Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, the now-confirmed name of the adventure game in the works at Wolfenstein studio MachineGames under the watchful eye of Bethesda and executive producer Todd Howard, is set between the plots of the first and third films.
During today's Xbox Developer Direct live show, designers from MachineGames laid out when and how the game's narrative picks up. It's set between the stories of the first and third Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. (The second film, Temple of Doom, was set before the first film, hence the somewhat confusing framing.)
"When our game begins, Indiana is working at Marshall College," the plot summary goes. "He wakes up in the middle of the night to the sounds of a break-in and rushes to confront the thief in the College museum. The mysterious giant of a man marks off with what seems to be a historically insignificant artifact, sparking Indiana's curiosity. Following the trail, Indiana heads to the Vatican hoping to learn why this particular relic was stolen and discovers that things aren't what they appear."
In a separate press release, the game is said to take Indy from "the heart of the Vatican, the pyramids of Egypt, the snow-peaked Himalayas, and beyond." In a blog post, Bethesda adds "the lush and sunken temples of Sukhothai" to the sightseeing list.
We also learned a fair bit about Indy's partner, fellow protagonist Gina, who's said to have "a personal stake in getting to the bottom of the core mystery." Gina is a reporter who was chasing a lead well before Indy got caught up in this artifact mess, and ends up working with the professor on the hunt.
MachineGames describes the main villain of the Great Circle as maybe its "favorite one yet," which is saying something after the, uh, memorable antagonists of the Wolfenstein reboots. Emmerich Voss is described as an "intensely psychological man" obsessed with the human mind, and depicted as an in-your-face creep who savors every syllable of his threats.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is out this year, and looks like first-person Uncharted with Wolfenstein combat and more Nazis.
