Trailers for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle have nailed the tone of the franchise. The triumphant John Williams theme song, Harrison Ford’s sly smirk, all accompanied with the crack of a whip and the distant howl of a Wilhelm scream. These are stylistic staples in the 43-year-old franchise that has had five films, a handful of games, and a TV show. There’s no doubt that developer MachineGames understands the look and feel of Indy, but questions have lingered around its ability to capture playing as the globetrotter. Now that I’ve had some hands-on time with the game, it’s clear to me MachineGames understands more than just the aesthetic of Indiana Jones, but also what it means to be Indiana Jones. The result is a promising prospect not just for fans of the franchise, but the adventure genre as a whole.
Taking place between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, The Great Circle sees the titular character a year removed from his globe-trotting adventures, having been teaching archaeology at the fictional Marshall College in the interim. At the beginning of my hands-on time, I wasn’t thrust instantly into a big action set piece, but instead I got to walk around as Dr. Henry Walton Jones Jr. the professor, rather than Indiana Jones the adventurer. This is an important distinction, as it presented a more relatable tone with the character, and a steady sense of pacing that allowed me to take in its environments rather than run through them–characteristics I was happy to see present for the entirety of my 90 minutes of hands-on time, all the way from Marshall College to the mini-sandbox of Giza.
Dr. Jones’s time-off from adventuring is put to an end, however, when he comes face-to-face with a towering intruder, portrayed by the menacing presence of Tony Todd, who steals an artifact from the college’s gallery and beats the crap out of Jones. With an artifact gone and its mystery thief on the run, Professor Jones hangs up the tweed sports coat in exchange for his brown leather jacket and fedora.
Before heading across the world on a new adventure, I was allowed to spend more time in the college, where I was able to explore a side of Indy–or Dr. Jones the professor, rather–that I had only seen glimpses of in the films. I was left to clean up the thief’s mess, picking up artifacts and placing them back in their rightful cases based on historical cues like hieroglyphics, playing like an environmental riddle and laying the seeds for the importance of observation for the puzzles to come.
The game’s first-person perspective made looking at the artifacts in Indy’s hands feel more tangible and immersive. Even inspecting Indy’s notebook–which you do often–feels seamless, as he opens it in front of you without pausing the game, so you can look at maps and notes in real-time without covering your viewpoint, allowing you to still observe and walk around the environment.
MachineGames understands more than just the aesthetic of Indiana Jones, but also what it means to be Indiana Jones
It was during this time as Dr. Jones that the game reinforced this Clark Kent/Superman-like theme; that Dr. Jones is a mere alter ego to the larger-than-life adventurer Indiana Jones. It’s a motif that came up later in the preview, when an old friend of Indy’s didn’t recognize him without his glasses, tweed suit, and bowtie. It feels intentional, especially in a particular scene when Indy puts his hat on, accompanied with the swelling notes of a John Williams-like score. The scene had the same effect as Christopher Reeves’s Clark Kent taking off his glasses and standing up straight to reveal he is Superman (which also features a John Williams score). It’s a simple trick, maybe even corny, but was effective enough to put a smile on my face. It’s moments like this that, while small, capture the character’s whimsy spirit better than even some of its own films do at times. Impressively, whether it’s playing as the college professor or the scrappy world explorer, that same spirit seems to be infused through every element of gameplay, especially in combat.
Despite those Superman comparisons, Indiana Jones is not indestructible. And I learned quickly that taking on enemies face-to-face or fist-to-fist was rarely the best course of action. On one hand, clobberin’ guys with punches feels appropriately cumbersome. There’s a weightiness to it that can feel satisfying when blocking an opponent’s punch, which can then be followed with an equally rewarding well-executed right hook to the face that leaves their face more and more swollen with each blow. On the other hand, however, combat often felt claustrophobic due to the first-person perspective, which led to rather clumsy brawls that can quickly become chaotic when taking on more than one enemy. My feelings could change after the full release, when I can play at my own pace rather than feeling the pressure of a preview event where my time with the game is limited. For now, I think of it as less a criticism and more of an indication that there is a learning curve in understanding my limits as Indiana Jones, which in turn encouraged me to be more creative in how I approached combat.
