Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a big departure for MachineGames, as despite taking place in first-person like the Wolfenstein series, it places a franchise-appropriate emphasis on investigation and exploration over brutal, violent murder sprees. In a new gameplay presentation at Gamescom Opening Night Live, we learned just where Indy will be exploring, as well as a few of the tools he has at his disposal. We also got a release date of December 9, 2024 for the Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Game Pass versions, along with confirmation of a PS5 release coming in Spring 2025.
Rather than stick to one location for Dr. Jones’ mission to put everything in a museum, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will send you to a variety of destinations. These include the Vatican, the Himalayas, and Sukhothai temples, but Indy won’t just waltz into these places in his signature fedora and hope no one notices him. Instead, he’ll make use of a number of disguises–for instance, he can dress as a priest to explore the Vatican, which makes sense, and MachineGames is putting an emphasis on slower, stealthy gameplay.
For those who have played the studio’s Wolfenstein games, this shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, but your options will be a little less lethal when dealing with unsuspecting enemies here. You can throw objects like a hammer or shovel to distract baddies in classic video-game fashion, but you can also use Indy’s whip for some more-inspired takedowns–see a metal barrel and want to yank a Nazi directly into it? Go for it.
Alongside his trusty whip, Indiana Jones also has a camera that can be used both for getting historical information about the environments and discovering clues on what to do. Utilizing clues at your disposal will be key to solving puzzles, and these can be found both by traversing the environment and examining Indy’s journal. The pen might not actually be mightier than the sword, but it can still be more helpful.
