Summary
After tons of speculation and chatter, Xbox and MachineGames have finally revealed the next adventure for Indiana Jones during the lengthy Developer Direct — it will be titledIndiana Jones and the Great Circleand is due out this year in 2024. It was a pretty in-depth reveal, bringing lots of new details about characters, game design, and environments, and even a Wilhelm scream.
The Great Circle has multiple settings, a phenomenally talented voice cast, a gorgeous and unique art style slightly differing from theWolfensteingames, and it’s set within a movie canon timeline. Here are all the things you might’ve missed from the reveal.
10Indy Is Voiced By Troy Baker With Harrison Ford’s Likeness
The first scene of the trailer shows one of the most iconic elements present in all Indy films, which is Indiana Jones getting captured by Nazis and still finding ways to antagonize them while restrained. He looks like Harrison Ford, and while he may amazingly sound just like Harrison Ford, that’s a credit to his voice actor,who’s confirmed as the one and only Troy Baker.
Troy Baker has gifted many iconic roles in his career to video games, with characters like Joel Miller, Booker DeWitt, Pagan Min, Talion, Samuel Drake, Erron Black, and Batman and Joker, and he now adds Indiana Jones to his stellar resume. It’s quite the performance to live up to, but the lines heard from the trailer and gameplay already demonstrate that Baker captured the perfect tone and charm of Indy.
9Tony Todd, Alessandra Mastronardi, And Marios Gavrilis' Character Reveals
Indiana Jones wasn’t the sole character revealed in the trailer. You also get a look at his new companion Gina, an investigative reporter joining him for the adventure, along with two new villains. One of those is an ominous and enigmatic Osmund Saddler-type figure named Locus and the other is the Nazi’s Emmerich Voss.
Locus is especially notable because he’s the catalyst for Indy’s new adventure and is voiced and modeled afterCandyman actor Tony Todd, whose past video game roles include Venom in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, the Director in Layers of Fear 2, and Tommy Briggs in COD: Black Ops 2.
Gina is confirmed to be voiced by actress Alessandra Mastronardi, or Francesca in Netflix’s Master of None, Gabriela in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and Lucrezia Donati in Netflix’s Medici.
Emmerich Voss is described as a psychological villain, and he’s played by Marios Gavrilis, the German dub voice actor for Sam Porter Bridges inDeath Strandingand Batman inGotham Knights, as well as the voice ofStarfield’sNPCs Tevin Anastes, Marko Jansen, and Tom Starrett.
8The Music Will Be By Gordy Haab
Much to many fans' surprise,John Williams isn’t returning to score the new musicfor Indiana Jones’s next adventure, even though he did for The Dial of Destiny. Instead, it’s confirmed that Gordy Haab will helm the soundtrack for The Great Circle, which is notable because he’s taken the helm from John Williams in Lucasfilm games before.
Haab has previously stepped in for John Williams for numerousStar Warsgames, serving as the composer of Star Wars: Battlefront, Battlefront 2, Squadrons, Jedi: Fallen Order, Jedi: Survivor, and Star Wars: The Old Republic. He’s also composed the soundtrack for Halo Wars 2.
7First-Person And Third-Person Gameplay Elements
UnlikeUnchartedand theTomb Raidergames, this will be primarily a first-person action-adventure experience as Indiana Jones, with the third-person elements kicking in for the traversal elements of the gameplay. When you’re punching and whipping away Nazis, it’s all in first-person, and when you’re in a cutscene, ziplining, or scaling a structure, you’ll see Indy in the third-person.
MachineGames' previous titles include the reimagined Wolfenstein games, with Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus featuring third-person cutscenes with first-person gameplay. The goal is to feel immersed as Indy on this adventure, and the gameplay genuinely comes across as if Uncharted was in first-person.
6Indy’s Whip Will Have Many Important Functions
The whip is Indiana Jones' most iconic weapon and tool, and MachineGames has found creative ways for it to be utilized in the gameplay when it comes to combat, stealth, and traversal. While you can use it to pull enemies closer toward you and smack weapons right out of their hands, there are plenty of other functions.
The whip’s handle will be used like BD-1 for ziplining, you can whip environmental objects as a distraction for guards, and you can use it as a rope to grapple and rappel up buildings. The development team has put a lot of emphasis on the whip, so you can guarantee it will be quite an important feature in the game.
5Camera, Puzzle, Stealth Mechanics, And Traps
The gameplay will rely on puzzles, stealth, and occasionally narrowly avoiding traps. The reveals so far have conveyed that immersive first-person stealth and Nazi ass-kicking action you know and love from the Wolfenstein games combined with the puzzles and traversal from Uncharted and Tomb Raider (which were heavily influenced by Indiana Jones).
What’s notable about the stealth, in particular, is that you may pick up environmental objects like hammers and shovels to throw and whack enemies for silent takedowns. The other element shown is the camera, which looks like it’ll be used to record interesting finds and possibly serve as a tool in keeping you disguised and safe from enemies you alert.
4A New Story Set In Between Raiders And The Last Crusade
The developers also revealed where in the timeline Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is set, and that would be in between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. This means it will fill in the gaps of what happened before Indy reunited with his father in 1938 and introduce some new characters we haven’t seen in the films.
From the early story details gathered so far, Indy is back teaching archeology at Marshall College until Tony Todd’s Locus breaks in to steal a valuable artifact, which soon sends Indy to the Vatican and getting the help of his new companion Gina while also in a race against the Nazis for the artifact known as The Great Circle. If the studio’s Wolfenstein games haven’t demonstrated already, the story and chaotic Nazi villains are in good hands.
3A Japanese Dogfight Section
It sounds like the new video game isn’t just stopping at Nazis as Indy’s enemies on the eve of the Second World War, but that Japanese forces will also play a role in the narrative, unlike their absence in the movies. The comic book series Thunder in the Orient saw Indiana Jones go up against Imperial Japanese soldiers, and it looks like he’ll finally get in their crosshairs in the game as well.
One particularly telling scene from the trailer is the riveting dogfight sequence between Indy and a Japanese WW2-era plane, which ends with the titular hero taking a plunge onto it. It instantly felt like something out of Uncharted and also a nod to The Dial of Destiny plane sequence.
Concept art shared by the developers during the presentation also revealed a scene reminiscent of an invasion by Japan, where Indy and Gina are running from explosions in a market as planes are flying overhead.
2An Adventure Spanning Across Different Settings
One of the most exciting things revealed is the concepts of the different regions and environments in The Great Circle. You’ll get to be at the Vatican, the Pyramids of Egypt, the snowy Himalayas, and the lush jungle surrounding the temples of Sukhothai.
This is quite the treat to receive all of these areas in one game, since the Tomb Raider games and the first three Uncharted games saw snowy environments, deserts, and exotic jungles between separate games.Indy’s around-the-world adventureis very on point with the films, and it’s a crucial aspect for the game to land.
1The Game Uses A Scan Of The Original Costume
One of the cooler details shown during the developer commentary portion of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s reveal is a technical artist doing a 3D scan of Harrison Ford’s original Indiana Jones costume provided by Lucasfilm. That means the in-game outfit on Indy will be as precise as it can be to the live-action character.
In the next frame, you see designers fine-tuning the details of Indy’s 3D-model hat. Since the whip was also seen lying on an office desk, you can assume that the whip was also scanned to be as authentic as possible.
