It’s looking like we’re not far away from a momentous day in the video games. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on the PS5 has officially been rated by the ESRB.
What does that mean? Well, only things we can speculate or infer right now, mainly that it probably won’t be too much longer until the previously given spring 2025 window for Indy swinging his way onto PS5 becomes a proper release date, joining games like Pentiment and Sea of Thieves which moseyed across the console divide last year.
You’re free to take a look at the rating itself on the ESRB site (thanks, IGN). If you’ve read literally anything about Indy in the past few months, you’ll learn nothing new from it.
“This is an action-adventure game in which players assume the role of Indiana Jones on an adventure to uncover a mystery while defeating villains,” the blurb included with the rating reads, “From a first-person perspective, players explore various locations (e.g., catacombs, tombs, ruins) while solving puzzles and engaging in hand-to hand combat against enemy soldiers. Players can perform stealth attacks and whip attacks to take out enemies discreetly. Players can occasionally use rifles, machine guns, and objects (e.g., shovels, brooms) [to] kill enemies.
“Combat is accompanied by impact sounds, realistic gunfire, and small blood-splatter effects. One sequence depicts a severed arm on the ground; another sequence depicts a corpse impaled on a spike trap, with small blood stains. The text in the game briefly references drugs (e.g., ‘I tried morphine; but the drug has given only transient surcease’; ‘Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling…’). The words ‘a*s,’ ‘bastard’, and ‘p*ss’ are heard in the game.” As someone who’s finished Indy, I can confirm to you that he whips the ass out of some bastard pissers.”
Aside from learning Indy’s favourite words, as I say, the only thing this rating’s useful for is inferring that the previously outlined spring 2025 release of PS5 Indy is likely coming soon, possibly next month or in May. If it’s the former, it’d be dropping on the same calendar page as Forza Horizon 5, which skids onto PS5 April 29.
Will Indy also require you to have a Microsoft account to play it on Sony’s console? Probably, given that’s been a thing for a number of other Xbox titles that’ve had the jump.