Fans of Indiana Jones haven't exactly been swimming in great new entries for many years now. The adventure franchise was created by George Lucas in the eighties with three highly successful movies. Then, all those who loved the scruffy but charming professor of archaeology portrayed by Harrison Ford had to wait for nearly twenty years to get Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It wasn't until last year that another sequel, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, was released. It featured Harrison Ford's final appearance, and the reception wasn't nearly as great as the previous installments.
Gamers have recently suffered from a similar dearth of new productions. Nine original Indiana Jones videogames were released between 1985 and 2009, but there's a fifteen-year gap between Staff of Kings and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Thankfully, Bethesda's Elder Scrolls and Fallout manager Todd Howard is a big fan of the character created by George Lucas. He has sought opportunities to make a game based on Indiana for a long time, pitching a project directly to Lucas himself back in 2009.
Back then, his idea did not take off due to a lack of resources on Bethesda's behalf. He kept trying, though, and eventually his idea based around the so-called Great Circle (which can be drawn on the world map by uniting the planet's most significant archaeological sites) took off. Howard selected Bethesda-owned developer MachineGames to make the game because of their familiarity with the World War II-adjacent setting and the main enemy, the Nazis. His perseverance is likely the primary reason we have this game now. Having just finished it, I am absolutely glad that it happened, as this might just be the best Indiana Jones game ever made.
Let's get this out of the way: yes, as you may have read, the game is almost exclusively played from a first-person view. This might seem counter-intuitive for two good reasons. First, when you have such a recognizable character as the protagonist, you would want to show him at all times. Second, the two main franchises in this sub-genre, Tomb Raider and Uncharted, have been massively successful with sticking to the third-person.
However, there are other considerations to make. MachineGames have always developed games played in first-person view, not just the Wolfenstein series, but even The Chronicles of Riddick and The Darkness when they were still at Starbreeze. This choice allowed them to do what they know best, though they have added a few concessions. In specific instances, while traversing the maps, the perspective automatically switches to third-person because that's simply the most comfortable way to handle those situations. Moreover, unlike in Cyberpunk 2077 where even the cutscenes are played in first-person, you'll be able to see a relatively young Indiana in all his glory in this game's many cinematics. Beyond these principles, though, what matters is how it plays, and this plays extremely well. The first-person view undoubtedly maximizes the immersion factor and also lets you interact more naturally with the environment, both during combat and exploration.
From a gameplay standpoint, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle marks a large departure from the studio's pedigree. MachineGames always made shooter titles, and this is anything but. Yes, you do technically have a gun and you can even borrow rifles from defeated enemies, but the game highly incentivizes non-lethal ways to overcome foes. This is one of the main ways it differentiates itself from Tomb Raider and Uncharted. While the games by Crystal Dynamics and Naughty Dog do sometimes offer stealth options, they are usually confined to specific segments; for most of those titles, players must necessarily engage in extensive shootouts where Lara Croft and Nathan Drake mow down countless enemies, creating the so-called ludonarrative dissonance between the murderous gameplay and the narrative that tells us they are heroes.
This would be entirely out of character for someone like Indiana Jones. Sure, he's been known to fire a gun, but he is not a killer. As such, it is perfectly fitting that the best way to progress through the maps and solve the mysteries is through a mixture of stealth, ingenuity, and disguises. That's right, they've taken a cue from HITMAN, and our favorite professor of archaeology can acquire various disguises to blend in and enter environments where he would otherwise be attacked on sight. As HITMAN fans know, you'll still have to keep your distance from certain NPCs (Captains, in this case) who can spot Indiana through disguise.
Disguises aren't always easy to procure, though, so stealth remains the most common way to access areas controlled by Nazis. Here, MachineGames did not see fit to reinvent the wheel, adopting a fairly standard stealth system. When they spot you, a wheel starts to fill, making them more suspicious at a speed that is based on their distance. When the wheel is full, they go on full alert, calling for help from nearby allies.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle isn't winning any awards for its stealth AI. Throughout my playthrough, I've seen several times where the NPCs failed to be alerted when I knocked out one of their fellows not 15 meters away. However, I'm willing to cut the game some slack. Stealth AI is extremely hard to get right; it would be very easy to make it realistic to a degree where it becomes very punishing for players. The purpose of a game like this is to provide a fun experience, though not to be an accurate simulation, and to this degree, the game succeeds.
