Upcoming action-adventure game Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is being developed by MachineGames, a Swedish video game developer best known for their recent work on the Wolfenstein remakes beginning with 2014’s Wolfenstein: The New Order. While the Wolfenstein games are abounding with blood-splattering, Nazi-blasting, gun-blazing action, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will see MachineGames take a slightly more subdued approach to taking out Nazis — not the BJ Blazkowicz way, but the Indiana Jones way.
“It’s tough, because the way [MachineGames] is used to working–how we build levels, how we design enemies–everything is coming from this action [focus],” Indiana Jones and the Great Circle‘s design director, Jens Andersson, told GameSpot at Gamescom 2024.” And now we’re coming at it from a different side. So it took a long time. Like, honestly, a really long time for us at company meetings and stuff, talking about ‘What is this game trying to do?'”
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle/MachineGames
One of the biggest differences in approach between the two games will be the use of guns. Whereas guns are a focal point of the Wolfenstein games and are certainly present in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, they’ll be more of an ancillary item in the latter game.
“We do not encourage gunplay,” creative director Axel Torvenius said in the latest issue of Edge Magazine. “It’s not being pushed as the primary way forward. The primary way forward is always trying to use your wits and your whip.”
While he’s probably just as recognizable on the action movie Mount Rushmore, Indiana Jones is no Rambo. While Jones can be seen touting firearms in the films, primarily a revolver, it’s not the recommended course of action to rush into the action and fire at enemies in The Great Circle.
“Indy doesn’t have superpowers,” Torvenius continued. “Very often, you can tell that it’s not easy for him to be in a fight. At the end of the day, he’s a teacher and a somewhat clumsy archeologist. He just happens to have this passion that puts him in these weird situations constantly with enemies and traps.
“It wouldn’t be true to the character to have him constantly shooting camps for all enemies constantly, and the team at MachineGames wants to emphasize the danger level. We’ve been trying to capture that sense that, if you need to engage in combat, it’s very dangerous to be shot at. It’s also very dangerous to shoot at enemies, because they will have an alarm system and reinforcements coming in.”
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