Indiana Jones games have been few and far between. Actually, we have to look back at the previous decade for a video game starring the intrepid archeologist, and that was made for Facebook.
So it makes sense that many are looking forward to the release of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which is coming this December.
MachineGames, the people behind the Wolfenstein games, are behind it, and this is surely one of the top games arriving in the second half of 2024. And MachineGames creative director Axel Torvenius recently spoke about the game in an interview with MinnMax (via PC Gamer), in which he said that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is “by far, the biggest and longest game that MachineGames have ever done”.
Big, bold words for sure, even if “biggest” and “longest” does not equate to “great”. Nonetheless, it’s a good thing that this will be a lengthy adventure for players to sink their teeth into when it arrives on December 9.
Worryingly for some, though, might be the fact that the game contains almost four hours of cutscenes. The Great Circle features “roughly three hours and 45 or 40 minutes” according to Torvenius. “It’s a lot”, added the MachineGames director in the interview.
For comparison, the original Indiana Jones movie (Raiders of the Lost Ark) is about 2 hours long, meaning that all the Great Circle’s cutscenes put together are almost twice as long as Raiders. Which won’t be a problem is these non-interactive bits are good, which they seem to be judging by the trailers MachineGames has released thus far.
Also if this is MachineGames’ longest game yet, it should take longer to play through it than their latest major game, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, which takes about 11 hours to beat according to howlongtobeat.com.
A playing time of 25 hours would be nice, taking into account the game has almost 4 hours’ worth of cutscenes, and that Bethesda Softworks’ last major release Starfield offers more than 100 hours of content. Bethesda publishes MachineGames’ games (which is a studio based in Sweden). It’s parent company is ZeniMax Media, which Microsoft acquired (together with Bethesda) back in 2021.
Most important of all, though is that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle turns out to be a good game. This is because it’s been a long while since video game fans got a great (or at least good) Indiana Jones game. Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues (released way back in 2009) was pretty decent, but the action-adventure extravaganza Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings (released the same year) was something of a disappointment.
Of course, LucasArts fantastic Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is probably the best Indiana Jones game there ever was, but the point and click adventure from 1991 is looking a bit long in the tooth now.
There’s also the fact that MachineGames has made Indiana Jones and the Great Circle a first-person perspective game. This is instead of the more typical third-person view employed in this kind of game, as is the case of Tomb Raider and others, but this was to be expected taking into account that their Wolfenstein games have featured a first-person view. So the man with the fedora and the whip will be beating Nazis in first-person perspective, then. He’ll also be voiced by video game star Troy Baker and not Hollywood star Harrison Ford himself, though.
It would be a great thing, nonetheless, if Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was not only a long and substantial adventure, but also a great game, something we’ll find out when MachineGames latest hits the shelves in a couple of weeks’ time.