Every major franchise has iconic features that almost anyone can recognize, and forIndiana Jones, it’s the explorer’s famous whip. That’s what makes the tool such an important part ofIndiana Jones and the Great Circle’s gameplay, andMachineGameshas done its due diligence to live up to expectations.
Game Rant had the chance to chat withIndiana Jones and the Great Circle’s creative director, Axel Torvanius, and its design director, Jens Andersson, following a theatrical presentation of the game at Gamescom 2024. When asked about Indiana Jones' iconic whip, Torvenius and Andersson were thrilled to divulge all the meticulous work that went into ensuring the whip would be front and center in the game.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s Whip Was a Huge Focus During Development
A Lot of Effort Went into Finalizing the Whip’s Design
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s whip was essentially treated like a celebrity during the game’s development—and justifiably so. Apart from other key characteristics likeHarrison Ford’s recognizable voiceand the exotic locales Indiana Jones has been known to visit,Indiana Jones and the Great Circleneeded a whip that looks and feels like the real deal. When asked about what research went into the whip’s design for the game, Torvenius replied,
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.
The whip inIndiana Jones and the Great Circlewas treated like another character — from its capture on film to the recording of its audio — as its design process was similar to that of bringing the voice and movements of Indiana Jones' actorTroy Bakerto life in the video game. This speaks volumes of how important the whip is to the character of Indiana Jones, but also of MachineGames' endeavors to ensure it allows players to have a true-to-film, firsthandIndiana Jonesexperience when they grasp the whip for the first time in the game. Regarding the more intimate details of the whip’s design inIndiana Jones and the Great Circle, Torvenius continued,
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 can use it all the time. There are so many different components that go into it.
MachineGames has clearly doubled and tripled its efforts when it comes toIndiana Jones and the Great Circle’s whip. There is likely plenty of room for something like a usable whip in a video game to come out of the oven looking, feeling, and sounding wonky and unbelievable, so the developer needed to go the extra mile to prevent that from happening. Capping off Torvenius' summary of the whip’s design process, Andersson concluded,
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.
The fact that the whip has a dedicated button inIndiana Jones and the Great Circlemeans it isn’t meant to be treated like an optional tool or weapon. Instead, players should expect the whip to be one ofIndiana Jones and the Great Circle’s most prominent features, hopefully providing them with an authenticIndiana Jonesgaming experience unlike any before it.
