Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is an Action-Adventure video game developed by DONTNOD Entertainment, released in 2024.
Set in 1695 New England, it follows apprentice ghost-hunter Red mac Raith and his mentor/lover, Antea Duarte, as they answer the call from an old friend to deal with a hostile ghost. Red goes up against the spirit alone and manages to nearly drown while getting Antea killed. Reuniting with her ghost, Red has to fight his way back while dealing with the local politics and hostile spirits of the region.
Tropes found in this game:
- Abhorrent Admirer: One brief sidequest has you track down the paperwork to help a woman get rid of these.
- Aerith and Bob: Since it's 1695, and the Puritans are everywhere, you're as likely to meet somebody named Sincere or Lamentation as you are Evelyn and Arthur.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Most of the diversions and side quests end with some sort of equipment reward.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Red has unlimited ammunition, which is compensated for with his musket having a long reload time. Also, you can reload the musket by holding down the fire button, so immediately after firing you can swing into your reload.
- The musket reload animation can be interrupted at any time to dodge or attack.
- When Antea takes damage, it just reduces her spirit points with no other penalty.
- Outside of combat, Antea's manifestations have no cost, making it easy to explore.
- If the upgrade elements you need are elsewhere on the map and you won't be going there for a while, you can buy just enough for an upgrade from merchants for a relatively reasonable price.
- Side activities like Nests and Elites offer permanent plus ones to all your stats, so even if you don't need the special crafting materials, they're worth playing.
- Enemies sniping at you from areas you can't reach with usually go down with one rifle shot, even if on the ground they might take two or three if you don't hit a weak spot.
- Arc Words: "Life for the living, death for the dead."
- Artistic License - Firearms: Red's muzzle-loading rifle is quick to reload, never misfires, and is pinpoint accurate across distances it'd be fairly impressive to hit with a modern rifle.
- Asshole Victim: Most haunting cases you solve feature this trope to some degree, sometimes more than one.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Starting with Red and Antea deciding whether to bring her back to life with human sacrifice, most of the game's story is somehow concerned with this, particularly in the haunting cases you solve.
- Bury Your Gays: Averted. One haunting case features two women pretending to be sisters. The death of one partner is completely off-screen, and the haunting itself is a
Breather Level mostly involving reading love poetry and observing vignettes of the loving couple. - But Not Too BI: Antea mentions a same-sex relationship in dialogue during one haunting case, which can be easily missed as it's fairly out of the way on the map.
- Cruel Mercy: Many of the haunting cases can be resolved this way, with the ghost dealt with, but the mortal left to live with the consequences of their decisions.
- Egocentrically Religious: Well, they are Puritans. Particularly important as one of the leaders of New Eden repeatedly hides behind his faith when dealing with his problems, including letting an innocent woman die to protect his interests.
- Genius Bonus: One haunting case touches on the very real cold war between French and British interests in North America in the 1700s, specifically a French spy sent to sabotage the New Eden colony.
- The haunting cases themselves are often riffs on or inspired by ghost stories set during the era, most notably Nathaniel Hawthorne.
- Red's incidental dialogue reveals he fought for the Jacobite cause.
- Judge Juryand Executioner: Banishers can ascend a ghost, banish it, or even blame the human instead, killing them. How you decide to deal with the ghosts and humans determines which ending you get.
- Karma Meter: Depending on how you resolve haunting cases and their aftermath, merchants and others may look more favorably on you.
- Karma Houdini: Some of the haunting cases require you to let some nasty behavior go unpunished, at least by your hand.
- Meaningful Name: Red's family name is "Raith," another word for "ghost." Also, you'll find that people with an adjective for a name tend to reflect that adjective somehow, sometimes in ironic ways.
- Multiple Endings: You can get five different ones, depending on the oath you swear and whether you stick to it.
- New England Puritan: The majority of the characters you meet, although just how religious they are varies widely.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Ghosts can become attached to people for a wide variety of reasons, but consistently they have to drain the life essence from the people they haunt to stay in the human realm. A banisher's job is to get rid of the ghost before it kills the human.
- The Mountains of Illinois: There's no shortage of sheer seaside cliffs and vast cave systems, neither of which are particularly common in New England.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Especially if you decide to ascend Antea.
- Time Loop Trap: The bad endings see Red sent back to the beginning of the game to try again, and imply that this isn't the first time he's gotten it wrong.
- One of the subplots implies that Captain Pennington and his daughter Grace are trapped in one.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Some ghosts you deal with refuse to accept that they're dead. And in one case, the ghost is of somebody who's still alive, but suffering from dementia.
- Witch Hunt: The central mystery revolves around one of these and just why an innocent woman was framed for witchcraft.
- "X" Marks the Spot: Hidden treasures are always marked with two crossed boards with a stone in the center.
