FIRST LOOK: Xbox’s Indiana Jones game is part-Hitman, part-Uncharted, all MachineGames

It’s amazing that it’s taken this long to get a big-budget, modern Indiana Jones adventure. While the franchise is obviously the less popular of the Lucasfilm dyad, the eternal love for Indiana Jones is evident anytime one of the classic trilogy is shown on ITV on a random Sunday night.

Though the modern pair of films have significantly less love attached to them, you’d have expected a major game developer to snap up the rights and have a go at the whip-cracking adventure years ago.

Not least because we have multiple successful franchises in gaming that are so clearly inspired by the work of Dr. Jones that a developer could have filed the names of one of the modern Tomb Raiders, or the Uncharted quadrilogy and made a good go of it.

But now we have MachineGames, Nazi killers par excellence, to take up the challenge, and from what we’ve seen, it isn’t shying away from the weight of the iconic fedora.

Further reading

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Xbox’s Indiana Jones game is officially coming to PS5

The Great Circle will arrive on Sony's console after Xbox and PC

A recent hands-off demo opened with Indy taking an ancient artifact off of a plinth, before smashing it to pieces to find something inside. As he does this, the room around him fills with sand, a trap left by an ancient civilization sworn to protect the artifact.

Sure, that’s basically the Indiana Jones equivalent of kicking off your Star Wars demo by skulking through a seedy Cantina before getting into a scrap with a local, but it sets the tone perfectly, and it gives us a ideal look at the lovingly recreated young Harrison Ford model.

“For the majority of the main cast, we had them scanned, but we didn’t have the chance to travel back in time and scan a young Harrison Ford, so what we’ve been doing is looking at a lot of the old material for the films, and turnaround photosets that exist from the films in the 80s,” says Axel Torvenius, creative director.

As Indy escapes, we hear Troy Baker‘s voice, a performance that skirts the line between a full Harrison Ford impression and his own spin on the character. To cross a perilous gap, Indy cracks out his whip, and we’re treated to the perfectly over-the-top whip sound effect as he escapes to safety.

Set between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, The Great Circle follows Indy on another adventure traveling across the world (tiny plane flying over paper map, and all) in search of a lost artifact, Nazi pursuers in toe.

When asked about why MachineGames chose to set the game in this part of the timeline, game director Jerk Gustafsson said that it was Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard‘s call.

“He was the one igniting that story idea from the get-go. He brought it to the table early on. A big part of the storyline is to continue the story arc from Raiders of the Lost Ark, we see the game as a direct sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Indiana Jones we see in the game is the Indy we saw in Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

“When asked about why MachineGames chose to set the game in this part of the timeline, game director Jerk Gustafsson said that it was Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard’s call.”

The game looks to strike a balance between puzzle-solving and combat. “The focus for this game is adventure, when you venture into the unknown, we want exploration to feel truly rewarding,” says audio director Pete Ward.

MachineGames is calling it an action-adventure game, but it seems like those two genres are far more segmented in practice. Indy’s looking for clues, reading through documents, and pouring over dusty old tombs.

However, when things kick into a higher gear and that iconic John William’s score starts to blare, he’s disarming baddies with his whip, and blasting them away with his trusty revolver. It wasn’t clear how much action will be in the game compared to what percentage will be taken up with doing puzzles and looking for clues, but we venture to guess it won’t land on the mass murdering Nathan Drake end of the scale.

“It’s an adventure with action in it. We put adventure first, because that’s the biggest beat,” says Torvenius. “But obviously, there are super cool action set pieces in it. It’s equally important but we try to emphasize the adventure game.”

Gustafsson adds: “We’ve even called it a MachineGames adventure, where MachineGames provides the story part and action part against the adventure part. That’s something we’ve used internally.”

The majority of the game is in first-person, a decision that has been met with a mixed reception from fans. MachineGames’ reason behind this? Confidence.

“We’ve even called it a MachineGames adventure, where MachineGames provides the story part and action part against the adventure part. That’s something we’ve used internally.”

“We have an extremely long history of making first-person games,” says Torvenius. “We feel strong and confident in that approach. We also feel that experiencing this game is best through a first-person perspective. You get extremely close up to solving puzzles, to mysteries and weird artifacts.”

Jerk Gustafsson adds: “It’s something we’ve been doing for 20 years, it’s a perspective we feel very confident working with. “It’s important to me you don’t just play as Indiana Jones, you get to be Indiana Jones. That’s why we chose the perspective.”

A perhaps unexpected game from which Indiana Jones and The Great Circle takes inspiration is IO Interactive‘s recent Hitman Trilogy. On his journey, Indy will need to sneak through restricted areas, and in order to do this, he must don various disguises in order to pass through undetected. Like Hitman, certain characters will be able to see through his disguises, so it’s not a free pass to run around and cause havoc.

“It’s driven by the narrative, but we also have a system that allows you to change the outfit based on the situation you’re in. You can change outfits at any given time, especially in our big spaces.”

In combat, players have two options. You can do in all guns (and fists) blazing, or you can use stealth to isolate your foes, and take them down. Objects in the game’s environment are also highly interactive. Bottles that are found on the floor can be lovingly repurposed as an implement to smash someone over the head. Or if you’re feeling less brutish, you can throw them against a wall to smash them, distracting your enemy.

If you’re defeated, the True Grit ability gives you one last chance against a foe. Hilariously, this manifests by finding Indy’s hat and putting it on triumphantly like it’s got a defibrillator inside of it. As you do this, the first few notes of the Indy theme play. It’s camp and cartoony, but we think it’s brilliant, and exactly the tone that we had hoped MachineGames would strike.

“If you’re defeated, the True Grit ability gives you one last chance against a foe. Hilariously, this manifests by finding Indy’s hat and putting it on triumphantly like it’s got a defibrillator inside of it.”

Batman fans have the Arkham series, Spider-Man fans have Insomniac‘s games, and Star Wars fans have more games than there are humans on Earth, but so far, it feels like with Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, Indy fans finally have their lovingly recreated digital entry into the franchise.

MachineGames is striking the perfect tone between what you want from that studio and what we expect from the franchise, and while he’ll never quite be Harrison Ford, Troy Baker’s take on the archeologist is confident and more than sufficient to carry us through the game.

Sure, it’s very heavily leaning on decades of Indiana Jones cliches, and we’ll be shocked if you don’t have to save your hat from a rapidly closing door, but honestly, who cares? When that music kicks in and the whip snaps across a Nazi’s face, there’s nothing quite like it.