Indiana Jones and the Great Circle —
Modern action/FPS is set inside Indy’s classic post-Ark, pre-Crusade era.
Enlarge / CGI Harrison Ford just can’t believe he’s getting roped into another globe-trotting adventure.
Bethesda/Machine Games
Almost two years ago to this day, Bethesda told everyone its Machine Games subsidiary was working on a new Indiana Jones game, one with “an original story.” Now we can see what Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is going to look like, with a gameplay trailer showing up during Microsoft’s Developer Direct event, and when it’s arriving: “2024.” You can now wishlist it on Steam and the Xbox store; it’s exclusive to those platforms.
Gameplay reveal trailer for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
While the game has Harrison Ford’s likeness, it’s not Ford voicing your character. Troy Baker, the original voice of Joel in The Last of Us, picks up the role of the archaeologist.
From the trailer, Great Circle looks a lot like the modern Wolfenstein games that Machine Games made—and that’s a good thing. The New Order and The New Colossus excelled at making you feel more like a human action hero than a shooting tank. They’ve got a knack for first-person platforming, stunts, and cinematic moments that are nowhere near as painful as in many shooters. They excel at balancing immersing you as a player and letting your character have a personality.
That, plus the developer’s interest in mystical-tinged WWII-era tales and art deco-influenced visuals, made them a natural fit for the project. It’s hard to think of Indiana Jones in the first person, but then it’s hard to think of any other team that could pull it off.
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That cavalier charm! None but the most heinous of artifact-stealers can resist.
Bethesda/Machine Games
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These sites we’ve visited? They form a circle around the globe. A great circle, you might call it.
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This is when I knew the Wolfenstein devs were involved.
Bethesda/Machine Games
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You will absolutely be able to whip, throw a hammer at, punch, shoot, shove, and otherwise bludgeon some Nazis.
Bethesda/Machine Games
Machine Games has also shown a notable dedication to letting the player knock out, stab, and kill Nazis. The trailer shows Indy dispatching foes with whips, fists, and trickery but also straight-up plugging them with a revolver and two-handed machine gun. There will be other ways of dealing with foes and situations, according to Entertainment Weekly’s interview with Machine Games’ lead designer, Jerk Gustafsson.
The plot involves the theft of a relic from Indy’s teaching gig by a supersized villain, Locus. Digging into the mysterious theft, Indy makes marker-drawn stops on his paper map in the Vatican, the Himalayas, Egypt, and Thailand. There’s a journalist love interest, a villain with the decisive name Emmerich Voss, and, of course, there’s Marcus Brody.
Great Circle is the latest from Lucasfilm’s new game strategy under its Disney ownership. The firm has given out its IP licenses to lots of notable firms to make new games: Respawn with its Jedi-based series, Ubisoft’s yet-unreleased Outlaws, and a Knights of the Old Republic remake that is either dead or alive, but definitely struggling a bit.