One of the most important parts of developing an adaptation is that its developers are fans of the source material. Thankfully, that is very much the case with MachineGames and its upcoming first-person action-adventure gameIndiana Jones and the Great Circle, which meansIndiana Jonesfans can likely expect the game to be a love letter to the films.
Game Rant had the chance to chat withIndiana Jones and the Great Circle’s design director Jens Andersson, as well as its creative director Axel Torvenius following a special presentation of the game at Gamescom 2024. During the interview, Torvenius and Andersson emphasized their appreciation for theIndiana JonesIP and how MachineGames poured that respect into the development ofIndiana Jones and the Great Circle.The following interview transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Realizing the Indiana Jones Films as a Video Game
Q: To kick things off, I wanted to ask what theIndiana JonesIP personally means to the two of you.
Torvenuis:Well, I was born in 1979, and I was raised in the ’80s. I have childhood memories of watching the movies — specifically,Raiders of the Lost Ark— with my dad at home making homemade pizza, so being allowed to work on such an IP is surreal and super cool.
Andersson:I remember back in Sweden renting theIndiana JonesVHS on the weekends, watching it, and being super excited, wondering, “Why isn’t every other movie like this?” Looking through all the other action-adventure movies out there, there was nothing like it.
Q: This is also the very first first-personIndiana Jonesgame, so I was curious if that presents any unique challenge and what advantage that perspective gives?
Torvenius: Absolutely. I think there are several different beats to it in terms of both challenges and advantages. We do have a very long history within the walls of MachineGames of doing first-person games. That comes naturally to us, so that’s, to some extent, a benefit. We know what we’re doing when we do first-person.
Then the challenge here is to counter potential expectations. What would an adventure game be? What, usually, areadventure games? But we’ve chosen such a different path for this game compared to other things, so it has been unfolding very naturally for it to be in first-person. In this game, you get very up close and personal to a lot of things. You are exploring hidden tunnels, you are solving puzzles, inspecting scriptures, and punching bad guys in the face. It feels very good to be up close and personal. It’s a mixed bag when it comes to challenges.
Andersson:It’s a starting point more than anything else. It’s a MachineGames game, so that means a very strong story, cinematics, strong characters, and then applying theIndiana Jonesfeel to it in first-person. What does that mean? How does it feel to crack the whip in first-person? It’s a different kind of answer to how it would feel in third-person, and taking that path and going with it is really what the challenge and the opportunity is — it becomes something special, I think.
Q: Could you talk a little bit about the adventure points that you unlock when playing the game, and how certain unlocks might make Indy play differently?
Andersson:We chose to go with this kind of loop and skill system, if you will, by having these adventure points that we are scattering throughout the game experience to encourage exploration and to encourage you to solve these small mysteries that we are hiding throughout the whole game. Some of them contain an ability that you need to unlock by using Adventure Points, which is something you gather through solving missions and filling out your journal with stuff.
I think in the theater presentation, we showed the True Grit ability, which is one of the abilities we want to highlight because it’s soIndiana Jones— get a second chance, grab your hat, and stand up. Generally, we have abilities that apply to every system that we have — from stealth, to hand-to-hand, to the whip, to everything. It’s about allowing the player to refine their playstyle in fun and interesting ways.
Q: Another gameplay element that was shown was disguises, so I was curious if you could talk about how that fits into the gameplay loop as well?
Andersson:The game takes place in a lot of different locations, all across the globe. It’s a global adventure. We have some areas that are bigger than the others, that are more free-roam, and those are the ones where you’re able to find new disguises. Once you’ve found a disguise, you can switch freely between the Adventurer’s Outfit and, for example, the Clerical Outfit, and it allows you to go out and not be attacked by the enemies that are out there or to be able to access areas that you otherwise couldn’t.
It becomes kind of this choice so that, instead of trying to stealth your way through, you can just walk through. You still need to be a little bit careful though because there are people who can see through your disguise, but it becomes an interesting gameplay option.
Q: Something you just mentioned was the variety of locales, all over the world. How did you approach structuring levels and exploration with so many different location options?
Torvenius:We have two different ways to prompt the player to go on exploration. You can send them off with just the mission update, where you get the quest, and it says “Go find this.” But we’re also trying to craft an environment that will encourage exploration as players look around while traveling or walking. It should be encouraged, like, “What’s behind the next corner? What if I climb that temple? What will I find?”
There are different components to it, but at the very core is, of course, a narrative that encourages that. When you go off-path trying to find things, you’ll earn Adventure Points, or you’ll unlock secrets and mysteries along the way. Several different components go into pushing you into exploration.
Keeping Indiana Jones and the Great Circle True to Its Roots
Q: I think it would probably be an understatement to say that some of the traps and puzzles that Indiana Jones has encountered over the years are pretty iconic. So, how did you go about designing puzzles with that iconic element in mind and translate all of that into gameplay?
