Indiana Jones The Order of Giants DLC Q&A – ‘People Just Wanted More; Everything Is Freshly Built’

At Gamescom 2025, we were able to go hands-on with The Order of Giants DLC for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and speak to two of the key developers from MachineGames (Lead Game Designer Ezekiel Virant and Creative Director Axel Torvenius) as they led us through the making of this expansion, which will be released on September 4 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X, and will eventually be available on Nintendo Switch 2 next year once the game launches there. Let's begin with the developers' words.

Axel Torvenius: The Order of Giants DLC's premise is that we set out to place the beginning of the DLC inside the Vatican sandbox, so you need to have played the game up to a certain point in the Vatican sandbox, and if you have the DLC installed, we have this new character called Father Orlando Ricci. When you interact with him, he will trigger a cutscene, which activates the DLC.

Father Ricci is obviously very, very obsessed with finding this secret chamber. He's also hinted that Father Ventura is onto him and that he's being forced out of the Vatican, which hints to the fact that only a small part of the DLC takes place inside the Vatican sandbox, maybe 10 or 15 minutes of gameplay, but then we quite quickly push the players to a complete new path, which is the streets of the Rome and the Tiber river and all the places underneath. Even the spaces in the Vatican sandbox were visible but inaccessible in the base game.

As you explore the DLC, you'll find lots of clues and hints, similar to what we did in the base game, in all the Chapters. We have tons of notes for you to find and fill out Indiana's journal. There are around 70 new collectibles in the DLC.

Ezekiel Virant: You can take this mission anytime in the campaign, really, even if you've already completed the game and you have a save and buy The Order of Giants DLC, you can still fast travel back here and start this mission, so there's no need to start a whole new game. As soon as you've gotten the camera and met Gina, you're good to go with the DLC.

Axel Torvenius: From the moment you enter the casina onward, everything is completely new content. At the beginning of the DLC's production, we thought we should reuse some stuff, but in the end, not much has been reused from the main game. Basically, everything is freshly built and you have no sensation of, like, oh, I've seen this before, this is just rehashed content from the main game. Everything is completely new.

So none of this is cut content from Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, right?

Axel Torvenius: Exactly, it's content that has been produced when we started to ramp down production on the main game, but obviously, there were some things when we were working on the main game where we were already planning for this. The concept images and stuff like that. We knew that we were going to hopefully be able to dive deeply into this part of the narrative with The Order of Giants.

It was one of the big mysteries of the game, after all.

Axel Torvenius: Yeah, so it's one of those nice opportunities to finally be able to actually do a DLC that dives a little bit deeper into the mystery of it.

Ezekiel Virant: We also have all-new puzzle mechanics. We are not recycling any of the old mechanics from other areas. There is a mix of big and small puzzles to get that balance between them.

Axel Torvenius: By the way, you can fast travel in and out of the DLC as you see fit.

Is The Order of the Giants DLC harder than the base game when it comes to combat and/or puzzles?

Ezekiel Virant: I think the puzzles lean towards being a little bit more difficult than the base game, actually, but of course, we still have hints. And we also still have the adventure mode if you want to have a simpler time in some of the puzzles. In terms of the combat, depending on where you are with the base game, the game will actually scale the difficulty. So, if you're starting right from the Vatican, it will be easier, but if you're in the endgame, the enemies will be more challenging.

Axel Torvenius: We will also be connecting the dots from certain narrative threads seen in the main game. Moreover, in terms of visual fidelity, everything that you'll see in the DLC is at a minimum as good-looking and polished as in the base game, and in some instances, it's even better. Similar to what we have in the main game as well, everything starts with a small mystery and then grows from there. In The Order of Giants, Father Ricci asks you to find the secret chamber and the giant helmet found within, but there's much more to it, so Indiana will have to keep digging.

Ezekiel Virant: We have multiple larger puzzles like this one in the DLC, similar to the base game. There are a lot of layers and mechanics, new mechanics, and we're truly trying to push the player all around the environment. This is one of the brand-new mechanics that we started working on immediately after the base game wrapped up. In most Indiana Jones adventures, the puzzles that he unravels start with him figuring out the mechanics, and then once he gets into a good flow, something breaks, and he has to clear the breakage or do something else.

Did you incorporate any feedback from the players' experience with the base game into the design of these new puzzles?

Ezekiel Virant: Yeah, we've watched a lot of players while they interact with our puzzles. I think what we heard from them is that they just wish there were more puzzles and also that they were more difficult. There were a lot of puzzles that we wished we could have made, so this was an opportunity for the team to take those ideas from the back of their mind, start putting them into the game, and try new things.

The designer who worked on this puzzle had an idea to rotate something with a wrench, and players could slot the wrench in and out. Then, another designer who had been working on the redirection maze for a while joined him to create this one.

One unique aspect of developing these puzzles compared to those from the base game is that they were finally done in our office. Most of those in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle were made during COVID, when people were forced to work remotely. This is the first time the people could meet physically to design them.

There are more secrets to be found on the levels. Something that we've always tried to maintain is to allow for new paths to open, for new secrets to be revealed, so there's always this layering of the environments where you dig deeper and find something new, and depending on your playstyle, you may be able to find more stuff.

