Microsoft Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (PC/Xbox - December 9 | PS5 - Spring 2025) - update (09/02): "WW(I)JD?" (developer interview with GamesRadar+)

[Mr.Vic20]

I imagine a simple scarcity of bullets will solve this and force you to lean more on the whip in most situations. 

[Best]

1 hour ago, Dexterryu said:

 

I actually kinda hope the opposite. There are TONS of FPS games out there. The fighting in the movies was mostly fist fights and/or smartly taking advantage of the environment. Rarely was fighting just about fighting... it was about rescuing/chasing/obtaining someone or something. Overall, I hope the combat in the game has some plot driven reason vs just mowing down the bad guys.

 

I agree with this. Good points. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

I mean this is a MachineGames game -- based on their history, there are likely to be significant stealth sections where the whip is used for silent takedowns.  Then, the gun is used when you get in trouble.

[Best]

Just now, AbsolutSurgen said:

I mean this is a MachineGames game -- based on their history, there are likely to be significant stealth sections where the whip is used for silent takedowns.  Then, the gun is used when you get in trouble.

 

What other games did they make?

[AbsolutSurgen]

Just now, best3444 said:

 

What other games did they make?

Wolfenstein II, Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Not stealth games, but they had stealth elements.

[Best]

1 minute ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Wolfenstein II, Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Not stealth games, but they had stealth elements.

 

I really liked Wolfy 2. I hope this does Indy justice because he was my childhood hero growing up. 

[Brick]

Hopefully combat is not wave after wave of bad guys like Uncharted is. 

[Keyser_Soze]

 

[Best]

That looked absolutely spectacular. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

Day 1 purchase. Looks awesome. 

[stepee]

Looks like a lot of fun I’m glad I’m not a soulless monster 

[Best]

When the Indy theme came on I got goose bumps. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

Between this, Doom and Gears…. MS might be making a comeback. 

[Best]

5 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Between this, Doom and Gears…. MS might be making a comeback. 

 

I said this not too long ago that Microsoft was sitting on a few great AAA games to unleash. I'm glad I own an XSX. 

[TwinIon]

That looked like a classic Indiana Jones sequence, but I’m not really sure if it looked like a fun game. They’ve nailed the vibe, but I still don’t see a lot of compelling interactivity. Hopefully it’s as fun to play as it is to watch.

[LazyPiranha]

The Wolfenstein games have been fun to play, no reason to believe this will be any different.  
 

Honestly, good on Machinegames for being the seemingly only people on earth to portray nazis and pathetic little shitheads.

[AbsolutSurgen]

2 minutes ago, LazyPiranha said:

The Wolfenstein games have been fun to play, no reason to believe this will be any different.  
 

Honestly, good on Machinegames for being the seemingly only people on earth to portray nazis and pathetic little shitheads.

Exactly  MachineGames has a stellar track record.

[Keyser_Soze]

 

 

@MarSolo

[Keyser_Soze]

@MarSolo

 

 

 

December 9th!

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

 

 

[Best]

I'm excited 😁 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Hands-off previews:

 

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle First Look Preview: It’s So Riddick and I Love it for That - IGN

WWW.IGN.COM

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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle strongly reminded of another game the developers at MachineGames once created: the Vin Diesel-starring original-Xbox classic, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. Indy absolutely screams Riddick – in the very best of ways – and because of that, The Great Circle went from something on my most-anticipated list to being far and away the game I’m most looking forward to playing this year.

 

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Much of the combat looks like it’ll involve your fists, but like in Riddick, your foes won’t go down with a simple press of the punch button. You’ll have to skillfully parry, block, and combo your way to victory in hand-to-hand combat. And don’t be afraid to get your whip involved too, by lashing it at opponents’ feet to knock them down, as one example of what it can do for you in gameplay. But your dukes aren’t always going to be your go-to weapons. I saw Indy use a rolling pin in a kitchen to bash a Nazi’s face in. I also watched him pick up a shovel, sneak up behind a Nazi, and whack him on the back of the head. In fact, sneaking looks to be a big part of The Great Circle, with stealth emphasized as a core tenet of gameplay – as it was in Escape from Butcher Bay.

 

 

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

WWW.VIDEOGAMESCHRONICLE.COM

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This looks well equipped to deliver the definitive Indy experience…

 

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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.

 

 

 

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Preview: Xbox's Big 2024 Exclusive Keeps Looking Better

COMICBOOK.COM

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MachineGames has revealed a lot of new information about the Xbox exclusive.