Andersson:It’s been a long journey. Even early on in development, we had to define what a puzzle is again. We chose a path — it’s a first-person game — what does afirst-person gamewith this kind of physical interaction mean for us? What kind of puzzles did we want to see? And there’s a huge variety in there, from brainy, cerebral puzzles to very physical, moving things around, plugging cogwheels and stuff like that. This variety is something positive, it’s something that we want.
We don’t want to have apuzzle mechanicthat would be too static throughout, so every new scenario is a new experience for the player, just like in the movies. Coming into a trap room, you need to look around. “Oh, there’s a pressure plate there, I wonder what that does,” and then you have a choice of whether to step on it.
Just trying to come up with as many good ideas as possible and then implementing them and making puzzles is hard. It’s new for us as a studio, so it’s taking a lot of iterations to really find what that is, especially in theIndiana Jonesuniverse and with our gameplay mechanics.
Torvenius:Also, looking at the existing variety of traps that you would see throughout the movies and then dissecting the key components, iterating upon them, and coming up with new traps that would still have the same flavor without being a ripoff. It’s been interesting, for sure.
Q: Why did you choose the time period shortly afterRaiders of the Lost Arkas the setting?
Torvenius:There are several reasons for that. One is how the narrative was written, and how it set up the original core narrative — that made it quite obvious that that’s where we want to be. All of this came to us throughTodd Howard. He had this amazing idea and lifelong dream of making anIndiana Jonesgame — he’s a massiveIndiana Jonesfan as well. He pitched the idea to Lucasfilm Games, and they were excited about the opportunity. Then, we were approached and asked if it was something MachineGames was interested in. “Yeah, we are!”
Andersson:Raiders, in our minds, is the first, most iconicIndiana Jonesstate. We wanted to be close to that because we feel that’s the most fitting for this project in terms of time.The game is set in 1937,Raidersis set in 1936— it’s one year later.
Q: You know, another important part of theIndiana JonesIP is this exploration of these historical cultures and ruins, so could you talk a little bit about your approach to researching and developing the ancient cultures and ruins that we’ll see in the game?
Torvenius:Absolutely. A lot of research started in the narrative phase — when something is written, we start to attempt to digest it and explore what it would be like in the 1930s. Then, when we’re entering the pre-production phase and the concept art phase, when everything starts to get sketched out, even more research goes in and consulting with external partners as well to make sure it’s a good representation — it’s a correct representation. It’s been extremely important to make sure that we hit that and that it feels respectful to each culture and region.
It’s also this weird mix because you can’t make anIndiana Jonesgame or an epic adventure game without made-up fictional stuff as well. Finding that blend, the above version of a temple, above the surface, what does that look like? We can try to research that and find out. But if you’re peeking down below, that’s where we can go a little bit more crazy and start to come up with more fictional adventures with anIndiana Jonesinfluence.
Q: That’s actually a great segue into my next question. As you know, that sort of fictional element is also another big part. How did you make that feel believable?
Andersson:It’s a tone thing, right? That’s what makesIndiana Jonesso very interesting. They are very light on supernatural elements, there’s very little of that in the game. It alludes to it all the time, but he’s a researcher and that’s the approach we have to the game as well — find that balance where it feels like, maybe it actually is like that if you peek under the Sphinx, as we saw in the theater presentation.
Torvenius:I think there is always this interesting synergy that happens when you start to mix things together. If you have something that is perceived as real, you can hit the target to sell that illusion, but when you start mixing that with fictional things, that’s where the magic starts to happen. I think we wouldn’t be able to get the believability or the contextual purpose of the fictional components perfectly right if we didn’t spend a lot of time researching and making sure that the real historically accurate component also feels right — and then those two come together.
Andersson:Even when we do this, it’s important to us that it makes sense in some way. There’s an explanation why there are huge cogwheels in this level. There needs to be a narrative explanation to it. Even if we don’t present it to the player, it needs to make sense. Why is this here?
Torvenius:I think that’s so true for so many different types of media rules and games. It doesn’t always need to make sense, but it needs to feel like it makes sense. You need to feel that there’s a thread that you can follow, even if you don’t understand the thread, the process, you still need to feel it, and I think that has also been a driving principle. Does this feel good? Does this feel connected?
Q:Indiana Jonesis not a constant combat action game, but there’s still a decent amount of combat in it. I was curious what the general philosophy behind combat inIndiana Joneswas?
Andersson:It all comes back to the character. We want to put you in the shoes of Indiana Jones and give you the tools that he has. That means you have your revolver, sure, you can pull it out and shoot someone, but that doesn’t happen in the movie. We don’t want to reward you for doing that either. It’s a choice that we give you. The whip that we give you, on the other hand, we want you to use it as much as possible. You use that as a traversal tool to get around, but you can also use it to disarm people or initiate combat by pulling someone into melee range so you can start punching them.
