Video games love to tell you that your choices matter, but usually, they just change the color of a lightbulb at the end of the story. Don’t get me started on the "blue for good, red for evil" trope that has plagued RPGs since the mid-2000s. Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden isn't interested in that kind of binary laziness. It's a game about grief. It’s a game about what you’re willing to sacrifice to get back the person you love most in the world.
Developed by Don’t Nod—the folks behind Life is Strange and Vampyr—this title dropped into a crowded market and honestly deserved more noise than it got. You play as Red mac Raith and Antea Duarte. They are Banishers. Basically, they’re 17th-century ghost hunters with a professional oath to protect the living from the lingering dead. But then Antea dies. She becomes the very thing she spent her life hunting.
Now you're stuck.
The Core Conflict: Why Ghosts of New Eden Hits Different
The central hook of Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a brutal, prolonged trolley problem. After Antea's death, Red has two paths. He can perform the "Ascent" ritual to let her soul pass on peacefully. Or, he can attempt a forbidden ritual to "Resurrect" her. To bring her back to life, though, you need to blame and sacrifice the living. You have to kill humans to feed her soul.
It's grim.
Most games make the "evil" path feel like a power trip or a joke. Here, it feels like desperation. If you want Antea back, you have to be a monster. But the game doesn't just ask you once at the beginning; it forces you to reaffirm that choice with every single "Haunting Case" you solve.
Every side quest is a mini-detective story. You find a settler in the town of New Eden or the surrounding wilderness who is being haunted. You investigate their past. You find the "tether" connecting the ghost to the world. Usually, both the living person and the ghost have done something terrible. You have to decide: do you banish the ghost, let them ascend, or "Blame" the living person?
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Blaming the living is the only way to get the essence required for resurrection. Watching Red, a man who clearly values honor, murder a desperate settler just because he wants his girlfriend back is deeply uncomfortable. That’s the point. The game sits in that discomfort and refuses to let you up for air.
Mechanics That Actually Mean Something
Combat in Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a tag-team affair. You swap between Red, who uses conventional weaponry like a saber and a firelock rifle, and Antea, who uses spectral "outbursts" and supernatural abilities. It’s snappy. It isn't Elden Ring, but it has weight.
Red is better against physical threats. Antea shreds through spectral resistances.
What’s fascinating is how the narrative choice bleeds into the gameplay loop. If you’ve committed to the resurrection path, the way you interact with the world changes. You start looking at NPCs not as people to help, but as fuel. It shifts your perspective in a way that feels organic to the character's descent.
The World of 1695 Massachusetts
The setting is a fictionalized version of New England during the late 17th century. It’s bleak. The atmosphere is thick with fog, mud, and superstition. Don’t Nod did a fantastic job capturing the "New World" anxiety—that feeling that the woods are endless and something very old and very angry is watching you from between the trees.
The "New Eden Curse" isn't just a plot device; it’s a physical presence in the world. As you travel from the shivering camps of the Dark Woods to the freezing heights of Mount Pleasant, the environment tells the story of a colony eating itself alive.
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- The Dark Woods: Dense, claustrophobic, and full of early-game tutorials that actually feel integrated.
- The Mire: A swampy nightmare where the level design forces you to use Antea’s spectral leap.
- Mount Pleasant: A vertical shift that emphasizes the survivalist roots of the Banisher profession.
Realism vs. Fantasy in Narrative Design
While the ghosts are obviously fantasy, the human drama is painfully realistic. There’s a case involving a man who may or may not have cannibalized his partner to survive a winter. Another involves a woman hiding her past to escape a localized witch hunt. These aren't "kill ten rats" quests. They are moral quagmires.
The voice acting—specifically by Amaka Okafor and Russ Bain—is what carries the weight. You can hear the exhaustion in their voices. They’ve been traveling for months. They’re tired. They’re mourning. When they argue about the morality of their mission, it doesn't feel like a scripted cutscene meant to explain the mechanics. It feels like a couple falling apart.
Navigation and the Map: Not Your Average Open World
One thing people get wrong about Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is assuming it's a massive, Ubisoft-style open world. It’s not. It’s more of a "wide-linear" game, similar to the recent God of War titles. You have specific paths, but there are plenty of reasons to backtrack once Antea gains new abilities.
You’ll find "Void Breaches" and "Cursed Chests" that require specific items or spectral powers to unlock. It encourages exploration without making it feel like a chore. Honestly, the map can be a bit confusing because of the verticality, but it rewards players who actually pay attention to the landmarks rather than just staring at the mini-map.
The Difficulty of the "Middle Path"
In most RPGs, the "Golden Ending" is the one where you please everyone. In Banishers, there is no easy middle ground. If you try to play it safe—sacrificing some people but ascending others—you might find yourself failing both of your goals. The game demands conviction.
If you promised Antea you would bring her back, but you start feeling guilty and letting ghosts ascend, you won't have enough "points" for the ritual at the end. The game tracks your choices meticulously. It’s one of the few instances where being "mostly good" can actually lead to a "bad" ending because you weren't committed to the oath you took.
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Technical Performance and Visuals
On a technical level, the game is solid, though it has some of that AA-studio jank we’ve come to expect. Character models are incredibly detailed—especially the faces—but some of the environmental textures can look a bit flat if you're squinting.
The lighting is the real star here. The way light filters through the autumn leaves or reflects off a ghostly apparition in a dark cave is stunning. It’s a very "moody" game. If you’re playing on PC, you’ll want a decent GPU to handle the volumetric fog, which is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for the atmosphere.
What Most Players Miss
There’s a nuance to the "Intent" system that people often skip over in the menus. Before you start the bulk of the game, you make a formal oath to Antea. This oath isn't just flavor text. It sets the "win condition" for your narrative.
Many players go into it thinking they can change their mind halfway through without consequence. You can't. Changing your mind is a narrative choice in itself, and the game will acknowledge your failure to keep your word. It adds a layer of roleplaying that most "choice-based" games are too scared to implement. They want you to see all the content in one go; Don’t Nod wants you to live with your decisions.
Actionable Insights for New Banishers
If you're just starting your journey through New Eden, don't rush the main story. You'll be tempted to sprint toward the end to see what happens to Antea, but the game's soul is in the side cases.
- Commit early. Decide within the first three hours if you are going for the Resurrection or the Ascent. The math behind the endings is strict. If you waver, you will likely end up with the "failure" ending where neither goal is achieved.
- Upgrade Antea’s gear first. Red is your primary damage dealer, but Antea’s spectral abilities provide the utility you need for crowd control. Prioritize items that reduce her "switch-out" cooldown.
- Listen to the environment. Many clues for Haunting Cases aren't marked with icons. Listen for whispering or look for slight visual distortions in the air to find hidden lore entries that can unlock new dialogue options with suspects.
- Manage your resources. Don't spend all your materials on early-game gear. Save the rare "Sourge Accretions" for the mid-to-late game weapons that have better scaling with your specific playstyle (physical vs. spectral).
- Respect the "Blame" mechanic. Remember that "Blaming" an NPC kills them instantly. This can lock out future side quests or merchants in that specific hub. It’s a permanent change to the game world.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a rare beast in the modern gaming landscape. It’s a mid-budget game with high-budget writing. It’s a ghost story that is actually about the living. If you want something that will make you pause the game and stare at the wall for five minutes while you weigh a person's life against your own happiness, this is it. Just don't expect to come out of it feeling like a hero. In New Eden, there are no heroes—only survivors and the ghosts they leave behind.