The Revenant and Vampyr inspired Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden

During our time in Germany for Gamescom this year, we had the chance to speak with the developers behind the upcoming Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. We caught up with Don't Nod's Philippe Moreau (game director) and Karim Benfares (executive producer) to talk about their upcoming project. During that interview, which you can see in full below, we asked the pair what their inspiration was for this action-adventure project.

"So in terms of inspiration, let's say The Revenant for the photography, you know, for the setting," said Moreau. "What else? In terms of gameplay, maybe for the combat system, we studied a lot of God of War because we knew that it was a system that fit well with the gameplay. So we tried a very different thing from Vampyr, which was our very first action RPG and we believe that we made this time a very good and dynamic action game."

Benfares then continued, "Yeah, I think that another main inspiration for Banishers is definitely Vampyr. We have to talk about it because in Banishers, we wanted to reuse our know-how we had from Vampyr. And for example, in Vampyr, we had the ambivalent situation for the main character, Jonathan Reed. He's a vampire but a doctor at the same time. And in Banishers, we wanted to keep this ambivalent situation with both characters, Red and Antea. One is alive, one is dead, and they are ghost hunters but they are haunted by a ghost. And it provides a lot of subtlety in terms of situation for the narration. And well, we have moral choices in Banishers like in Vampyr and we are convinced that it creates a lot of complicated choices to make for the player."

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is set to launch on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series consoles on November 7, 2023, and we recently just got to see a ton of additional gameplay for the title, which you can find here.