The New Indiana Jones Game Wants You Think and Fight Like Its Hero

The new game Indiana Jones and the Great Circle doesn’t just want you to step into Indy’s famous fedora, it wants you to go all the way into the character’s mind. At each turn, the game designers attempted to make the player look like Indiana Jones and think like him too. For example, in the movies, Indiana Jones has a gun, but he rarely uses it. In fact, arguably the most famous scene in any Indy movie is in Raiders of the Lost Ark where he specifically does use one. And that was the type of subtle detail the team at Machine Games, which is behind Great Circle, wanted to convey.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will be out later this year for Xbox. In it, players become everyone’s favorite archeologist, going on a globe-trotting adventure for ancient relics that are part of a massive supernatural mystery. At your disposal will be Indy’s trusty whip, his fists, and, of course, his brain. All of which you’re supposed to use before taking out the gun, just like Indy himself.

“What we’ve been trying to do, and tried to push, is to make sure you first and foremost try to use your wits and your whip,” creative director Axel Torvenius said. “Look at the environment, think, and understand that are optional ways of coming through obstacles. The only solution in this game is absolutely not to shoot your way through. You can, potentially, in some scenarios, do that but it’s very dangerous in this game to fire a gun. It’s dangerous to be shot at and it’s dangerous to shoot at… You can use the gun but we are balancing it towards more about being clever in how you solve a situation and how you navigate around an enemy rather than through them.”

Last week, io9 was among several outlets invited to attend a virtual presentation about the upcoming Xbox game, from Bethesda and Machine Games. Torvenius was joined by game director Jerk Gustafsson to showcase a nice big chunk of gameplay and answered questions about the highly anticipated title, which will get a specific release date later this week.

For starters, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is set in 1937, right after the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s a largely first-person game, which was a shock to some fans when the first trailer was revealed, but had been the plan since day one. It also added some great opportunities to the gameplay. “A large section of the game is mystery, solving puzzles. It’s being up front and close to ancient relics, ruins, and scriptures,” Torvenius said. “So [first-person] adds an intimacy to the adventure. You get up close and can really inspect things which is pretty nice.” Plus, Machine Games was built on first-person games like Wolfenstein. It’s what it does and is best at.

As Torvenius suggested, while the game will be mostly linear, multiple sections are open-world and encourage exploration. That’s where you’ll find side missions, possibly some Easter eggs, and more. But for the most part, it’s a game about a single adventure. You use your whip to traverse, you solve puzzles, you engage in some very cool looking hand-to-hand combat, and when all else fails, you’ve got that gun.

Other important aspects of the game are your journal, which both documents your journey and provides clues to what’s next, as well as your camera. The camera fills up your journal and becomes important in puzzles too, though it wasn’t quite clear how that worked. As you take more photos and solve more puzzles, you’ll also acquire “Adventure Points” which can be used to upgrade your character however you like. One upgrade they showed allowed Indy to come back to life if he dies.

The gameplay we saw featured Indy and a local woman raiding a temple. On the way in, they realize they need a special medallion, which requires Indy to put on a disguise and infiltrate a base of bad guys. Once he has that, it’s into the temple, where many booby traps await. You whip around, pull some levers, explore, and move deeper into the space. But don’t worry too much about missing anything. If anything can be interacted with—a switch, piece of paper, hammer, etc—it’s highlighted in white to call it out.

Even though we didn’t get a chance to play it hands-on (and, without an Xbox myself, I may never get to play it at all), Indiana Jones and the Great Circle looked, sounded, and felt like the type of Indiana Jones adventure you want to see on a home console. One that understands what makes Indy, Indy.

Update, August 20, 4:05 p.m.: At Gamescon today, it was confirmed that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle from Bethesda and Machine Games will be out for Xbox December 5; PlayStation 5 is coming spring 2025.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.