We have thislayered action combatsequence. You usually start in stealth, you go through it with a disguise or not, and then when that goes wrong, it escalates to hand-to-hand, melee-style fighting. And here, how does that look in anIndiana Jonesgame? Well, it’s semi-chaotic. There are opportunities like a glass bottle you can use to hit enemies in the head, and you get this kind of comedy feel in there as well. If things go awry and people start shooting, sure, at that point you have nothing to lose, you can start shooting back—but that’s high stakes and a dangerous route to go.
What’s interesting is that we managed to preserve this kind of cycle so you don’t go straight to the gun. Even if we give you that choice, it’s not the most effective, and it’s not the most fun way to play the game. We have this feature where you can pick up a gun and turn it into a melee weapon to smash people over the head because it’s not as loud.
Q: It definitely fits thatIndiana Jonesfantasy a little more. So, the whip, another iconic part, works in combat and exploration. Can you talk a little bit about the research elements that went into getting the whip into the game?
Torvenius:I mean the whip is such an iconic asset to the character, to the IP, and the game wouldn’t be what it is if we didn’t have a functional, cool, fun whip. A lot of research went intohow Indiana Jones uses the whip, what type of actions he performs with it, how it behaves, and what it sounds like. We had this amazing whip master in northern Sweden — an amazing guy. The team went up there and rigged up a whole array of different mics, and we captured him. We also took a lot of footage of him and how the whip behaves.
In the end, a lot of effort goes into engineering and programming to verify the simulation is working, the physics are behaving as they should, the animation components where we need to animate and control the behavior, the look of it, and the sound of it. Then, we have to make sure that we have scenarios set up for you so you feel that you have this dynamic intuitive control of the whip, and you’re able to use it all the time. There are so many different components that go into it.
Andersson:It’s such an important feature, even just reserving a dedicated button for it. We needed to put it front and center and that’s what we’ve done.
Q: This game is going to attract a lot ofIndiana Jonesfans, but there are also a lot of fans of MachineGames too. We’ve talked a lot about realizing thatIndiana Jonesvibe, but can you talk about how your DNA as MachineGames is also present inIndiana Jones?
Torvenius:We have this long history, and I would say it’s the DNA and the backbone of the studio where we have the synergy between three very important components. We always push the narrative as hard as we can. We always try to push new unique game mechanics that constantly change throughout the game. Then, we have the visuals, and that’s the third part. Binding all of that together, we work with the engineers and the programmers to ensure all of this is confined to this whole triangle.
That has always been true for this project, also. Nothing really differs fromprevious MachineGames titleswhen it comes to the quality of those components compared to what we see inIndiana Jones and the Great Circle. That’s what we’re passionate about and that is our guiding light, so that’s what we are trying to follow.
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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
WHERE TO PLAY
Uncover one of history’s greatest mysteries in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a first-person, single-player adventure set between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. The year is 1937, sinister forces are scouring the globe for the secret to an ancient power connected to the Great Circle, and only one person can stop them - Indiana Jones™. You’ll become the legendary archaeologist in this cinematic action-adventure game from MachineGames, the award-winning studio behind the recent Wolfenstein series, and executive produced by Hall of Fame game designer Todd Howard.YOU ARE INDIANA JONESLive the adventure as Indy in a thrilling story full of exploration, immersive action, and intriguing puzzles. As the brilliant archaeologist – famed for his keen intellect, cunning resourcefulness, and trademark humor – you will travel the world in a race against enemy forces to discover the secrets to one of the greatest mysteries of all time.A WORLD OF MYSTERY AWAITSTravel from the halls of Marshall College to the heart of the Vatican, the pyramids of Egypt, the sunken temples of Sukhothai, and beyond. When a break-in in the dead of night ends in a confrontation with a mysterious colossal man, you must set out to discover the world-shattering secret behind the theft of a seemingly unimportant artifact. Forging new alliances and facing familiar enemies, you’ll engage with intriguing characters, use guile and wits to solve ancient riddles, and survive intense set-pieces.WHIP-CRACKING ACTIONIndiana’s trademark whip remains at the heart of his gear and can be used to distract, disarm, and attack enemies. But the whip isn’t just a weapon, it’s Indy’s most valuable tool for navigating the environment. Swing over unsuspecting patrols and scale walls as you make your way through a striking world. Combine stealth infiltration, melee combat, and gunplay to combat the enemy threat and unravel the mystery.THE SPIRIT OF DISCOVERYVenture through a dynamic mix of linear, narrative-driven gameplay and open-area maps. Indulge your inner explorer and unearth a world of fascinating secrets, deadly traps ,and fiendish puzzles, where anything could potentially hide the next piece of the mystery – or snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?
