Machine Games always seemed like an unlikely developer to helm Indiana Jones’ next foray into video games. Aside from the team’s intimate understanding of how to brutalize Nazis in gratifying ways, the studio behind the recent Wolfenstein games isn’t an obvious choice for recreating the franchise’s classic pulp. And the reveal that Indiana Jones And The Great Circle would be a first-person adventure further stoked uncertainty about the direction of the upcoming Xbox exclusive.
After seeing more than 20 minutes of gameplay for the upcoming title, it’s safe to say that skeptical Indiana Jones fans should rest easy. Machine Games clearly understands what a good Indy adventure should and shouldn’t be. And while some design choices — like the focus on puzzle solving and laying low — might alienate gamers looking for something more aligned with Machine Games’ past work, the studio has created a recipe that feels authentic to the films.
“The starting point for us was to try to ignore the shooting part.”
Indiana Jones And The Great Circle follows the archeologist’s investigation of a stolen artifact at the Vatican, set in between the events of Raiders Of The Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. While early trailers have shown some outlandish setpieces (including Indy running across the wingspan of a fighter plane midflight) the gameplay shown during our preview tonally aligned with the franchise’s first and third films.
This more grounded approach to an Indiana Jones adventure is why much of my skepticism about the game dissipated. Machine Games has no intention to make Indiana Jones any more of an action hero than he is in the films, a welcome bit of restraint when translating the character to the playable medium.
The focus of our preview was a level in Egypt where Indy is trying to enter a secret passageway underneath the Great Sphinx of Giza. The demo kicked off with a brief fight with three Nazi guards. After taking out two of them with a mix of his trusty whip and fisticuffs, Indy fired a single bullet from his revolver to take out a Nazi in the distance.
I expected the rest of the demo to keep showcasing how uncharacteristically combat-ready Indiana is. But to my surprise, there was very little of it. Instead, the protagonist spent the next six minutes doing things that felt ripped straight out of the storyboards crafted by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. When he and his partner, Italian journalist Gina, can’t gain access to the Sphinx, Indiana pours over documents for clues, discovering that a golden medallion in Nazi possession is the key to entering the ancient site.
Instead of charging into a nearby Nazi camp guns-blazing, Indiana donned a disguise as a local servant to stealthy gain access. While in his disguise, Indy is confronted by a guard who demands he serve him water, forcing the player to comply while in search of the medallion. It was a tense moment that called back to Indy’s confrontation with Adolf Hitler in The Last Crusade.
For the rest of the demo, the action remained secondary to Indy’s use of wits and cunning. Once inside the Sphinx, Indiana spent the next few minutes carefully navigating the deadly obstacles within and solving a light puzzle. Players collect clues on how to solve the puzzle by snapping photos of statues in the room with Indy’s camera, a crucial tool used to gain helpful knowledge throughout the adventure. Snapping photos also rewards the player with Adventure Points, which can be spent to give Indy perks and special abilities.
The demo ended with Indiana desperately fleeing the hidden chamber of the Sphinx as the room filled rapidly with sand. The daring escape, again, felt like the real deal. A highlight reel of gameplay seemed to show that cinematic escapes like these, as well as careful stealth levels, fisticuffs, and environmental puzzles will be the brunt of the action in Indiana Jones and The Great Circle.
Game director Jerk Gustafsson tells Inverse that gunplay has been secondary to ensuring the rest of the game is engaging.
“The starting point for us was to try to ignore the shooting part,” Gustafsson says. “We know that we can do it well, so it's never something that would ever concern us. We know that we can get that right. So very early on, we did this pie chart with different types of experiences. Everything from stuff like hand-to-hand, navigation, and traversal. We started our focus on those things that we knew were going to be challenging, especially in first-person.”
It would have been easy to center The Great Circle around great gunplay. While that would have been fun considering the developer’s caliber, it would also be a betrayal of the character. Indiana Jones isn’t John Wick or B.J. Blazkowicz of Wolfenstien. He’s a rugged archeologist who will always use his brain before falling back on his revolver as a last resort. Indy firing a single bullet across our entire demo was a refreshing surprise. It perfectly showcased a fundamental understanding of one of cinema’s greatest characters in a way that should excite any can of the movies.
The result of Machine Games’ restraint is an adaptation that looks like it will have more in common with adventure games of the past, including the excellent Indiana Jones and The Fate Of Atlantis. If the final game is as focused on puzzle solving and centering Indiana’s intelligence as this demo, Indiana Jones And The Great Circle could be both a great Indiana Jones adventure and one of the year’s most subversive adventures.
Indiana Jones And The Great Circle will release on Xbox Series X|S and PC this Fall and on PS5 in Spring of 2025.
