Banishers Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

Good Morning Friends! Yesterday was the beginning of the Geoff Keighley replacement for E3 called the Summer Games Fest. Quite honestly I think I like this construct better as it is something that sort of meanders its way through the summer connecting a number of disparate events and looping in Gamescom as part of it. I am going to talk about a few games that piqued my interest, but really… you are going to have to listen to me gush about the new Path of Exile II Teaser that we got as part of it. All in all, I think the show was well worth your time, so if you are interested you can check out the official video here.

Path of Exile II

It would not be Path of Exile if we did not start on a beach somewhere. The challenge with this teaser is that it is very much the definition of a “sizzle reel”. In the gameplay trailer from two years ago, the game did not feel that fundamentally different from POE1. This however feels way more story driven as combat unfolds as you are clearly investigating a location. I also find it deeply interesting that just a very short way into the fight the character seems to do a dodge roll, which makes me wonder if this means that like D4 and D3 on the console… POE2 is adding some sort of an evade button. This does worry me a bit because the way movement abilities work in Path of Exile generally negates the need for an evasion button. However Ruthless mode lacks movement abilities of the same caliber as the base game, so it does make me a bit concerned that they are leaning into that more sluggish gameplay style that bugs me with Diablo IV.

The other thing that is interesting in the trailer is that the character seems to be using a lot of abilities. Like in Path of Exile, you tend to build around one main ability and I guess in part this is due to the lack of access to multiple six links. However with Gems working completely differently in Path of Exile and them socketing support gems into ability gems… does that mean we will have access to a six link for every ability? Again this sort of concerns me in a different way because it makes me wonder if we are going to be forced to use a ton of different abilities due to cooldowns on each individual one. Again the cooldowns and the sluggish pace of combat in Diablo IV drive me up a wall, so it does concern me a bit that what I am scrying from this teaser might be heralding a slower-paced Path of Exile experience. Slower-paced does not equate to a more enjoyable experience for me at least. I guess we will have to wait until ExileCon at the end of July to see more details.

Alan Wake 2

I was happy to see more discussion about Alan Wake 2. The more I see of this the more I am interested. It seems like you will be shifting between Alan and a new character called Saga. It sounds like essentially Saga will be playing through the story that Alan is telling, with the ability to shift back and forth between the characters at various points. My biggest hope is that we also get a crossover with either Director Faden herself or at least some Federal Bureau of Control agents. I am here for Alan Wake, but what I am even more here for is the expansion of this nonsense shared “Remedyverse”.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden

Another game that we are getting to see a bit more of is Banishers, which feels like a gaslight-era game where you play a medium of a sort that can banish restless spirits. What is interesting about this specific trailer is it adds a bit of the hook of the game. It seems like you have lost your partner and have to make a Bioshock-like decision do you spare the inflicted humans, or do you steal their life essence in a vague attempt to resurrect your love? The combat looks interesting and the visuals are most excellent. I want to play through this whenever it lands but given my affinity for “forever games”, it will likely have to wait until a holiday break when I seem to grind through a bunch of single-player stories at once.

John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando

I feel like this game is calling me out directly. I still love Zombie movies and games. I am not tired of them. I was a fan of the Zombie genre long before it blew up with Walking Dead, and I am still a fan all these years later after that same series more or less ruined it for the masses. This seems like a Bulletstorm-style nonsense shooter with lots of zombies and an 80s soundtrack. Putting “John Carpenter” in front of it is also a siren song for those of us who grew up idolizing Snake Pliskin. Will I actually play it? Who the fuck knows. It is going to have to compete with all the other games that seem to look just interesting enough to buy, but never critical enough for me to actually devote the time to finishing them.

