Among the game’s challenges, of course, is to blend these halves convincingly.
The titular Banishers are a ghost-hunting couple, the Scotsman Red MacRaith and the Cuban Antea Duarte.
The process of investigating a ghost blends straightforward CSI sleuthing and dialogue interrogations with a touch of spellcraft.
Suffice to say that Ben hadnt just got lost picking daisies in the woods.
The setting is also more intriguing than I expected, though Dont Nods recentJusantisby far the more compelling creation.
I might have more to say in the weeks to come.
RPS: Can you change your mind about whether to resurrect or ascend Antea as the game goes on?
Elise Galmard (EG): Yeah, that’s definitely the idea.
We make you swear an oath at the beginning of the game.
Or on the other side, you decide that actually, these people deserve to die.
This is something we’ve already tested in Vampyr, that it worked from the players perspective.
I think we’re just doing what we do best.
Its our goal to always challenge the players to question themselves, by creating very different stories.
Its a very rich source of ghost stories for the narrative team.
It helped us create this very multi-dimensional setting, and a set of people that are very complicated.
And that’s what makes it even more difficult - that you understand them.
And so that’s, I think, definitely a victory.
PM: What did you do with Jacob?
Preview events give me a chance to be nasty!
EG: Well, sometimes you will really want to Blame people!
RPS: This seems very heavily inspired by Vampyr.
Can you tell me what youve brought back from that game and what you wanted to do differently?
This is the key feature that we have kept in Banishers.
We’ve tried to really diversify the way we do investigations.
Do you explore the idea of a colonised land being haunted at length in the game?
EG: It’s not an overarching theme.
And so this is something that she has lived herself.
And so it’s mentioned, it’s acknowledged, its respected.
It’s not the theme of our game, but it’s definitely something that is acknowledged for sure.
EG: Yeah, we have a lot of sensitivity readers.
In terms of people who were directly involved, for sure.
PM: Thats quite a difficult question.
How did we do that?
In this setting, it was easier to create our own world with its own rules and limits.
So in terms of spaces, we were very free.
I think the lighting also plays a big role in the atmosphere.
It’s all about landmark points of interest, leading the players where we want them to go.
That’s not really how we envision our world.
RPS: I like that - I’m very burned out onopen worldswhere theres so much to do.
On that note, can you tell me about how Dont Nod is set up right now?
How many people do you have on the books?
How many people are working on this, versus other projects?
Thats all I can say.
RPS: Im not fishing, I promise!
What has been the major source of your growth, over the past few years?
PM: The biggest success is Vampyr, definitely.
So yeah, that’s how it works - trying to find partnerships with different publishers.
I hope that Banishers will also be a hit.
EG: We definitely have two sorts of fanbases at Dont Nod.
And yeah, that’s great!
