of the game have their own identities and backgrounds and, as soon as they become haunted by a ghost, you will have to dig into their pasts to unveil their deepest secrets. We don’t have hundreds of NPCs like in other AAA action-RPGs, but all of them are important in Banishers.
“Secondly, I would say that our lore and universe are very different from the competition. Just as we did with Banishers, we took a lot of time to build a consistent, authentic universe with that supernatural flavor of ghosts and witches on top of it. You can expect to dive into really different regions of North America, with different moods, biomes, and communities with their own beliefs and problems to solve. “
Our adventures in New Eden with Red and Antea will see us carrying the weight of our choices throughout the game, as we uncover stories filled with love, betrayal, and suffering. Those choices may come in the form of feeding a soul to Antea, banishing a tormented spirit from the world, or freeing them from the suffering, but it’s not all as simple as making choices.
As an action-RPG, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden features a semi-open world to explore, filled with combat, secrets, and treasure. We play as both Red and Antea, using Red’s firebane, rifle, and sword and Antea’s ethereal powers to take down the many enemies standing in our way. We’ll also have a host of skills to unlock along the way as well, so exploration will likely be the key to maximizing our power.
“We also offer a really rewarding exploration experience alongside the story if you are interested in this kind of content,” Moreau said. “It’s designed as a semi-open world, full of Banishers-related activities with a completion panel to track your progress region by region. Even though we don’t match the AAA level in terms of the quantity of activities and the scale of the world, we really put a lot of love into the exploration, and I think people who played our previous titles will be surprised to discover how much of it we put in the game!”
You might have noticed that we’ve already picked up the 43 Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden achievements ahead of its launch later this month. We’re told that the list was designed to reward players for experiencing everything Banishers has to offer, as the team believes that achievements should mark valuable moments during your time with the game.
“We have set a few golden rules for our achievements in order to be sure they remain interesting to unlock. We believe achievements should be good and valuable moments for the players. We also wanted to provide accessible rewards and a way to promote all the content and possibilities available in the game,” lead system designer Mathieu Bourgain told us. “We have distributed the 43 achievements between story, combat, exploration, and characters’ evolution in order to reward and expose all the gameplay elements you can expect from an action-RPG.
With that in mind, you’ll need to run through the game twice to earn the completion, as you’ll need to experience two endings. If you’re curious about what needs to be done for those two playthroughs, you can check out the achievement requirements below, but bear in mind that these count as spoilers!
“All the achievements can be unlocked in ‘only’ two playthroughs of the game because we don’t want players to feel forced to replay the game an excessive number of times just for completing achievements. We have five difficulty modes in the game but there is no achievement associated with the difficulty modes, as we want to let players choose the difficulty mode of their choice and change it during their playthroughs as they wish,” Bourgain says. “Overall, we tried to find the right balance between achievements that are accessible for the majority of players and achievements that strongly reward exploration, completion, and experimentation.”
If you’re as excited as us to play Don’t Nod’s Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, you don’t need to wait much longer — it launches on February 13 for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC!
Originally posted by www.trueachievements.com
