Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a 2024 action role-playing game from developer Don't Nod and publisher Focus Entertainment. It launched on 13 February 2024 for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S. Critics gave it generally positive reviews, but it sold poorly for Don't Nod.

The game is a third-person action RPG. Players control two ghost hunters, Antea Duarte and Red mac Raith. They investigate a haunted settlement called New Eden, but Duarte becomes a ghost during the mission. Players use Raith's conventional weapons and Duarte's spirit powers to fight enemies. Choices throughout the game affect the story.

Set in 1695, the story follows banishers—itinerant warrior mystics who banish hauntings. Red is a former Scottish soldier; Antea is a Cuban-born mystic and scholar. They arrive in New Eden at the invitation of their friend, Reverend Charles Davenport. The town is plagued by a malevolent spirit, and Davenport dies of a heart attack after confronting it. The protagonists meet his widow, Esther, and the town's selectmen: Governor Fairefax Haskell, a self-avowed demonologist; militia leader Captain Saul Pennington; and huntress "Thickskin" Newsmith. During their first night, Red cannot find Antea and rushes to the meetinghouse to confront the spirit. It is a powerful ghost called a Nightmare, which kills Antea and hurls Red off a cliff. Red wakes in a cave, tended by a young woman called Seeker, who says her mistress, the witch Siridean, ordered her to help him. Red then meets Antea's ghost, and they vow to return to New Eden to recover her body. The game's direction is set here: they can commit to resurrecting Antea via a necromantic ritual called Lesser Palingenesis, which requires a large sacrifice of people, or let her ascend peacefully.

As the game progresses, the protagonists encounter characters from the prologue after the colony fled New Eden. They learn about each character's role in the trial and execution of a young woman named Deborah Comenius. Captain Pennington, now in the mining town of Mount Pleasant, accused Deborah of witchcraft for introducing his daughter Grace to reading. Governor Fairefax, now in the Harrows, officiated the trial despite his own occult dabbling. Kate Newsmith, Thickskin's sister, was Deborah's secret lover but was too afraid to defend her. Deborah's spirit became a pervasive haunting across the colonial penin