Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: Whip and Brains Instead of Guns

Anyone who fears that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will be more of a shooter than an action-adventure, like Uncharted, need not worry, the developers have other priorities.

If you believe the developers, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle couldn’t really stick closer to the spirit of the films. Because even though developer Machine Games has a lot of expertise in the shooter genre thanks to Wolfenstein, the use of firearms is not a priority in the Indy game, quite the opposite.

Creative Director Axel Torvenius confirmed this in an interview with Edge. “We don’t encourage gunplay,” Torvenius said. “It’s not promoted as the primary way forward. The primary way forward is always trying to use your wits and your whip.” The reason is that an Indiana Jones game that focuses on shooting wouldn’t have done the character justice.

And he continues: “Indy has no superpowers. You can often tell that he doesn’t find it easy to win a fight. Ultimately, he is a teacher and a somewhat clumsy archaeologist.”

It would not do the character justice if he were to constantly shoot at all enemies. Furthermore, shooting at enemies is dangerous in terms of gameplay, as is being shot at, because the noise could, for example, trigger an alarm or bring reinforcements.

“We have a game where there are a lot of weapons, but you choose not to use them because it’s too loud and too dangerous,” he said. “You can pick up a gun and use it as a melee weapon. That’s a very in-character use of a weapon for Indiana Jones.”

This of course requires sophisticated close combat mechanisms, not forgetting the use of the whip. We are very excited to see how Machine Games manages to do this. According to the first impressions that colleague Denis was able to gather during a presentation for his preview of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, it could work: “I find it extremely astonishing how adeptly Machine Games manages to combine elements from all of these games under one brown fedora, be it in terms of exploration, puzzles or action. The fact that the fistfight system contains strategic elements and is not satisfied with simple button mashing goes far beyond what you would call standard fare.”