Thankfully, there’s a lot of player expression in how you can approach a fight–or how you can avoid them entirely thanks to the game’s excellent stealth system. After learning I wasn’t the best at hand-to-hand combat, I fell into a rhythm of finding items around me, whether it was shovel, an empty bottle, or a guitar, and using those to wail on those damned Nazis. I also found this fighting method to be genuinely funny, as I often used my whip to knock a weapon out of an enemy’s hand, only to snag it for myself and beat them to a pulp with it. It didn’t get old.
As Indiana Jones, you also have a pistol. But, to my surprise, I was extremely reluctant to use it. When I had to shoot my way out of a situation, it felt as if I was admitting I had run out of ideas–a feeling I had never felt in MachineGames’ other Nazi-killing game, Wolfenstien. This is one of the strongest examples of how MachineGames has honed in on the spirit of being Indiana Jones: Sure, Indy has shot and killed his share of people in the films, but it’s always secondary to his improvisational fighting antics, and this is exemplified by the game’s design rather than ever explicitly telling me how to play, or overloading me with ammunition.
From the tight halls of the Vatican to the open areas of Giza, the game presented me multiple solutions to every combat encounter, whether it was a clean break to escape, a frying pan in arm’s reach, finding a disguise, or just an old-fashioned brawl. Pulling out a gun was the equivalent of descending into panic and using it only brought more unwanted attention to me.
To my surprise, shooting a Nazi in the face didn’t feel nearly as rewarding as yanking a bad guy’s feet from under him and watching him get knocked out cold from smashing his face into a chair. This reliance on guns is further de-emphasized by allowing each gun to also be used as a melee weapon. Once, when facing-off against a Nazi with a machine gun, I yanked the gun from their hands, picked it up, flipped it upside down, and swung it right into their face.
Sneaking around the Vatican, scouting alternate routes, and taking out enemies, in my own unique way, gave my Dishonored itch a well-needed scratch
With the amount of variety I was given to tackle any given situation, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has more in common with the immersive-sim genre than I expected. MachineGames worked in collaboration with sister studio Arkane for Wolfenstein: Youngblood, which featured a more open-ended approach to design than previous Wolfenstein games, and there seems to be a knock-on effect present in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle as a result. Sneaking around the Vatican, scouting alternate routes, and taking out enemies, in my own unique way, gave my Dishonored itch a well-needed scratch.
The Great Circle takes an approach to level-based worlds that is similar to Dishonored–open areas are filled with side missions and secrets to explore, which the player can return to anytime, and are non-linear in their design. One of the more open-ended areas I got to explore was Giza: a vast open desert with pyramids to explore, Nazis camps to sneak around, and shabby markets to purchase items from. While Giza was completely open for me to roam around, I was only able to see about a fourth of it due to time constraints, so I barely scratched the surface of what it had to offer. It was in this area that I got the most out of the game’s other two tools: the camera and the notebook. Due to this section’s non-linearity, the notebook was vital in keeping track of Field Works (side missions), as well as collecting pictures I had taken, which provide context regarding points of interests and characters you meet along the way.
Filling out Indy’s notebook gave me a sense of agency akin to Alan Wake 2’s evidence board. By taking pictures myself, I had an active role in digesting the game’s information, and in turn, feeling more involved in the story and objectives. This was a feature I loved in Alan Wake 2, as it made me a participant in organizing evidence, rather than an in-game notebook automatically populating itself. In Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, I had a similar feeling. Every time I took a picture of a point of interest, my natural reaction was to open my notebook and observe the photo and its information, making it more like a companion than a checklist tracker.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle feels like an amalgam of many genres but appears to be striking the right balance between them, all in favor of honoring the spirit of Indiana Jones, the archaeology professor and adventurer. While 90 minutes wasn’t enough time to get the full scope of everything the game has to offer, it gave me a taste of a kind of adventure-puzzle game seldom seen in the AAA space, and it is one that’s shaping up to be an impressive display of MachineGames’ toolset and understanding of molding game design around its protagonist and story. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is expected to release for Xbox Series X|S and PC on December 9.