Indiana Jones And The Great Circle Lets Us Spent More Time with the Archeologist Than Ever
It’s Machine Games' longest yet.
Indiana Jones And The Great Circle is almost upon us. It will mark the globe-trotting archeology professor’s first gaming adventure since 2009’s Staff of Kings. And from the sounds of it, developer Machine Games is giving players a whole lot of time to live in Indy’s world.
Machine Games' Axel Torvenius, creative director for Indiana Jones And The Great Circle, told the MinnMax podcast that the upcoming Xbox-published game will be the studio’s biggest game to date.
“By far this is the biggest and longest game that Machine Games has ever done,” Torvenius said.
The game’s runtime will contain nearly two movies worth of cutscenes starring the titular character. “It’s roughly three hours and forty-five minutes, something along those lines. It’s a lot.” Torvenius said.
Indiana Jones And The Great Circle will feature Machine Game’s longest campaign yet.
He added that the game’s story will take place over the course of a couple of weeks and will peel back new layers about who the iconic film character is.
The Great Circle being longer than either of the studio's Wolfenstein games bodes well for players worried that the single-player-only game would be too brief. Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus were both lengthy first-person shooters. Main pathing either took about a 12-hour to complete and tackling extra side content easily tacked on an additional five hours.
The Great Circle is already confirmed to have a main story line and more open-ended sections that let players interact with NPCs and complete side missions. These sections will provide the game with some replay value, the game’s developers confirmed back in August.
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The Great Circle will be a significant change for the typically concise style and kinetic of storytelling the series is known for. With the exception of maybe the serialized TV show Young Indiana Jones Chronicles from the 90s, The Great Circle marks the longest time viewers have ever spent with Indy on a single adventure. Considering actor Harrison Ford is hanging the fedora up for good after last year’s Dial of Destiny, The Great Circle is a solid proof of concept for what the future holds for the aging franchise.
Short of recasting Ford (something Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy has outright shut down) or making a weird movie starring a deepfake for its entirety, games are probably the best chance the character has at continued relevance. Everything that makes the character so enduring can easily live on with the help of talented developers who care about the property. After all, Indy is the inspiration for some of gaming’s most iconic characters, including Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft and Uncharted’s Nathan Drake.
If a developer like Machine Games can build out a story that keeps the intrigue simmering and engaging across more than 12 hours, Indy’s path forward be clearer than ever. So far, everything from the grounded approach to action set pieces to the more methodical and cerebral gameplay suggests this developer understands what’s made this series tick since its 1981 debut.
In addition to the game’s length, Torvenius and design director Jens Andersson shared a few other fun facts about the game. For one, the game’s overarching narrative is virtually the same as the one Fallout Game Director Todd Howard pitched to Lucasfilm in 2009, according to the duo. (Howard is currently credited as an executive producer on The Great Circle.)
The two also provided insights into the game’s first story DLC, The Order of Giants. They confirmed that its story “fits in very [well] with the main campaign,” and also said that Indy will face brand new animal threats that he’s never before faced in the films. Thankfully, however, we already know the character won’t be harming any canines in this trek across the world.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will close out a decent fall for Xbox and its Game Pass subscription service, coming just a few weeks after the ultra-difficult survival first-person shooter S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. So far, The Great Circle looks to be a much easier and more universally enjoyable game, thanks to its faithfulness to the family-friendly source material.
