When I think of developer MachineGames, I think of shotguns in its Wolfenstein games, sprinting down narrow corridors with guns blazing while the walls are covered in Nazi blood. After all, MachineGames’ entire portfolio to date has been built on the brazen Wolfenstein revival – a series of five bloody, no-holds-barred action thrillers. And boy, did it do it well. That’s why I was surprised to see that its next game, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, focuses on more methodical combat that will have you solving puzzles and using the environment as a weapon, rather than shooting your way out of every scenario and getting covered in Nazi blood in the process (which is a shame).
“It’s always a big challenge to go from something known to the unknown of what the Indiana Jones game was for us,” Jens Andersson, design director of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, told GameSpot at Gamescom 2024. “It’s tough, because the way we handle the game is very challenging. [MachineGames] is used to working – how we build levels, how we design enemies – it all comes from that action [focus]. And now we're coming at it from a different angle. It took us a long time. Honestly, we spent a lot of time discussing what this game is trying to do in corporate meetings and stuff.
Don't worry, you'll still be able to shoot Nazis in the Grand Circle, but as Indy, it's your wits, gloves, whip, and maybe the occasional rolling pin left on a kitchen table that will be your primary tools. Stepping into the shoes (and hat) of globetrotting Dr. Henry Walton “Indiana” Jones Jr., your autonomy as a player is not limited. just actionbut also exploration and investigation. It's a mix of genres and mechanics rarely seen in a single game, let alone a first-person game.
“I think this particular game doesn’t have a lot of references,” Andersson said. “It’s like it’s an adventure game first and foremost. What does a AAA adventure game look like today? We don’t know. We had to figure it out.”
The adventure game genre is a broad one and rather difficult to define. At one time, it was often lumped in with more traditional point-and-click games, like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis , for example. These games were heavily narrative-driven, with puzzle-solving at the core of their design, and rarely, if at all, featured combat. Modern audiences, however, might point to the Uncharted series as a starting point for what a modern adventure game is: action-packed games in which Indiana Jones-inspired protagonist Nathan Drake takes down hundreds of bad guys in blockbuster-sized settings. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle doesn't seem to fit into either category, and it seems unfair to place it somewhere in the middle of this broad spectrum.
For game director Jerk Gustafasson, determining the identity of this game began with a simple reminder to the team: this is a “MachineGames adventure.”
“When this idea came up in a meeting,” Andersson said, “that’s when a lot of the team started saying, ‘Oh, I see what you mean.’ Like MachineGames means cinematic, immersive, action, first-person. So what’s the adventure version of this game?”
From there, creative director Axel Torvenius felt that meant doubling down on adventure and exploration rather than relying on the studio's proven track record of action. “There are a lot of slower moments. And because [they’re] “The slower moments are not necessarily boring,” Torvenius said. “Quite the opposite, it's very intense and exciting. The pace is slow, but the tension is still high and the film is filled with a sense of adventure, and that's what we tried to achieve. It's about finding the right balance.”
From the hands-off gameplay I've seen, those quieter moments that Torvenius was referring to are spent using Indy's camera, taking pictures of artifacts that in turn fill your journal with information. This information is essential for telling the player which direction to go or answering questions about the game's mystery. This, of course, comes with its own challenge: pacing the game and helping the player figure out what to do and where to go, without holding their hand too much.
“How do we push the player to do something, when before all we were doing was linear corridor shooters – which sometimes opened up a little bit, but never that much – into something in the style and pace of the game that was very different,” Torvenius said.
It couldn't be further from what I was used to seeing this team do with their games, and it was MachineGames' full embrace of something so different that started to make me most excited about what Indiana Jones and the Great Circle could be: something truly new for the first-person genre, regardless of the Indiana Jones IP.
“The writing and the characters are at the forefront, rather than mere accomplices to the action.”
Jens Andersson
After all, this is a team with a long history in the first-person genre, long before MachineGames was formed. Many of the Great Circle team had worked together at developer Starbreeze Entertainment on games like The Darkness, and before that, the slower-paced Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, which, like Indiana Jones, relied heavily on melee combat and stealth. The two games, while both first-person, differ significantly in terms of gameplay. But the team's approach to design always starts with the story. That, as Andersson says, is the MachineGames process.
“It all starts with the story, as trivial as that may sound,” Andersson said. “We tailor everything to fit that story rather than the other way around, like a lot of other studios do.” […] The writing and characters are at the forefront, rather than mere accomplices to the action.
It’s easy to get caught up in the run-and-gun action that is Wolfenstein, but it’s MachineGames’ approach to storytelling and character development that made Wolfenstein’s The New Order and The New Colossus so memorable to me. When I think of Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus in particular, I immediately think of its sweetest moments: BJ Blazkowicz’s surprise birthday party; memories of his childhood sweetheart; or his relationship with his mother. These scenes gave its characters time to breathe between the gunfire and made the game all the more memorable.
While it's too early to tell whether MachineGames can reach the same writing heights as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, it's clear so far that it does an exceptional job of conveying the main character's identity, particularly in the game's combat.
During the game, the player would use Indy's whip to disarm an enemy, causing them to lose their balance and fall headfirst into a steel barrel, knocking them out cold. It was a brief and brief moment, but it felt like a slapstick comedy and gave the fight its own brand of charisma. As quick as this encounter was, achieving this objective was by no means easy for the team.
“We have a very complicated system where characters are pushed around in the environment, so you can use the whip to move people,” Andersson says. “It took a lot of work to make enemies react and regain their balance. It was a scary proposition when we started pushing for it. Not everyone was happy with us. But this combination of simulation and animation, the ability to interact with the environment and pick up objects, it’s so Indy, right?”
The pace of the fights is comical and feels improvised rather than scripted, much like some of the most iconic scenes in the film franchise, whether it's pulling out a gun to shoot the swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Indy patiently waiting for a plane's propellers to slice a Nazi into pieces. These are the moments that reflect Indy's character, and translating that organically through combat is very exciting.
Granted, as a die-hard Wolfenstein fan, I always look forward to the next installment in the Blazkowicz family saga. However, I'm just as eager to see how MachineGames extends its writing and design philosophies to the story as a whole, whether or not I'm an Indiana Jones fan.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is set to release on December 9 for Xbox Series X|S and PC, and it will be a Game Pass release on day one.