Indiana Jones and the Great Circle — An old school adventure with action/stealth | preview

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is perhaps the biggest mass appeal gaming coming this holiday season. And I was happy to be one of the first to play a couple hours of a preview of it in San Francisco recently.

The developers at Sweden’s Machine Games are finishing up the game for Microsoft’s Bethesda Softworks division, and the title is coming for Windows and the Xbox Series X/S on December 9. It will be out in the spring of 2025 on PlayStation 5. Aside from Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, it’s one of the most important first-party games coming out for Microsoft’s platforms this holiday season.

The Machine Games crew wanted to make a true Indy adventure, a game that is rich with detail, full of intriguing environments and hidden secrets, exotic places, good puzzles to solve and gameplay that will bring the resourcefulness out of every player. It combines stealth, action, story and exploration.

Machine Games is an interesting choice of developer for this game. They had created an amazing run with the Wolfenstein first-person shooter series where you were able to kill Nazi soldiers in the most gruesome ways. But now they’re in charge of the family-friendly mainstream property of Indiana Jones — where you still kill Nazis. Do the Swedes really have the sense of humor needed for an Indy game?

I haven’t come across any hilarious moments in the game so far. But it’s going to matter. The team analyzed the tone and the narrative beats when it comes to capturing the comedy of the Indiana Jones series. The tone has to shift between scenes that have a lot of action to those that have a lot of humor.

“The most appealing thing was just being able to work on such an iconic, classic IP,” game designer Jens Andersson told me at Gamescom. He added later, “It was obvious early on that certain aspects we might have indulged in earlier projects wouldn’t be a good fit for this project …. This time around it’s more of a Machine Games adventure, rather than a Machine Games shooter. It’s still very much a Machine Games game.”

The stakes are high. If all goes well, the action-adventure title could be the biggest form of entertainment in the Indiana Jones universe on any medium. And it is one of the things that will help Microsoft in its competition with console market leader Sony as well as nimble rival Nintendo.

The game — the first one since Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 2003 — is set between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). That setting tells me that Bethesda and partner Lucasfilm Games are going for a cross-generational strategy, catering to older gamers and their offspring or just brand new fans. This is one of the big games coming for Microsoft in a year when there aren’t any blockbuster adventure titles in Sony’s lineup.

The story so far

The story follows archaeologist Indiana Jones (played by Harrison Ford in the films and voiced by Troy Baker in the games) in 1937 as he tries to decipher the mysteries of the Great Circle, which shows that mysterious sites around the world are connected in a perfect circle when drawn around the globe.

During this time, Jones has left his fiancée, Marion Ravenwood, the lead female character in the first Indy movie. He investigates the theft of an artifact by going to the Vatican, and he realizes that sites of interest around the world form a perfect circle around the globe. Indy and Gina Lombardi (voiced by Alessandra Mastronardi) race against rival archaeologist Emmerich Voss (Marios Gavrilis), who tries to manipulate them and find the secrets for the Nazis instead.

Todd Howard, executive producer of the game and a veteran of Bethesda’s big Elder Scrolls and Fallout titles, conceptualized the game’s story but he doesn’t have a hands-on role in the game. We have Howard to thank for pitching an Indy game to George Lucas in 2009. That planted the seed for the Bethesda’s involvement in the eventual game. But it took many years to work out an actual agreement, which was unveiled in 2021. Microsoft, which now owns Bethesda, unveiled the first footage in January 2024.

The game will hop through real-world locations including Rome, Thailand, Egypt, Shanghai and the Himalayas. You play the game from a first-person view, but it switches to third person for in-game moments such as interacting with the environment.

Players control Indy, who is paired with Gina Lombardi, an Italian investigative reporter. During the recent Gamescom trailer, we learn she is looking for her lost sister. As they uncover clues, they learn they’re unraveling a much bigger conspiracy.

Playing the preview

I got to play a few different levels in the near-finished game. Oddly, I felt a little nauseous while playing. I believe that had more to do with the big screens that we played at a close distance at the preview event, rather than anything to do with the game itself. The game runs at a speedy 60 frames per second.

As Indy, you get access to his signature whip, which, as in the movies, can be used as a weapon, a tool to disarm enemies, and a way to traverse obstacles in the game world. I loved this, as I could whip the Nazi guards, stun them, and then punch them silly without alerting the whole place. You can also make good use of your fedra hat, a cigarette lighter and, of course, the revolver.

There are a variety of gameplay styles that Indy can use. He can operate in stealth and sneak past guards or get into direct combat with the Nazi enemies who are seeking to thwart Jones from solving the Great Circle mysteries first. There are a lot of puzzles in the game with a variety of difficulty levels.

And, like in the familiar action-adventure game series Uncharted and Tomb Raider, there is climbing and traversing across various environments in the game. Of course, when we think about how Indiana Jones inspired those games, we get stuck in a big debate about who got inspired by what.

Jones is voiced by Troy Baker, and I had various moments where I felt like he was talking just like actor Harrison Ford and other times when I thought it was Troy Baker doing the talking.

You get to use tools in the game like Gina’s camera and the journal. An icon appears on the screen to tell you when you have a picturesque moment that can also offer you a clue in the story. You can record these clues in your journal as you learn them and go back to the journal to solve new mysteries. In the journey, you can find “adventure books” via exploration. You’ll also get completionist points and skills from the books.