Ezekiel Virant: This traversal section is one that was just so super inspired. One of the designers who worked on this was someone who didn't do a big traversal section throughout the main game, but we had the opportunity to try a lot of new ideas with the DLC. Since the engine was in such a good shape that we had all the mechanics nailed down, it was easy for us to experiment and make new things without having to worry about bugs. This traversal scenario here, where you deal with pulleys and weights and moving up and down, shows off this brand new mechanics; it's a whole new way of using the whip.

This whole level here is like that. We started designing new mechanics and new features. We began by putting together a fresh view of mechanics with this rope and these pulleys. The designer had it in their mind, and I think they actually tried to do it a year or two ago, but only had the opportunity to make it work and get all the tech pieces in place for The Order of Giants DLC. When we first started doing this level design and walking it out, we actually found that it was getting longer, but people were having a lot of fun, so we increased the scope and the complexity of this whole scenario, just based on just internal player feedback. We felt it would be a missed opportunity otherwise.

Do you have an estimate of the length of The Order of Giants DLC?

Axel Torvenius: In terms of time spent, it's similar to a sandbox environment in the main game, so it's around 5 to 6 hours, but if you are a completionist and want to find everything, then I think it's more, and if you are a very skilled player who knows how to solve all the puzzles on first try, maybe it's shorter. But I've been playing through the final build back home in the studio and I think I'm at, like, four and a half hours, but then I know everything. Some of the puzzles can be very challenging even at medium difficulty, but that's why we also have easy difficulty available. If you don't want to spend too much time on puzzles, you should still be able to navigate through and continue the adventure.

I think it's important to emphasize that this is not a puzzle DLC. It's still primarily a story-driven narrative DLC. The balance here is similar to what we have in the base game: large puzzles, small puzzles, hard combat, light combat, cutscenes, set pieces, tense action, even some boss fight. Everything that was in the main game is represented in the DLC as well.

Basically, everything players loved about the base game, they're getting more of it.

Axel Torvenius: Yep. Exactly the same type of tone, sensation, same humor and everything. It's very much like an extension of the main game. I think that's something we felt was very correct to do, because we're still telling a new, standalone, unique adventure, a new story. But we saw so much feedback from the player community where people were like, we want more Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Finally, we had the opportunity to get the DLC out, which is just doing that. It's adding more to the beloved world of Indiana Jones.

Earlier, you talked about the game's fidelity, which is already great. But I know that you are also improving upon it with the upcoming RTX Hair update. Can you talk about that a bit?

Axel Torvenius: I can't go into technical details, but what we're happy to see is that the development and integration of RTX Hair makes it so much better. Actually, there's a lot of things in the game that can benefit from it, because many things utilize the hair system, not just hair itself. It's a system that is used over other aspects as well. Everything that is fur or hair-related will have better render fidelity.

Some people may think it's a small thing, but there are all those small things that add up. The details and everything just make everything come together. We are really happy with the RTX Hair integration.

I know that you announced a Switch 2 version, right?

Axel Torvenius: Yeah, it will be released next year.

Are you doing that internally, or is that work being outsourced?

Axel Torvenius: Yes, most of the work is done internally. Our CTO, the engineers, and the programmers are working on it to ensure it is as good as we can possibly make it on a handheld platform.

You already ported the previous Wolfenstein games to Nintendo Switch, correct?

Ezekiel Virant: Yes, both the last two Wolfenstein games. It's a continuation of Machinegames bringing the titles to Nintendo platforms.

Axel Torvenius: Which is great. As a developer, you want to own as many as possible so that your game can be enjoyed, so we were very happy with the Switch 2 confirmation.

One last question. Can you share whether there will be more of Gina in this DLC?

Axel Torvenius: Gina is not part of the DLC. This is more of Indiana Jones going on a little bit of a rogue adventure on the side. Gina is most likely still back undercover in the Vatican, doing some research at this point.

That was one of the reasons we wanted to really focus on Indiana Jones and the core of the IP to push him on a side quest. Obviously, we have a lot of sections in the main game where we do things together with Gina, which is nice because we want that balance. She's an important character, but we also see that it's cool when you're completely alone and you get the sensation that it's only up to you to solve the mystery, so it fits in within that balance too.

Ezekiel Virant: Yeah. I think Indie is a bit distracted at this point and he wants to keep searching and pushing, whereas Gina is really on a beeline to find her sister.

Axel Torvenius: In The Order of Giants DLC, you'll see Father Ricci, but there are also appearances of Father Ventura and Mussolini as well.

Fair enough. Thank you so much for your time.

Based on what we played at Gamescom 2025, The Order of Giants looks like a thoughtful extension of what people (the undersigned included) already loved about Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: awesome graphics, outstanding puzzles, and great atmosphere. There are also some interesting new platforming mechanics, too, especially those based around Indy's whip. The demo only featured a very brief combat scene, but according to the developers, fans should expect roughly the same split between combat, exploration, and narrative that made the base game so great.

There's not much to wait to experience the new content, with the DLC slated to hit all platforms on September 4. Look forward to our review soon.

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