Indiana Jones and the Great Circle comes to Xbox Series X/S, and Windows on December 9, 2024. It will be a day 1 release on Game Pass, and will eventually be ported to the PS5 in 2025. Publisher Bethesda sponsored the trip to Australia for the media preview of the game.

Ezekiel Virant, the lead developer at MachineGames who’s currently hard at work on the new video game Indiana Jones and The Great Circle — which might just set a new standard for an Indy title — talked to Rappler about how the project started, how they sought to define what an Indiana Jones game experience is, and whether the character still appeals to the younger generation.

The Indiana Jones franchise is far more recognized for its legacy in the film industry rather than its videogames. There have been a few notable ones, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine in 1999, and the Lego Indiana Jones game in 2008, but outside of loyal fans, Indy games just don’t get a lot of run when gamers get together and talk games.

MachineGames has the pedigree, developing the likes of Wolfenstein: The New Order, and Wolfenstein: The New Colossus — first-person shooters that are also known for their compelling and scary plot wherein the Nazis had won the war. (If there’s a common thread here, Indiana Jones is known for his penchant for kicking Nazi butt as well, and The Great Circle is no different.)

Does MachineGames finally have the winning formula for the franchise? We’ll find out when the game laucnhes, but for now, let’s dive deeper into its making with our interview below:

Hi Ezekiel, can you go back and tell us how this project started?

Todd Howard (Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Starfield games) is a super fan of Indiana Jones. He loves the franchise, and it’s been basically his dream to have an Indiana Jones video game. And he even went to Lucasfilm Games back in the day and wanted to pitch something. I think he did pitch something. And then as time went on, he was still very interested in trying to get an Indiana Jones game made. 

So he gave the idea to us at MachineGames, and MachineGames has then worked very closely with Lucasfilm Games to kind of bring this project to life.

Todd has been helping out as an executive producer. Todd’s been the executive producer throughout the project. But MachineGames has been developing the story, developing all the feature sets and the gameplay, and then collaborating with Lucasfilm Games throughout this whole project.

How excited has Todd been for this project? 

Yeah. I mean, when I see Todd’s messages about this, it’s always just like, smile, smile, smile, smile. I’m very excited. I can’t believe it.

He’s been so supportive and his level of confidence in the studio and in the project has just been wonderful. It’s been very inspiring for the team to have Todd come over, and be able to show him and see that he’s just very happy that we were able to achieve his childhood dream, maybe his adult dream.

I think a lot of us interacted with [the franchise] as a kid. I was four or five when I first saw it, and so I still kind of feel like a kid, and I remember how awesome those scenes were. And I watch it now a few years later, and I’m like oh yeah, Indiana Jones still hits the same. 

How is it working with Lucasfilm Games? 

When we’re developing our ideas you know they’ve been a really great resource for giving us lots of old footage and other concepts and things, and behind-the-scenes stuff that no one has seen.

It’s in their archive so we see the sets from Raiders; we see the sets from Temple of Doom and Last Crusade and it’s been really lovely to have that. And it’s helped us research and build out all of the game. 

Yeah, and then as we continue to develop, they’ve been so helpful in making sure we steer with authenticity, and making it feel like a real Indiana Jones game. And we’re all on the same page — we’re all excited to get this to come to life.

As a kid who watched the original movies, what’s it like being able to translate that experience into a game? 

As a game developer, when you hear about this project, and being at MachineGames and knowing what we do and how we approach things, it was super exciting immediately because [the material] has so much potential in it and it felt like just a natural fit for us. 

It’s just been the easiest thing to kind of design something with combat or design something with a puzzle, all the while using Indiana Jones, the character, and those movies as the constraint, as the thing that can guide me.

Here, you don’t do a punch and the guy [just grunts]; here, you do a punch and he says, “oh, my me!” and falls over, and flies over the banister. When you use the whip, everything is exaggerated and has that matinee feel. 

And despite the battles being so dynamic, you know, it still feels like everything’s appropriately Indiana Jones-like.

So if I get in a fistfight and I’m like, “Oh goodness, I need to get a weapon,” and I pick up a fly swatter on accident, and that’s like a good Indy moment.

Yeah, I picked up a paintbrush. I’m like “A paintbrush? What am I going to do with a paintbrush?” 

On the first-person perspective, some are saying it should be third-person. But after playing it, we get what you’re trying to get at. Thoughts on that? 