 

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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is set in 1937, shortly after the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The specter of World War II continues to hang over Doctor Jones, who is woken in the middle of the night by a break-in. After a relic is stolen, it's up to Indy to figure out what the Nazis are up to this time, and his quest will take him on a new globetrotting adventure. Jones won't be alone, however; this time, he's joined in his quest by a journalist named Gina. Gina's camera plays a key part in the puzzles of the game, with players having to take pictures in various locations. 

 

As Indy takes pictures, his journal will fill up, revealing hints and clues uncovered throughout his journey, helping to lead him to new areas he'll have to explore. While we saw quite a bit of the Himalayas in the June preview, this time we got to see some different locations, including the Great Sphinx of Gizeh, which got a good deal of focus. This quest saw Indy finding a clue left behind for Emmerich Voss, the game's lead villain. Disguises will have a role to play in the game, and Indy has to conceal himself as a worker to follow the clue and get the required item to continue on his journey. In classic Indiana Jones fashion, nothing is ever as easy as it looks, and the Gizeh section is filled with perils, from spear-filled pits, to rooms brimming with scorpions. While no snakes were shown in the preview, the developers assured us that Indy's least favorite reptile will have a role to play. 

 

 

 

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Looks Like a Worthy Addition to the Franchise

WWW.CNET.COM

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After the last two disappointing movies, I'm finally excited about a new Indiana Jones title.

 

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The exclusive part of our preview, which won't be shown to Gamescom attendees, took place in a hidden area under the Great Sphinx of Giza. It involved Indy working alongside his new companion, Gina. The sequence began with Indy fighting off a few foot soldiers who follow Emerick Voss, the game's main antagonist. After he met up with Gina inside, it was revealed that she and Indy would need to find a talisman to open a locked door.

 

The preview then introduced something we haven't seen before: a disguise mechanic, which players will employ throughout the game to sneak into areas incognito. Instead of the classic hat and leather jacket, Indy is seen in a turban and robes, more akin to the locals of the area. He moved into a hut full of enemy generals strategizing around a table, and one of them yelled for a bottle of wine. This key moment allowed the player to access the back area, where they could steal the missing talisman before returning with the wine and leaving the tent. 

 

This disguise mechanic sounds like it will be used often throughout the game as the preview also included a segment where Dr. Jones dressed up as a priest to walk undetected throughout a church. But we were cautioned that this isn't an invisibility cloak -- certain enemies will still be able to see through your veil if you aren't blending in well enough, so make sure to act the part, too.

 

 

 

Preview: Xbox's Indiana Jones game has way more depth than expected | Windows Central

WWW.WINDOWSCENTRAL.COM

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After seeing some gameplay of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, it's clear there's a lot of depth for adventurers to explore.

 

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While some adventures will be fairly straightforward, with linear tombs and ancient ruins to explore. At other points, the game opens up wide, with hub-like locations to check out that feature optional quests and puzzles. You can choose to solve as many mysteries off the beaten path as you'd like, with rewards like money that be used for purchasing things from merchants in a bazaar.

 

Solving puzzles and taking pictures relevant to the mysteries you're pursuing also unlocks Adventure Points, which can be used to get different skills. One example shown in the preview is for a skill called True Grit, which gives Indy a second chance after falling in combat, allowing him to get back up once after being knocked out in a brawl.

 

Depending on how long you take to explore, your adventure may be a fair bit shorter or longer, but you're in for a hefty journey either way. According to Gustafsson and Torvanius, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is the biggest game that MachineGames has ever crafted, making it larger than the studio's prior Wolfenstein titles even if players only stick to the main path.

 

 

 

After seeing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle's stealthy disguises, punchy hand-to-hand combat, and the iconic whip in action, it's one adventure I need in my life | GamesRadar+

WWW.GAMESRADAR.COM

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Preview | "We want the player to really feel that they can take on different obstacles or challenges in many different ways"

 

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What is perhaps most exciting, though, is the fact that the Great Circle will present us with various ways to engage with the world, from taking a stealthy approach, to cracking the whip in and out of combat, and picking up any object we find in the environment and using it to our advantage. In one instance, for example, the end of a nearby spade is used to land a concussive blow, while a spear in another location is thrown at the wall to become a makeshift latch for the whip. 

 

"We want the player to really feel that they can take on different obstacles or challenges in many different ways, and stealth is definitely part of that," Gustafsson says. "... Something that we have been working with now for a long time, which can be a challenge when it comes to first person, is doing these very intensive hand-to-hand fist fights. We have been putting a lot of effort into that, and of course with the whip, which adds another element to the combat in the game. Overall, all of these tools, and all of these different styles of gameplay, will provide a mix for you to play around with and have fun with."

