Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden team solved video game romance

It can be difficult to keep up with Don’t Nod. Since its sci-fi debut, the French studio has established itself with a diverse oeuvre of mid-budget games with an emphasis on storytelling Remember me to his popular teen drama Life is strange and the latest: Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden.

A sequel to the studio’s 2018 cult RPG vampireBanishers: Ghosts of New Eden takes cues from its predecessor, in which a doctor was tormented by his transformation into a vampire in the wake of the Spanish flu pandemic following World War I, by using the supernatural premise to create character-driven morality plays, this time with a cross-game romance.

In BanisherThe players slip into the dual roles of Red mac Raith and Antea Duarte, partners in love and work. The eponymous Banishers are ghost hunters and exorcists who face a personal crisis when Antea is killed in a haunting and must accompany Red in disembodied form. As players resolve hauntings involving the mortal Red and the ghostly Antea throughout the game, they must continually ask themselves the question: Will Red revive Antea or banish her to the afterlife?

To talk about it a bit BanisherTaking a unique approach to the morality, romance and supernatural horror of video games, Polygon spoke with Don’t Nod creative director Philippe Moreau and narrative director Stéphane Beauverger, who had a lot to say about making decisions difficult for players and how What’s important is to expose players to both sides of a love story.

Polygon: Don’t Nod has created so many different types of games over the years – what do you think is a Don’t Nod game?

Philippe Moreau: We like to do different things, but I think the commonality that we have is that we love holding players accountable and making them think about their actions, about the meaning of what they are doing do. If you involve people in the game, not just shooting, you’re just chilling your brain.

Image: Don’t Nod/Focus Entertainment

Stephane Beauverger: Maybe also the tendency to ask more questions than give answers.

Don’t Nod’s production has grown over the years as the company has grown. It’s both a studio now [with two locations] and a publisher. Do you think people are aware of this? Does it matter or influence their expectations?

Beauverger: Sometimes it scares us a bit that people start seeing us as a AAA game studio. No no no! We are still small! We are still cautiously developing AA games. We try to be generous and passionate about what we do, but we are not a AAA studio, not at all. I think most of the time we have between three and six or seven projects, including games produced or distributed by Don’t Nod.

Banisher seems to fit it [AA] Mold as a love story. Was your first instinct to make one of these when you started developing it?

Beauverger: The love story came about when we knew we were going to tell a ghost story. We’ve already done something about vampires. What’s new? Mummies? Not very interesting. Werewolves? Uh! Ghosts? OK, ghosts are cool.

What is special about a ghost? They are emotions, regrets, melancholy, secrets, something untold by a deceased who has something to say before deciding forever. A love story about grief was very special to the concept of ghosts.

And ghosts give you the backbone of the game’s morality, what ritual you can use to banish them and who is responsible for a haunting. How do you know when a decision is compelling and difficult for the player?

Beauverger: We try to ensure that the characters you meet have reason to shine and possibly be hated. You have deep motivation. We have some for the mental safety of the player real 100% assholes, so you get a free pass! You can kill them without too much brain torture. However, for the remaining characters, we tried to ensure that every aspect of the story or mystery could be understood. So it’s up to you.

Image: Don’t Nod/Focus Entertainment via Polygon

Moreau: To check if it works, we usually run a lot of playtesting sessions where we can see the different options players choose. And if we find a balance between the different options, that means we’ve done a great job and don’t need to change anything. But if the convergence is too great, maybe we need to adjust the characters a bit, or maybe it’s a story that’s been told wrong. So we may readjust the various clues that players will discover to ensure that they really understand the motivations, that they can connect all the dots of the story, to ensure that they make a real decision at the end.

Beauverger: We also know that statistically, most players prefer to play the good guy. About 75% or 80% of players prefer to play the white knight. So we have to find a way to incite them. Be tempted by the dark side in one way or another. For example, to bring Antea back to life, you have to kill a lot of people.

Does it excite you when you see people taking a long time to make a decision?

Beauverger: Oh, you have no idea. Every time I watch a Twitch stream and someone puts the pad down, I say, “Yes! We made it!”

How do you make the player care deeply about Antea and want to resurrect her when it’s such a morally fraught decision?

Moreau: Antea was a big challenge. We worked on her a lot to make sure that she’s not just a sidekick, that she’s not just here to make an effort, make jokes, or just use some powers at some point. We had golden rules: Antea must be a driving force, a positive force, and she must always be there during the cinematics. If you pay attention, you can see that she is in the picture most of the time, even when she has nothing to say.

Image: Don’t Nod/Focus Entertainment

When it comes to gameplay, we’re making sure you can use it as much as Red. That’s why the Switch feature exists – it wasn’t there when the game was designed. We gave her a lot of skills to ensure that players play as her and to find the right balance between the two characters to ensure that people feel like they are playing a couple.

I guess like the central dilemma in Banisher The focus is on this couple’s moral obligations to each other, not necessarily the morality of earth-shattering decisions like in many other games. To me, it plays on the idea that love makes you something you didn’t know you were, and I’m curious if that’s a lever you wanted to lean on.

Moreau: Yes, that’s why we decided to make a love story, to create that kind of immersion and that kind of complex decisions. Love is something personal, something intimate. So we’re pretty sure that people will react very differently based on their relationship with love. I think it can resonate with people. I hope so.

Beauverger: Another golden rule we had when developing the game was: Red and Antea always work together Couple. And you will play on both sides because we [could have] told the players, “Okay, you play red, you’re in love with this woman, and she’s in love with you.” And you have to accept that fact.”

But since you play both sides of the couple and all decisions are made by both characters, you never agree 100%. That was very important for us. This makes it clear to the player that they are engaging with and controlling a love story and a couple, and not receiving some sort of forced love from another character. A few journalists asked us why there aren’t as many love stories in video games, and I think that’s why. It’s not easy for a player to say, “You’re in love with this woman or this man and you have to act like it.” The.” But if you say: “You are a couple. You play both. This is a package!” It’s easier, I think.