Yeah, we’ve been, throughout development, it was always like first-person. MachineGames (which made the Wolfenstein games starting in 2014)  makes great first-person games. This is what we know. This is what we do best. 

And so yeah, being able to interact with things in first-person, pick things up, inspect them, place them — not only just puzzles but like picking up notes, and picking up weapons and inspecting the environment, and being up close to the statues.

The set dressing is gorgeous, and so just watching people explore and say “oh I can’t believe this cathedral or little chapel is so well-lit and so homely, and cinematic.”  

This is our MachineGames adventure. This is the perfect fit for how we do an adventure game.

Talk about the experience of the studio developing Wolfenstein.

Even before Wolfenstein, the studio was a lot of people who worked on The Darkness and worked on Chronicles of Riddick which are also really unique seminal first-person games.

Specifically, Riddick had a lot of new approaches to first-person games, and I feel like a lot of people have missed that in terms of first-person.

And so for us to open up the scale of a first-person game again to allow puzzles, to have hand-to-hand combat, to not shy away from just picking up and inspecting stuff, and having these first-person and third-person switches for traversals — it’s such a refreshing space to be in because usually when you think of first-person games, it’s fast-paced shooting games most of the time. 

I mean we love fast-paced shooting games. I mean we make fast-paced shooting games. We’re really proud of Wolfenstein and you know, Wolfenstein has a lot of really great narrative and story, and diverse characters throughout it.

And so, in a lot of ways, Indiana Jones — it’s adventure first. We’re not just going run-and-gun for a lot of it. But we’re still making a game that has so many cinematic qualities.

I like the map mechanic too. If you really want to look at the map, you have to press down and shift your character’s view. So talk about the decision to keep that immersive experience where a mini map doesn’t distract you.

Yeah, just from the start, twe’ve always wanted the journal just to be a core feature of the game. That possibility of having this record of everything you’ve done, everything you’ve collected, everything that you want to do, being able to view your map in multiple ways, and have that interaction. 

It’s like from the very beginning of the game, the development, it just felt like something that would really get you in the shoes of Indy — something that would drive immersion. So it’s taken a lot of time to to get it to feel, to make it smooth and make it consistent, but it’s like the pay-off has just been so awesome. 

Like the first time you get a map and you’re like, “Oh I’m like, I’m in this world still. I’m not in the mini map. I’m not distracted from the world around me.” I’m not distracted from what’s going on around me, and I’m using this as a real navigational tool.

How did you plan to differentiate yourself from adventure games like Tomb Raider or Uncharted? 

We’re very confident in our ability to make a MachineGames game, and we’re not really concerned with what the competition is doing. We have such a different take on it and such a unique perspective on making our own style of MachineGames games that it’s just been kind of easy to continue to develop it, and never get bogged down with what the competition is doing or how they would do it. 

How did you allow the films to inspire the scenes in The Great Circle?

We’re huge huge fans of Raiders and well, all of the movies. But particularly we really loved the action, and the framing, and the cinematic experience of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade so it just made sense for us to place it right there between them, as something where we can still draw upon that time period.

And of course, we’re looking directly at those movies and how they shot scenes and what the camera angles are, and the color grading and everything.

But it’s also, it’s how we can make our own take on that, how we can build into that universe, and doing a fresh story.

Talk about the scoring. 

Lucasfilm’s helping out, so Gordie Hobb is right there. Gordie Hobb is working on the score. He’s also done some Star Wars games as well.

He’s amazing. Every time the score comes in, and more music comes into the game, it’s just like, immediately everything has that atmosphere, has that personality you know and it’s just been super lovely. 

How do you think Indiana Jones can still be relatable to younger gamers now? 

Over the last year, as people have gotten to see the game more and more, we’ve gotten so much love — from everyone who loves this character, and are just so excited by an authentic Indiana Jones experience coming in a game. 

And so what we’ve seen is that this character is timeless. This character really appeals.

I mean I talked to someone yesterday, and they said this is a game that he and his dad will be playing together because his dad wants to play this game, and he wants to play this game.

Anybody who gets to watch the Indiana Jones movies with their kids now… and then suddenly there’s a new five-year-old, seven-year-old and a 10-year-old who love Indiana Jones and want to have a whip, and a fedora and go on an archaeological dig. 

So I think the character is pretty timeless, and as we’ve shown, the response has just been tremendous. – Rappler.com