 

 

 

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle makes a timid but faithful first impression

WWW.EUROGAMER.NET

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Eurogamer's hands-off preview thoughts for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

 

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It's worth emphasising this is a first look, and again one only presented in managed chunks, but to be frank this entire section felt very 'safe' to me - a short cutscene encounter with a spiky pit aside. First off, Indy was saved from that pit by Gina anyway, seemingly without the player needing to do anything. But beyond that, to retrieve a golden mask from its concrete bindings, Indy and Gina had to solve that old video game staple: a mirror puzzle, bouncing beams of light around the room in a certain way liberated the golden mask from its stone pedestal.

 

It's tough to feel any fresh thrill of anticipation from what seemed a fairly paint-by-numbers section. The Great Circle's creative director Axel Torvenius said the game would include a variety of "rewarding, challenging and smart" puzzles, and brief snippets of gameplay shared earlier in the presentation did tease more. I just wish I had actually seen one of them in more detail, but even the gameplay shown in Giza felt quite minimal.

 

 

 

Indiana Jones & the Great Circle might have what great Indy games need | Polygon

WWW.POLYGON.COM

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Bethesda and MachineGames’ Indiana Jones video game has everything you’d expect (and maybe more) from an Indy game. Release date set for Dec. 9 on PC and Xbox.

 

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Even in first-person moments, you can feel Indy’s charm radiating, especially during the excitement that comes from a well-earned discovery. This is a game of puzzle-solving and unlocking mysteries, and Indy will have two instruments that aid him in that regard during his adventure: a journal full of notes, maps, and clues that fills out over time, and a camera with which he can snap photos of important discoveries (which will in turn lead to more discoveries). MachineGames calls the camera “one of the key gameplay mechanics” in The Great Circle. Players will find “clever, unexpected uses” for all of Indy’s tools, the developer says, including that camera and his iconic whip.

 

The whip can be used in combat to attack and disarm foes, and for traversal. Expect lots of climbing and swinging (which is shown in third-person view, unlike the rest of the game), as well as opportunities to lash Nazi soldiers with the whip. There’s gunplay, of course, but much of the one-on-one combat moments we saw were some combination of whip and fistfighting. Indy can block, parry, and dole out combinations of punches, all of which hit with the meaty thwack heard in the Indiana Jones movies. MachineGames says that pacifists can bypass some of these encounters by carefully using stealth and the environment to sneak around Indy’s enemies.

 

 

[Brian]

You had me at Riddick

 

[MarSolo]

PS5 in SPRING! Hell yeah!!!!

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Indiana Jones And The Great Circle is both a more "relaxed" Wolfenstein and Riddick plus Nazis

WWW.ROCKPAPERSHOTGUN.COM

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MachineGames have made a decent living as the creators of satirical alternate histories in which you messily murder Naz…

 

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Speaking of tombs, they're predictably full of traps - spike pits, puddles of scorpions, and a chamber that floods with sand when you meddle with the plinth at its centre. All the old Indy standbys. They also house lots of bespoke puzzles - there isn't really a defining puzzle minigame such as glyph-matching, with conundrums varying by the setting. In what I hope is music to Graham's ears, some of the puzzles take inspiration from the old point-and-click Indiana Jones games. Possibly the most interesting aspect of Indiana's tomb-raiding, however, is photography: as you explore you'll fill a journal with snapshots that clue you in about backstory and the way forward, alongside drawings of puzzle props and scribbles of plot speculation. The journal itself is a lovely creation, all doodles and dogears: aside from using your fedora to revive, it's the aspect of The Great Circle I find most enchanting.

 

Less enchanting, but quite enticing: the combat system, in which you'll alternate between jabs, parries and haymakers. Gustafsson again cites Escape from Butcher Bay as an influence: "going back to Riddick, something we have been working with for a long time which can be a challenge in first-person is these very intensive hand-to-hand fistfights, and that of course combines also with the whip, which adds another element to the combat in the game." I'm not sure whether there's a progression system tethered to the felling of Nazis, but you'll definitely earn Adventure Points for unlocks by finding books. The idea is both to gratify your thirst for new abilities or passive buffs and encourage you to poke around. Should you miss anything, you'll be able to revisit cleared areas by means of the game's world map.

