‘It’s not easy to be told you’re in love’: How Don’t Nod reinvented the video game love story
It can be hard to keep up with Don’t Nod. The French studio has established itself with an eclectic oeuvre of mid-budget games featuring a strong emphasis on storytelling, from its sci-fi debut Remember Me to its beloved teen drama Life Is Strange and its latest: Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden.
A follow-up to the studio’s cult-classic 2018 role-playing game Vampyr, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden takes after its predecessor — which saw a physician tormented by his transformation into a vampire in the wake of the Spanish flu pandemic following The Great War — by using the supernatural premise to build out character-driven morality plays, this time with a game-spanning romance.
In Banishers, players take on the dual roles of Red mac Raith and Antea Duarte, partners in love and occupation. The eponymous Banishers, they’re ghost hunters and exorcists faced with a personal crisis when Antea is killed in a haunting and must accompany Red in non-corporeal form. Through the game, as players solve hauntings as the mortal Red and the ghostly Antea, players must continually revisit the question: Will Red resurrect Antea or banish her to the afterlife?
To talk a bit about Banishers’ unique approach to video game morality, romance, and supernatural horror, Polygon spoke with Don’t Nod creative director Philippe Moreau and narrative lead Stéphane Beauverger, who had lots to say about making choices hard for players and the importance of putting players on both sides of a love story.
Polygon: Don’t Nod has made so many different types of games over the years — what would you say a Don’t Nod game is?
Philippe Moreau: We like to do different things, but I think the common ground that we have is that we love to make players responsible, to push them to think about their actions, about the meaning of what they’re doing. Involving people in the game, not just shooting and you just put your brain off.
Stéphane Beauverger: Maybe also a tendency to ask questions more than give answers.
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