Photos can reveal historical insights and important clues. The journal starts as a blank slate, but it becomes a detailed archive of your journey with maps, photos and letters. It’s a reminder of where you’ve been, and for the sharp observer to hint about where to head next. You will enter restricted areas where wearing a disguise is important. But some guards can spot trespassers.

The first level

I started out with the first level of the game where Indiana Jones and Marcus Brody are passed out after a night of celebration at Marshall College.

Professor Jones is awakened by someone moving through the school after hours. Jones thinks it’s a student who wants to sleep in the library. Instead, as he confronts him, Jones finds out that it’s a giant, evidently a foreigner from the Middle East, who is seeking something and is in a bad mood. He escapes with a priceless relic but leaves behind an identifiable necklace.

“A thing that we want you to notice here is the attention to detail we have in this game,” said Jens Andersson, game designer at Machine Games, in a briefing. “There’s an immense amount of research that’s gone into this, trying to recreate the world of Indiana Jones in 1937.”

In the classrooms, you’ll see old school chalkboards and primitive projectors. And there are the old style maps that show Indy flying from one place to another.

Jones looks over the broken glass in the school room and figures out what’s missing. This is one of the first instances in the game where you have to solve a puzzle. This theft leads Indy on a journey around the world to solve the mystery of The Great Circle. This first part was nothing special, but it taught me to look around in every corner looking for clues and small items. I thought the cinematics were well done. And all the details make you think you’re at an American university in the 1930s.

In stealth, you can use an object to distract, stun or subdue enemies. You can toss a bottle or a brick and make a guard turn his back to you. And in brawls, you can use an object like the whip to stun an enemy and start launching punches at the dazed fighter. You can fight using combos, blocks and parrying. If you do your job, you’ll get a nice finishing knockout. Then you can drag a knocked-out enemy to the shadows so other guards won’t discover the body.

Breaking into the Vatican

In Rome, you have to get into the Vatican. Rather than going in the front door, you have to find an ancient passageway. And that led me to a place I’ve seen in real life, Castel Sant’Angelo in the midst of the eternal city.

I started out on the borders of the castle and had to trick some guards and knock them out. I found plenty of objects to toss, but if you alert a nearby guard as you take out one, the other guard can sound a general alert and you’re done.

It took me longer than usual to notice that I could go vertical and use my whip to find a way up over a wall. Then I had to creep through the shadows and take out a lot more guards. Good thing they didn’t check in with each other using cellphones — that’s the nice thing about 1937. I chose to try to go stealthy as much as I could, though I triggered some alarms as nearby guards saw me taking out someone.

A couple of times, I got advice that I should look up. And that was always the magic trick. You could use the whip to pull you up to higher levels and continue through the maze to get to the Vatican. There was one guard with a dog that presented a problem. I knew the dog could sniff me out but I didn’t want to shoot it. So I had to find another way to scare the dog away or distract it. The big moments in this level were when Indy found some keys to restricted areas that could open the way forward.

I felt like I was in an Uncharted game with some of the climbing I had to do. I noticed a couple of times that I was unlocking some adventure points that could help me level up. My mission was to find Father Antonio, my Vatican contact. The Vatican seemed like a pretty linear adventure, while the Gizeh level was more like a broader open map.

The Great Pyramids of Gizeh (Giza)

I also hopped over to the level set in Egypt, near the Great Pyramids of Gizeh (Giza). The place was a pretty big map, with a village with a food market and a Nazi camp, though the playable area was smaller than the far distances to the pyramids suggested.

While Gina was looking for her missing sister, Indy was there to figure out why Voss and his Nazi goons were there searching through the place for artifacts. I had to move in a nonchalant and calm way through the crowds, avoiding people who would be suspicious about me. I had to find a disguise and I solved some puzzles along the way too. I took pictures of the pyramids and the game dropped lore on me for storage in my journal. Even with a disguise, some enemies are suspicious — something that makes the game harder and is reminiscent of the Hitman games.

Once I located the right tent, I met a character who spilled a lot of information to me that made the Nazi search make sense. I picked up a lighter in the bazaar and proceeded to find a way into the pyramids. I didn’t make it as far as I wanted to in the demo, but I was happy that I played the game my way.

I did get to do some more fist fights with the Nazi soldiers in this level, particularly underground where the fighting wouldn’t draw a crowd. They were easy enough to dispatch, though I had to use some variety in terms of blocking and punching to take them out.

Conclusion

I was glad to get a few hours with the game, but it was missing more of the rollercoaster set-pieces that the Indy games are known for. The Gizeh level has one of these but I didn’t make it that far in my gameplay session. Still, I know from the trailers that these are in the game and they make me excited to play more of the title when it comes out.

Andersson isn’t saying yet how many hours are in the game, as it’s easy to play the minimum number of hours and still miss more than half the content of the game. So there will be a wide variation in time played depending on your play style. After you finish the game, you can go back and keep progressing on the different levels you’ve already played. That way, you can run a beeline to finish the story and still play through all of the content.

I can’t say I’ve seen the best parts of the game yet, but I’m sure that I want to play this game the way I’ve religiously done with other action-adventure titles like the Uncharted series and Tomb Raider. Funny, those games were inspired by Raiders of the Lost Ark, and now Indy is catching up. If you’re itching for something similar to those older games, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has you covered.