 

 

 

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle brings action, puzzles, exploration and disguises

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There's a fair bit of trepidation for what Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will actually be like as a game, in particular with the first person view

 

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Indy might have a roguish tendency to pull a fast one with a pistol, but he’s always been a brawler more than a shooter, and that’s what he seems to be here, mixing together punches, whip strikes and occasional pistol shots. You’ll be able to make use of the environment, whether that’s using a knockout combo to finish a bruising enemy, shoving them down a level in a dig site, or grabbing a rolling pin from a nearby table to clonk them on the head.

 

All of this will take place in first person, keeping you rooted within the character, but there’s then shifts to third person when climbing or swinging across gaps on Indy’s whip.

 

I can’t help but wonder if the game might be better to stay in first person the entire time. We’ve had games like Mirror’s Edge which have integrated fast and fluid parkour with a first-person view, and I’m not entirely sold on the value that switching to the third person for a few seconds offers. Especially when stealth, which might benefit from shifting to the third person to give better spatial awareness, and sliding down a slope don’t make the switch. I hope it comes together for the full game.

 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle devs say an Indy game 'could never be a shooter, should never be a shooter,' so they're embracing his signature whip, improvised brawls, and disguise-based stealth instead | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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And it's sounding fun as hell.

 

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In a conversation with PCG global editor-in-chief Phil Savage at Gamescom, MachineGames developers went into more detail about how Indiana Jones and the Great Circle builds on their prior games like the new Wolfensteins and Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay. Their emphasis on rollicking, scrappy improvisation has me way more excited than I was before for this adventure.

 

"Indiana Jones, he's not a gunslinger, right? He doesn't go guns blazing into situations," said Jens Andersson, design director at MachineGames. "So it could never be a shooter, should never be a shooter. But hand to hand combat, that makes total sense."

 

That's where the Riddick connection comes in: along with MachineGames' founders, Andersson (who joined on in 2022) worked on the shockingly excellent side adventure for Vin Diesel's buff sci-fi Hannibal Lecter, which has some of the best first person melee combat to grace a game. That's a strong pedigree, but also not where the story ends, either: Indiana Jones has a very different vibe from Riddick's brand of brutal prison knife fights and cold-blooded stalking.

 

"He's not a fighter, that's not his nature, even though he ends up in fights all the time," Andersson explained. "He's an unlikely hero, lucky⁠—how can we replicate that into gameplay, make the player feel that humor, how do we get that across?

 

"Compared to even Riddick, that has a different style of hand to hand combat. [The Great Circle] is much more semi-chaotic, lots of things around the environment that you can pick up⁠—pots and pans that you pick up and smash into people's heads…"

 

"And banjos!" Piped in Axel Torvenius, MachineGames creative director.

 

"...And banjos," Andersson confirmed. "I love the banjo."

 

 

[SoberChef]

I have high hopes for this, but please, after releasing, go back to work on the next full bore Wolfenstein! 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

From playing dress-up to whipping everything in sight, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is driven by one question: "What would Indiana Jones do?" | GamesRadar+

WWW.GAMESRADAR.COM

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Interview | MachineGames wants players to feel like everyone's favorite archaeologist, but the studio hasn't forgotten its shooter roots

 

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"What are you going to do, Indiana?" 

 

This is a question that's asked of the titular hero in the official showcase reveal of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle that was released earlier this year. As we get swept up in a global conspiracy in 1937, that question is not only one we'll have to answer for ourselves when we step into the famous archaeologist's shoes this December, but it's also the driving force behind what features and tools developer MachineGame's decided to put at our disposal. For every scenario, item, and ability, the team thought on the same question time and again to help players embody the role of the beloved fedora-wearing character: "What would Indiana Jones do?". 

 

"The team has worked on games all the way back to Chronicles of Riddick, The Darkness, Wolfenstein," design director Jens Andersson tells me. "So you can see features in all those games that we like and we borrow from, we've learned from, and we want to do that more and better. But [in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle], it's coming from the character: what would Indiana Jones do? What do you want to do as Indiana Jones?" 

 

 

[Bacon]

I think this game is going to be a boring piece of shit for boomers. Practically a visual novel. Uncharted but worse. A movie that claims it is a game.

[MarSolo]

I just wish it was third person.

[Keyser_Soze]

15 minutes ago, MarSolo said:

I just wish it was third person.

 

Maybe someone will make a mod for the PC version.

[Best]

I have a lot of faith in MachineGames to make the first person gameplay great. But I agree I'd really prefer if this was in 3rd person. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

This again?

[Keyser_Soze]

I'd prefer if it was 3/4 perspective like Crusader No Remorse