Indiana Jonesis dipping its toes into triple-A gaming at a weird time. There are fiveUnchartedgames that gleefully pilfer from Harrison Ford’s iconic adventures as much as they do ancient artefacts, and countlessTomb Raidergames and movies witheven more on the horizon. The platforming action of an archaeologist out for treasure is a niche that has been occupied successfully in the medium already. Twice.
Developer MachineGames has an interesting challenge then, bringing the progenitor of these two iconic series into the same medium while keeping it distinct. That’s hard to do when your entire aesthetic has been lifted already, butthe gameplay reveal at Xbox Direct 2024gives me hope for one incredibly simple reason - it’s first-person.
Indiana Jones has had several video games before, but never one on this scale.
Tomb Raider and Uncharted are third-person games. You see Lara Croft and Nathan Drake at all times which lends itself to the enormous platforming set pieces. Indiana Jones is trying something else entirely, using MachineGames’ experience withWolfensteinto craft a more intimate experience, which is genius for a couple of reasons.
For one, Indiana Jones started as a movie series. We’re used to watching everything he does and seeing Harrison Ford from an outside perspective. Bethesda is using the format of games as an opportunity to rework our role in his story by having us directly slip into his shoes and see things through his eyes. It’s something an Indiana Jones movie won’t (and can’t) do, so already MachineGames’ spin on the snake-fearing adventurer is making the most of the change in medium. That’s incredibly important for a 43-year-old franchise that, asDial of Destinyproves, is going stale.
It also means that Indiana Jones isn’t just an Uncharted or Tomb Raider clone, which are themselves versions of Indiana Jones clones. It’s trying something new and doing its own thing, which we see with the more stealth-driven, quieter action scenes that utilise the whip and objects in the environment. Where Uncharted has us mow down 300 goons while quipping, Indiana Jones has us crawling through dig sites and carefully dispatching guards.
It also sees us mounting turrets on planes and punching Nazis, but nothing on the level of Drake’s mass murder sprees.
There’s a level of vulnerability to this approach, as Indiana Jones feels less like an unstoppable superhuman and more like a university teacher out of his depth, which the first-person perspective only amplifies. We see this world from his view, the danger and threat closer than ever, and throwing stealth into the mix is what brings it all together.
For important moments where being face-to-face with a rock wall might be jarring, we’re pulled back to third-person. Or, if MachineGames wants to embellish the story, the camera is ripped away as we enter more cinematic, movie-like interactions with other characters. There’s no strict rule, and the dynamic approach will only bridge the movies and games together seamlessly, making the most of two vastly different formats.
It would have been all too easy to cash in on the love of Uncharted and Tomb Raider and excuse the blatant similarities with, ‘Indy was here first!’. Thankfully, that’s not what this is. Indiana Jones is taking the aesthetic and story beats that Uncharted and Tomb Raider brought to games already and reinventing how they’re expressed and told. It keeps things fresh, but who knows? Maybe such a different approach will even be as influential as the movies were.
