MachineGames has made its living creating satirical alternate histories in which you shoot Nazis with shotguns. There are Nazis to fight in Indiana Jones And The Great Circle – a globe-trotting, grave-robbing adventure starring a Lost Ark-era Harrison Ford – but as you might expect from a Lucasfilm adaptation, there’s rather less bloodshed.
Wolfenstein’s skull-splitting has given way to the clean, Spielbergian “WAP” of Indy’s fist slamming into a fascist jaw. He has a gun, sure, but you’ll be relying just as much and more on his whip, which is used both to trip opponents and as a way to swing at objects or snatch props from afar. And let’s not forget his fancy fedora: there’s a skill that lets you resurrect yourself after a knockout if you can crawl away and retrieve your fallen hat before you lose consciousness. It’s the grace note of a “light morning adventure,” in the words of game director Jerk Gustafsson, which takes ideas from his and the company’s old first-person games and melts away their guts and grime, while adding a few sunny flourishes.
“In designing this game, I think we even drew on our own history,” Gustafsson told reporters gathered at a pre-Gamescom presentation. “The first-person perspective is the main perspective you play in, but we combine it with the third-person perspective.” [for actions such as swinging from your whip]So very similar to what we did back in the day with the Riddick games and the Darkness game. And also similar to those games, which were the first games we did where we put a lot of emphasis on character creation and story, combined with a lot of gameplay variety. And that's something we've pushed really hard here. We want the player to really feel like they can tackle different obstacles or challenges in different ways.”
The story, overseen by Bethesda's Todd Howard, who may make you groan or smile depending on your Starfield experience, sees Dr. Jones embark on a quest to various popular historical sites that together form the titular Great Circle, aided by gallant journalist Gina and opposed by Third Reich treasure hunter Emmerich Voss. The game's environments, which range from the pyramids of Giza to European cities at night, seem comparable to MachineGames' Wolfenstein projects in that they're compactly constructed and mostly linear, but often filled with different routes and side activities to discover. There doesn't seem to be a lot of open space, but there are plenty of alleys and tunnels.
The larger scenarios give you the ability to be sneaky or violent, hitting guards in a particular order and hiding bodies, or using props. You can throw spears to create surfaces to swing on, for example. You also have the ability to disguise yourself – certain story episodes require this, and you'll build up a wardrobe of outfits that you can change depending on the situation. One particular scenario might have you playing servant, bringing wine to a fascist with a grudge. It doesn't feel like an Agent 47-level exercise in social camouflage to me, though the idea of a Hitman level set in one of Indy's tombs with a cast of stranded stormtroopers has a certain appeal.
Speaking of tombs, they’re predictably full of traps: spike pits, pools of scorpions, and a chamber that fills with sand when you touch the pedestal in its center. All old Indy staples. They’re also home to plenty of bespoke puzzles – there’s no real game-defining puzzle mini-game like glyph-matching, with the puzzles changing depending on the setting. In what I hope will be music to Graham’s ears, some of the puzzles take inspiration from the old Indiana Jones point-and-click games. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Indiana’s tomb raids is the photography: as you explore, you fill a journal with snapshots that give you clues about the story and the way forward, along with drawings of puzzle props and scribbles of plot speculation. The journal itself is a lovely creation, all doodles and dog ears: aside from using your fedora to revive, it's the aspect of The Great Circle that I find most enchanting.
Less captivating, but very appealing: the combat system, in which you alternate between punches, parries, and punches. Gustafsson again cites Escape from Butcher Bay as an influence: “Going back to Riddick, we've been working for a long time on very intense melee combat, which can be challenging in first-person view, and of course combines with the whip, which adds another element to the combat in the game.” I don't know if there's a progression system tied to taking down Nazis, but you'll certainly earn adventure points to unlock them by finding books. The idea is both to satisfy your thirst for new abilities or passive buffs and to encourage you to scavenge. If you miss something, you can revisit cleared areas using the game's world map.
The Great Circle is “MachineGames’ biggest game ever,” according to Gustafsson. I’m trying to figure out if it’s their most ambitious. As a licensed adaptation, The Great Circle dilutes things I liked about the developers’ past work: it’s odd to see MachineGames portray Nazis in this… gentle way, and I miss the more angsty writing and identity dynamics of the company’s Wolfenstein offerings. I wonder what MachineGames would do with the character of a seedy, grave-robbing archaeologist if they weren’t constrained by Lucasfilm, with whom they worked “closely” to gain access to the film archive.
Still, The Great Circle looks to be a fun game, full of challenges and puzzles, and I find it intriguing that it's a MachineGames production that isn't held down by cow-sized guns. “It's been a big step for the team as well, to move away from this intense BJ Blaskowitz gun-based game and towards something that's much more accessible in many ways, much more casual and relaxed in a way, more focused on puzzle-solving and exploration,” Gustafsson concludes. “It's been a pretty big departure from what we're used to doing here as well, but the core remains the same: we're going for that experience where you actually feel like you're part of the world, where you can put yourself in the protagonist's shoes and feel like you're part of this big adventure.”
Indiana Jones And The Great Circle will be released before the end of 2024. Find out more on Steam.
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