Indiana Jones and the Great Circle made a big appearance at the Xbox Games Showcase 2024 last weekend, showing new gameplay, revealing new story elements, and treating us to an extended scene in the Himalayas where Indiana and his new companion Gina try to recover a relic while evading the clutches of Colonel Viktor Gantz.
In a special episode of the official Xbox podcast, host Malik Prince talked more about the trailer and the game in general. Guests included MachineGames Game Director Jerk Gustafsson and Production Director John Jennings. If you want to see the full interview, check it out below – or read on to find out the new details.
Indiana Jones and the Great CircleDevelopment is in full swing and what we’ve seen of the game promises a truly authentic Indiana Jones adventure – both in terms of storyline and gameplay.
“The story begins when an ancient relic is stolen from the college where Indiana Jones works,” explains Gustafsson. “He is determined to track down the thief and stumbles upon this ancient conspiracy surrounding the Great Circle theory, as we call it. The Great Circle is a strange arrangement of ancient sites around the globe, with a number of mysterious artifacts connected to it. But Indy is not the only one looking for answers. The enemy is searching the world for these artifacts because they believe they hold some kind of power – and to stop them, there is only one thing they can do: they must find the artifacts first.”
So we embark on a classic globe-trotting adventure that begins in the halls of Indiana’s beloved Marshall College before taking us to the Himalayas, the ancient jungle sites of Sukhothai in Thailand, the Vatican (an entirely new setting for an Indiana Jones project), the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, and more. It’s the kind of premise you’d hope for from an Indiana Jones story, but it comes from a perhaps unexpected source:
“It actually started with an idea from [Bethesda Game Studios director and executive producer] “Todd Howard,” said Gustafsson. “He had been thinking about creating a story around the concept of the Great Circle for years, and when we got this opportunity to work on an Indiana Jones game, it seemed like the perfect combination.”
Of course, that idea was just the starting point, and the team at MachineGames worked incredibly closely with Lucasfilm Games to ensure their original adventure felt true to the films it was set alongside.
“We spent countless hours rewatching the films – especially the two films closest to the game, Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade,” said Gustafsson. “In addition, we have one of the best resources through our partnership with Lucasfilm Games, and working with them on this project was invaluable. That wealth of knowledge about the character was just fantastic.”
“It was great to connect with writers and art directors from Lucasfilm, people who have worked on the Indiana Jones franchise for decades,” Jennings continued. “To hear their opinions – I mean, some of these people know everything that has ever been written about Indy – and it was incredibly valuable to have them to share ideas and provide input of my own.”
This partnership also brought benefits for the team’s fans: “We managed to access some of the Lucasfilm archives as well,” Jennings said, “which was an absolute dream for Indy fans because we got access to some of these things that maybe not as many people have seen.”
The research was deep. The team’s writers and artists studied not only the films, but also comics and books, and had replicas of Indy’s costume made – including his iconic fedora, reproduced by the same hatter who made the original for Raiders of the Lost Ark. On the music side, longtime Lucasfilm Games collaborator Gordy Haab (who recently won a Grammy for his work on the Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Soundtrack) was brought in to create a score that John Williams would be proud of.
That authenticity extends to the characters involved, too. While most of the cast are brand new faces for the franchise, the latest trailer showed us more of Indy’s friend Marcus Brody: “Since we’re starting the story at Marshall College, it made sense to have Marcus there to ground it in the familiarity of Indy’s home base,” Gustafsson said – before announcing that we’ll also see cameos from other classic characters throughout the story.
The most important element for authenticity was, of course, to portray Indy himself correctly, and the team found the perfect partner in renowned actor Troy Baker:
“It was perhaps an unexpected choice at first, but from the moment we saw his audition tape, we were absolutely thrilled,” said Jennings. “He’s just a great actor. He put so much effort into the role too – you can tell he’s just a huge, huge Indiana Jones fan. […] We were just in a [voiceover] “I had a session with him recently and he would improvise lines. You know, ‘Wouldn’t Indy say it like this?’ Or we would comment on lines we had written that we thought were subtle Easter eggs just for the diehard Indy fans, and he would get it right away.”