Space Marine 2

There are a lot of Warhammer games out there. At some point Games Workshop went from carefully curating their licenses to the maximalist approach of letting anyone use their licenses… which resulted in a ton of shovelware. Space Marine is maybe the single best game that ties into the Warhammer franchise and it is good enough to stand alone as an amazing experience even if you do not care one iota about Adeptus Astartes. I’ve been playing Boltgun lately which apparently sits in between the story of the first and second game, and I am highly looking forward to ripping into things with my chain sword again in non-retro glory. Well worth checking out the first game if you have never played it as well.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

The Prince of Persia reboot… got rebooted again. Do I have any faith that this one will actually make it to market? Absolutely not. However, I do have to say that this looks much better than the previous attempt at rebooting this franchise. I like the focus on a more 2.5D feeling harkening back to the original games a bit at times. The Sands of Time remake may at some point make its way out of development hell, but this definitely looks way more interesting.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

They closed out the show with a powerhouse and gave us footage of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. I am here for this game and unlike many single-player outings, this really probably will be a day-one play for me. I loved the Remake and the Yuffie expansion, and quite honestly dig the action reboot of this series way more than a turn-based option. I get that this is a divisive thing, but it works for me personally. I honestly even liked the tweaks and changes to the setting that this alternate version of the world has presented. The open world looks gorgeous and apparently, on consoles this is going to be a two-disc game, which seems like nonsense. I feel like you are either into this with all of your heart, or you have long since checked out of everything Final Fantasy VII related and just do not care in the least. FFVII is not my favorite of the series by any means, but I greatly enjoyed the first bits of this reboot universe so I am here for the continuation.

I think the next show that I am looking forward to as part of Summer Games Fest would be the Xbox/Bethesda showcase at 10 AM PDT on the 11th. It apparently also has a follow-up “Starfield Direct” with a further deep dive into that game since we are getting closer to its launch. I often watch the PC Gaming Show as well since it occasionally has some weird PC-only gems in it. That takes place on the 11th but a bit later in the day at 1 PM PDT. The Capcom and Ubisoft show on the 12th are definitely going to be “look at any relative trailers later” shows because I am not that deeply connected to either publisher. Quite honestly I think I am bored with the Ubisoft formula at this point, and I am not into a return to stealth gameplay with the Assassin’s Creed franchise either. It may not be E3… but it certainly feels like the same sort of experience that I used to have watching the streams leading up to the official trade show that none of us had access to anyways. As much as Geoff Keighley claims that he didn’t kill E3… he certainly helped prove that the companies no longer actually needed a costly in-person show.

I spent my night like so many gamers did while trying to maintain a connection to the Game Awards stream on both Steam.tv and Twitch.tv so I could earn potential rewards in both locations. I think everyone was out chasing the possibility of winning a Steam Deck, and it seems as though maybe Valve had some technical difficulties with this giveaway because about 20 minutes into the show they finally seemed to start announcing the winners. I did not win a Steam Deck which is probably a good thing because I already have one… but I promise it would have gone to a good home if I did end up with a second one. Here is hoping someone out there that I know actually managed to snag one.

We all know we tune into “The Game Awards” for the cavalcade of trailers because the rewards themselves are largely inconsequential. They will feature some esports people you have never heard of and a bunch of games that you didn’t play… with a single AAA game winning almost every single award. This year I thought it was going to be all about Elden Ring but it seems that God of War Ragnarok was the main character of the evening. What was significantly different this year however is how I commented about what I was seeing. Normally speaking on a game show like this I would have Twitter open and keep a running sequence of commentary going along with all of my other friends doing the same thing. Since I am no longer on Twitter however a few of us opted for something different.

I spent a delightful evening hanging out with Arkenor, Scopique, and Tipa as we attempted to all stay in synch while hanging out on voice chat while watching the show. It did not work as planned. The original goal was to have everyone tune in to discord which would in theory rebroadcast the same stream at the same time to all of us so we would be able to comment on the same things. What ended up happening instead is that the rebroadcast was wigging out for a few people, which lead some of us to be watching YouTube, others on Twitch, and myself trying to keep tabs on the Steam version of the broadcast. This caused some hilariously out-of-sequence comment moments, but in spite of all of that, it was a heck of a lot of fun. This is definitely the most enjoyable way to watch a big corporate games presentation.

There were way too many things covered to talk about in a blog post, so here are some of my rapid-fire comments about the things that really stood out to me on a personal level.

