Indiana Jones And The Great Circle’s Director Took This Spielberg Philosophy To Heart
Studio Director Jerk Gustafsson reveals the internal debates that brought the character to life.
Of all of the internal debates that Machine Games had during the development of its most recent game, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, director Jerk Gustafsson recalls the toughest being about how the iconic archeologist should move. While some team members wanted to make Indy as acrobatic as his gaming contemporaries, others felt a duty to portray him as his creators intended.
“To be honest, that was probably a harder sell internally,” Gustafsson, who was in the latter camp. “I remember reading this quote, I think it was from Spielberg who said ‘Indiana Jones is a non-superhero superhero.’ That became one of the core values of the project. Of course he’s still fit and can handle himself. But he’s also a 35-plus-year-old professor. I had this goal of trying to make it grounded in that way.”
“In my mind, you have to think about it as the end product. You only play this once.”
Not everyone was on board. Those repeatedly playtesting the game more than any normal consumer probably would be frustrated by how slow Indiana moved when climbing up walls and ledges. But Gustafsson believed in keeping the character from becoming as nimble as those he influenced.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s platforming and climbing is slower-paced by design.
“In my mind, you have to think about it as the end product. You only play this once. Grabbing a ledge and climbing is pretty tough. We need to think about how hard it is for a man of this age to climb around this environment.”
This is just one example of the many conversations the talented Sweden-based team discussed during The Great Circle’s four-year development. These discussions weren’t easy. At times it meant making choices that bucks trends in favor of immersion or faithfulness to the beloved source material. The end result however is an experience that confidently doubles down on its vision, creating an entirely unique game that doubles as one of 2024’s best.
Becoming Indiana Jones
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a first-person action adventure with an emphasis on adventure. Players seldom blow away fascists with high-powered machine guns, an inspired act of restraint considering Machine Games’ pedigree. Instead, it's a slower game about solving ancient puzzles, grand mysteries, and subterfuge.
Not a ton of modern big-budget games would opt to put its recognizable lead behind the camera.
The choice to make a puzzle-heavy adventure game like The Great Circle in the first person isn’t unprecedented. But it is unusual for such a licensed, big-budget game. If a game is starring an iconic hero with the face of Harrison Ford, building a game where that character isn’t seen for the majority of its runtime isn’t how most developers would capitalize on Indy’s brand recognition.
This was another point of contention when the team first got started, according to Gustafsson. Every Indiana Jones game adaptation has featured the character front and center during game play and breaking from this tradition would be a jarring switch-up. Ultimately, the team decided first person was the way to go because it plays into their strengths as a team.
“We don't just want to play as Indiana Jones, we want you to be Indiana Jones.”
“Everybody understands the reasoning behind it and was supportive of it,” he said. “We don't just want to play as Indiana Jones, we want you to be Indiana Jones. It’s an immersion that leads to presence and makes a good adventure game. It always takes some time to explain the thinking and the reasoning behind it, but you also have to show it.”
Without the leading man on screen, the teams worked on ways to remind players who they were: NPCs that respond to the player with barks, how Gina reacts when she’s sneaking through sections alongside Indy, and having moments where Indy is thinking out loud. These moments, combined with cinematic cuts and the third-person camera for when Indy scales the environment help create that ever-present reminder.
It turns out that making alternatives to gunplay extremely fun was the perfect deterrent to players leaving their revolvers at their sides.
Taking A Shot, Without So Many Guns
Making the player feel like Indy without seeing him was an easy challenge to overcome. Incentivizing players to roleplay the character without constraining them was an entirely different ballgame.
“We thought about it so much, especially early on,” Gustafsson. said. “I’m of the opinion that should try to give the player as much freedom as possible all the time. Let the players do what they want to do with the tools they have at hand.”
“I even started to think recently, that maybe we focused too little on gunplay.”
The team considered weakening guns or restricting weapons in certain areas outright. However, as the game’s combat started to come together, Machine Games realized maximizing the fun of the fisticuffs, makeshift weapons, and the whip was a functional deterrent to players blasting everything in sight.
“I'm quite surprised myself when I see players play the game,” he said. “I even started to think recently, that maybe we focused too little on gunplay. But it's also a good thing for this IP and for Indiana Jones. And I'm really glad that the players usually take the non-firearm approach.”
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle borrows a lot from 2004’s The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay.
In many ways, The Great Circle is a spiritual successor to older games developed by Starbreeze Studios. Both 2004’s The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay and 2007’s The Darkness are nearly identical in how levels are structured and progression is made. And that’s no coincidence as Starbreeze studio alum founded Machine Games. Both those retro titles made a point to be more than just a shooter they also had players completing quests, favors, and acrobatics to solve their problems.
But it doesn’t mean 2014’s Wolfenstein: The New Order and 2017’s Wolfenstein: The New Colossus didn’t have its influences carry over. Gustafsson said the pacing of action in those games helped them tremendously for The Great Circle.
The Indiana Jones game does differ from all of those games in one crucial way.
The Great Circle is a big departure from Wolfenstein’s over-the-top Nazi-slaying violence.
“This is actually the first Teen-rated game ever for us,” he said. “We’ve always done mature games with a lot of violence, blood, and gore. Even with a sense of humor attached to that, [switching to a Teen-rated game] has been something the team has been forced to adapt to.”
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is not only a great game. It’s also a lovingly crafted and authentic new chapter in the globe-trotting chronicles of Indiana Jones. While the writing, cinematics, and direction play a huge part in bringing back the feeling of Spielberg and Lucas seminal trilogy, so do Machine Games’ bold design decisions. The Great Circle remains true to the films while being a total blast to play.