That's largely due to the great level design that enables many different approaches to the various situations. In this regard, the game reminded me of Dishonored, which placed a similar emphasis on stealth through its amazing level design. Like in those games, exploration is greatly rewarded. There's a ton of notes that not only fill out the lore but also provide maps and clues to solving the various mysteries and side stories that populate Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
This is especially notable in the three open maps: the Vatican, Gizeh, and Sukhothai. Here, players can explore largely at their leisure, uncovering artifacts and tombs and discovering adventure books and chests that help with progression. Indeed, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has some RPG-lite elements. By completing main and side objectives as well as snapping pictures of key locations and subjects, the game awards Adventure Points, which can be used to unlock dozens of upgrades in the survival, fitness, packing, brawling, combat, and exploration categories.
You will need to obtain the related Adventure Book to unlock an upgrade, though, which is where exploring every nook and cranny becomes highly recommended. There are even secret underground boxing rings where Indiana faces off against up to three foes to earn money and buy more Adventure Books.
By the way, brawling is the main way to resolve combat, and it's well done. You can parry and dodge, as well as use the left trigger to hit with the left hand and the right trigger to hit with the right hand, which is a nuance that most games do not include. Hits are meaty, especially when you grab a shovel or baton to hit the Nazis with. Indiana is not a fighter, though, and at Hard difficulty, you won't want to get surrounded by too many foes - yet another reason to be stealthy.
The difficulty can be set separately for action and exploration, which is a win-win in my book. Every user deserves to tailor the experience to their liking. There are only two exploration options: Light and Moderate. The former lowers the difficulty of puzzles, but rest assured that at least some of the optional puzzles remain not at all obvious. The game even includes a few instances where you'll have to crack a safe code by cross-referencing various tables. Of course, as with Tomb Raider and Uncharted, there are also many enjoyable environmental puzzles, most of which are resolved with the help of Indiana's trusty whip.
Being a game based on a movie character, the story is clearly very important for this game. Thankfully, this is one of the most exciting Indiana Jones stories yet. It is set in 1937, between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, while the winds of war start gathering across the world. The characters are extremely well portrayed, especially Gina Lombardi (played by a fantastic Alessandra Mastronardi), and more importantly, Troy Baker does an excellent job (despite Todd Howard's initial reservations) at mimicking Harrison Ford's voice without being too on the nose. The antagonist Emmerich Voss is a Nazi through and through, which makes him inherently stereotypical as far as villains go, although he does have more interests than just pleasing the Fatherland - he wants to best Indiana and prove he's the finest archaeologist of the two.
Be prepared for the plot to take a bit of a supernatural turn, but then again, it's not unusual within this franchise and genre. Overall, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has a lot of great content; I finished it in 23 hours, and I had to rush for the review, leaving some optional mysteries aside. The side stories tie in well with the main narrative, and you can return to the aforementioned three maps even after the game's ending, which will make completionists very happy.
From a visual standpoint, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is largely great, with the excellent lighting and facial animations being standouts. Powered by the id Tech engine, it features extensive ray tracing implementation. Unfortunately, path tracing and DLSS Ray Reconstruction will not be available until day one (December 9), so I could not test it. However, the performance at the current max settings allows a Ryzen 7 7800X3D and RTX 4090 to use NVIDIA DLAA while keeping a comfortable and smooth 70-80 frames per second. Stutters were few, usually only appearing briefly during the automatic saves. By the way, you can enable real-time performance analytics in the game settings, at least on PC. Moreover, the game already offers full support for the DualSense controller on PC, coming with all prompts. Of course, there's no haptic feedback or adaptive triggers, as those are likely still being tuned for the PS5 release next Spring.
There are also a few bugs that I have to report on the technical side. Firstly, there's a visual noise bug that showed itself consistently throughout the game. I'm told it is an issue caused by the combined usage of DLSS and HDR and that it will be fixed with a patch shortly. Secondly, for the whole playthrough, I had to contend with a bug where the game would dramatically slow down the frame rate after taking a picture with Indiana's camera, loading a save, or starting a cutscene. I quickly found out a workaround - alt-tabbing and returning to the game completely fixed it, at least until one of the above happened again. I have reported the issue and sincerely hope it will be resolved soon, as it was quite annoying.
Reviewed on PC (code provided by the publisher).
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