Dead Cells Return to Castlevania

You had me at Castlevania. I enjoy Dead Cells but have not played it anywhere near as much as I should. Once this DLC drops I will do my best to remedy this failure. I have so many fond memories of the Belmonts, and Alucard, and count Symphony of the Night as my one true favorite game of all time. There was no way I was not going t o play this.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden

This looks really interesting. It gives me deep Witcher vibes as maybe a more spiritualist/druidic take on that franchise. The trailer definitely piqued my interest enough to wishlist this. My hope is it feels like the big open-world witcher nonsense that I love so much. It definitely seems like the sort of game I would go in for.

Hellboy: Web of Wyrd

Scopique and I were talking about this during the show, but we did not realize that we had apparently not gotten a Hellboy game before now. This is apparently not true and that there were two games previously… one in 2000 and one in 2004 but I remember the existence of neither. What impressed me about this game particularly is how closely it seemed to replicate the unique art stylings of Mike Mignola. I love Hellboy and more particularly I love the Hellboy comics. I will be watching this game closely.

Star Wars Jedi Survivor

I don’t have this problem when I am playing the game but in person… I cannot see Cameron Monaghan as anything other than his character from Shameless which is a hilarious show if you have never watched it. I loved Jedi Fallen Order so this is absolutely going to be a “day one drop everything else” type game for me. I will be picking it up on the PC and I will be ignoring again the warnings against playing with a keyboard and mouse because that control scheme greatly improved my enjoyment of the first title. I will also be playing this on a low difficulty because at that point it no longer feels like a “soulslike”.

Judas

Bioshock in Outer Space? Yes please, sign me the fuck up. Like if you had told me nothing else about this game but that elevator pitch you would have had me on board with it. I loved the Bioshock games and played the first two multiple times. There was something about Infinite that made me less interested in the replay. Regardless I am extremely interested in this game.

Dune Awakening

Okay, I love the Dune franchise and have been wanting to have a Dune-based MMORPG since I first started playing these games in the 2000s. There were a few rumored projects that went nowhere and now we have Funcom carrying this banner forward. Funcom is both the company behind Secret World that I loved and Conan that I had no interest in. I am hoping this does not end up being a forced PVP murder box and has a way in which I can play it in a purely PVE-focused nature. I am not super optimistic however because I am almost certain that faction lines will be drawn crossed the Great Houses of the Landsraad.

Hades II

I have to be honest, this reveals somewhat shocked me. When I saw Supergiant scroll across the screen I remember commenting to my friends that I wondered what genre they would be tackling this time. Basically, up until this point, each time Supergiant released a game it would dive into a new style of gameplay. Bastion was mostly a Zelda-like beat-em-up, Transistor was a strategic dungeon crawler, Pyre was a story-driven “sportsball” game, and Hades was maybe the purest version of the rogue-lite I had seen in a while. I guess Hades was just too popular not to warrant a direct sequel. I am on board for more Hades world from a different perspective, but also I am kinda hoping that the studio has gotten big enough to have folks also be working on another quirky venture into a new genre.

Death Stranding 2

This was my highlight of the evening without a doubt. I loved Death Stranding and I played it at a very specific moment in life, during the lockdowns of the pandemic… and as a result, the storyline felt deeply poignant. I want to know more about this world and it seems like we are going to get that. I became way the heck too attached to BB, which I know is a bit weird. I am just hoping we get a simultaneous release on PC and Console because I have no interest in trying to play this with a controller. It was excellent with a mouse and keyboard and I want more of that.

Reformed Orthodox Rabbi Bill Clinton

The highlight of the night however was at the very end of the show, when a kid seemingly snuck up on stage along with the confused developers of FROM Software. This gave The Game Awards their “Soy Bomb” moment, so I guess they have officially arrived on the world’s stage. Essentially after the devs gave their comments, the kid sneaks up to the microphone and in a faux broken English accent he dedicates the award to his “reformed orthodox rabbi Bill Clinton”. According to Geoff Keighley, he was arrested… which I guess is a bit sad because it added a moment of true levity to an otherwise stuffy occasion. There is another twitter thread indicating he did something similar on Info Wars with a Free Taiwan message, but I have not been able to find a clip of whatever that was. The same thread also indicates that he had planned this ahead of time.

Did you watch The Game Awards? What were your highlights? Drop me a line below.