Baker’s performance isn’t just limited to a great impersonation of Harrison Ford. “He’s not just a voice actor, he’s the whole thing,” Jennings continued. “We do full performance capture: body, face and voice all captured at the same time. And he’s got the physical acting down, too. He captures the character of Indy really, really well – especially his character in the first few movies, the earlier ones, which is obviously where our game is set. He just does it perfectly.”
This was a new development process for MachineGames, and so was the game itself. “This game is a little bit different for us in many ways,” said Gustafsson. “We’re used to having heavy weapons and shooters with guns blazing – and this is a little bit different. We’re making a real adventure game here.”
While the team’s acclaimed Wolfenstein games were brutal, hectic shooters, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle offers an experience more worthy of the world’s most famous archaeologist.
“He solves problems with his mind first and really relies on his intelligence rather than these over-the-top fights that we’ve seen or done in the Wolfenstein games,” explained Gustafsson. “When you play the game, in most cases, choosing the more authentic, stealthy Indy route – or just a classic fistfighting game – benefits the player and also makes for a very fun and challenging experience.”
When we play as Indy, we don’t roam the world, but stop to solve puzzles and try to avoid conflict whenever possible. The team wanted to avoid turning the character we know into a superhero.
“He has weaknesses, he makes mistakes, he stumbles, his movements are heavy and the action has this gritty, pulpy quality to it,” Gustafsson continued. “But at the same time he’s also quite athletic, he’s an excellent fighter and he’s also enormously lucky – and at the same time he’s the best archaeologist in the world. By focusing on all of these things, the game feels in some ways like those classic matinee action adventures that were celebrated in the movies, something that I think Indy himself also embodies in some ways.”
To achieve this, the game will be played primarily in first person – a perspective that MachineGames is very familiar with and allows players to really feel like they are in the game’s skin. It’s also an exciting difference in the overall action-adventure genre. However, at key moments, we will see the character in third person, allowing us to experience these cinematic moments from the outside.
And speaking of cinematic moments, the trailer ended with a nod to perhaps one of the most famous scenes in film history – Indy escaping from a rolling boulder. We had to ask how that made it into the game and if we could play it. But Gustafsson wanted to keep one secret first. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle arrives:
“Unfortunately, this is one of those things where I just have to say, ‘You’ll have to wait and see.'”
Play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Day one on Game Pass when it launches on Xbox Series X|S and PC later this year.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Bethesda Softworks
Solve one of history’s greatest mysteries in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle™, a single-player first-person adventure set between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark™ and The Last Crusade™. The year is 1937, sinister forces scour the globe in search of the secret of an ancient power tied to the Great Circle, and only one person can stop them – Indiana Jones™. Become the legendary archaeologist in this cinematic action-adventure game from MachineGames, the award-winning studio behind the recent Wolfenstein series, and executive produced by Hall of Fame game designer Todd Howard. YOU ARE INDIANA JONES Adventure as Indy in a thrilling story filled with exploration, compelling action, and intriguing puzzles. As a brilliant archaeologist – famous for his sharp wit, cunning ingenuity and signature humor – you travel the world in a race against hostile forces to unlock the secrets of one of the greatest mysteries of all time. A WORLD OF SECRETS AWAITS YOU Journey from the halls of Marshall College to the heart of the Vatican, the pyramids of Egypt, the sunken temples of Sukhothai and beyond. When a middle-of-the-night break-in ends in a confrontation with a mysterious, colossal man, you must set out to uncover the earth-shattering secret behind the theft of a seemingly unimportant artifact. You’ll forge new alliances and face familiar enemies, compete with fascinating characters, use cunning and wit to solve ancient puzzles and survive thrilling situations. WHIP-SHOCKING ACTION Indiana’s trademark weapon is the whip, which remains the centerpiece of his kit and can be used to distract, disarm, and attack enemies. But the whip isn’t just a weapon, it’s Indy’s most valuable tool for navigating the environment. Swing over unsuspecting patrols and scale walls as you make your way through an impressive world. Combine stealthy infiltration, hand-to-hand combat, and gunplay to combat the enemy threat and unravel the mystery. THE SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY Venture through a dynamic mix of linear, narrative-driven gameplay and open-world maps. Unleash your inner explorer and uncover a world of intriguing secrets, deadly traps, and fiendish puzzles, where anything could hide the next piece of the mystery – or snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?
