At the start of March 2024, I finally rolled credits on Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden.
After around 61 hours of ghost slaying, chest opening, haunting solving gameplay I’d managed to unlock 41 of the 43 Achievements, including 3 done after the credits rolled… I went back and found my last 4 items of equipment (all at the end of Voids), milked a relatively simple Nest site until I completed it 11 times in total, and replayed part of the final Void as it contained a potentially easy place to get 5 headshots with the Rifle in one combat encounter.
Looking at the Achievement list I never thought I had a sniff of the full 1,000 Gamerscore… now I’m one, bare bones, run away from completion… and this time I’m going to get my woman back.
Bare bones… the full game has 23 haunting cases, and I need to complete a minimum of 13 of these to have enough “Essence” to perform the ritual bringing Antea back from the dead… part of me still thinks this will be a “bad” ending where Antea is furious at Red for breaking his vow for purely selfish reasons… but it’s time to find out… at the same time I’m curious to see if making different decisions changes much of the story.
Will the trapper settlement fall into ruin if I kill/blame the one competent hunter there? Will Kate refuse to assist me later as a result? What effect will taking out the Blacksmith, sole Cook and Physician there as well? Will the Fort fall into madness and rebellion if I cast out the commander?
Thankfully I have a save after the first banish/blame scenario on the way to the trapper camp… so that’s maybe 6 hours I don’t have to replay… and I don’t have to work on any of the Nests, Voids, Cursed Chests again… simply work through the 4 main quest segments and then maybe another 10 hauntings and onto the final boss battle and alternate ending.
August 13th
I’m now about halfway through the game… having killed the Beast and blamed Thickskin, I moved onto Fort Jericho where I bumped off the old boy in charge and I’m set to move onto the more, bible bashing, settlement further down the map.
Along the way I’ve blamed the fake blacksmith and taken care of the person who was preparing all the meals, and dealt with all the medical issues in the Hunter’s region… personally I’d say that settlement was pretty screwed after that, no Blacksmith, no cook, no medic and a leader who hates herself for letting the people of New Eden chain up her beloved school-mistress.
Nobody claimed that this, obviously much darker, run was going to be a cake walk.
With the old witch now in a much better place, especially considering I’m killing people left right and centre, I ought to be able to consume the minimal number of souls/spirits by the time I reach the end game and still be strong enough to get through the final battles that are ahead.
Here I am thankful that I delayed my return trip to New Eden originally to get all the collectable stuff out of the way, the time spent at Fort Jericho was much reduced, and I even left a couple of haunting cases there untouched in my rampage through the main plot.
August 21st
Well… this I didn’t expect… as I was working on a couple of other side quests I found myself back in the Trapper camp, and thought I’d take the chance to start another haunting case… first time through a Storekeeper was worried that his friend/bodyguard, a female Indian he saved from Slavers, was missing… and you put her ghost to rest.
Now I’m playing and going through working towards bringing Antea back and I head to the same store… and the Storekeep is no more, and his Indian bodyguard is in charge having inherited the store after his death… so they’ve switched the haunted/haunter around here… I had been planning to just mainline the main quest to get the game finished quickly, but now I may take the time to seek out the other Haunting Cases I’ve been ignoring.
Sadly, it doesn’t change much of the haunting case… the story of how the Storekeep was partially (read very) responsible for her tribe being wiped out still plays out… while I lack the imagination to see how they could have played it differently, the “reason” used to blame the living person at the end was reaching a little, granted that could be said of some others, but when I was playing with the aim of ascending all the spirits there seemed more logical reasoning to blame all those people that were being haunted.
August 23rd
Credits have rolled and Antea is back in the land of the living… the final 2 battles, the one in the final void and the 2 part final boss battle were a little harder than before as, this time, I wasn’t as highly levelled as I had been before… first time around I was fully levelled up, with Relics in all equipment slots and all powers honed and balanced… this time I was at level 20 (just) and had barely scratched the last skill tree.
I’d been hammering the main questline to reach the end, pausing only once I found the quest mentioned in the August 21st segment… when I came across another haunting case where the roles had been reversed, again no change to the story so I made the decision to go back to the main plot missions only.
I knew I was close to the end, but when I settled down to an early morning session I was surprised to hit the final battle after 40 minutes… the ending was naturally bitter-sweet, as the narrator hints at a possible sequel plot as he talks of Red and Antea having developed a liking for the forbidden fruit.
Between them they’ve consumed a lot of human souls now, how would people who swore an oath to protect human life cope with this going forward?
It went on Ebay that weekend, while it’s a definite contender for my game of the year, I can’t see myself going back and playing through it again, and there has been no mention of any DLC, or even how they would implement it… if they knock out a sequel down the line I’ll be there… I knew when I bought it that I’d most likely enjoy my time there… I just didn’t realise how much.