MachineGames has released the first update for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which technically launches today even though early access actually started last Friday for pre-order customers who purchased the Premium Edition.
This patch's highlight is undoubtedly the addition of full-blown path tracing, which was missing from the review build, as I noted in my article. Now, owners of NVIDIA RTX graphics cards can activate the computationally expensive (the developers recommend at least 12GB of VRAM) yet visually impressive mode.
YouTuber Tyrian has published the first video comparison to demonstrate the graphics improvements enabled by path tracing in the game. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle supports ray traced sun shadows, ray traced reflections, and ray traced indirect illumination, all of which can now be toggled in the graphics settings. After turning everything on, the improvement is easily noticeable. However, the performance hit is just as stark, with Tyrian's RTX 4080 graphics card having its frame rate cut in half (or even lower) when path tracing is enabled.
Still, it should be manageable for the RTX 4080 by setting DLSS Super Resolution to Performance and activating the obligatory DLSS Frame Generation. Of course, the top-class RTX 4090 remains the best choice for anyone who wants to go all-in with path tracing - at least until its successor, the RTX 5090, launches next month.
The Indiana Jones and the Great Circle update also fixes a number of bugs, as you'd expect for any first post-launch patch nowadays, including a bug I had reported to the developers during the review process (HDR and DLSS sometimes produced a moiré effect when enabled together). Moreover, MachineGames is also thinking about AMD users. They promised that FidelityFX Super Resolution would be integrated into the game in a future update. There is still a known issue that the developers pointed out to the community. Sometimes, when starting the game with DLSS enabled, the game will run slower than intended. When this happens, until a final fix is released, you should switch from DLSS to TAA and then back to resolve the problem.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is available now on PC and Xbox Series S|X, and Game Pass subscribers can access it without any additional cost. The game will also be released next Spring for PlayStation 5. It's certainly worth keeping an eye out for PS5 users, as I mentioned in my review:
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is an excellent adventure/action game that features one of the best Indiana Jones stories, great level design that rewards exploration, and awesome ray traced visuals. This might just be the best game dedicated to Dr. Henry Walton we've ever seen.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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