Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has finally been unearthed, with Bethesda giving us a proper title for our favorite whip-wielding archaeologist's all-new adventure. New mysteries, new villains, and brave new frontiers in digi-Harrison technology that aren't at all unsettling to look at.
After a brief look with a teaser trailer in 2021, we're finally starting to see what MachineGames and executive producer Todd Howard have been cooking for Indy's next outing, and good news: It's got all the Nazi clobbering you'd hope for. Her'es everything we know about Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
What's the release date for Indiana Jones?
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle launches on December 9, 2024 for PC. Pre-ordering the Premium Edition grants you early access, making it available on December 6, 2024.
MachineGames, the same studio that brought us the rebooted Wolfenstein games, is collaborating with Lucasfilm Games on Indy's next adventure. Todd Howard has also been named as the executive producer.
What trailers are there for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle?
Here's the latest Indiana Jones gameplay reveal trailer
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle passes on the torch to the new voice of Indy, Troy Baker, for narration in the release date trailer. It's a more rounded look at where MachineGames will take us, checking the usual boxes for the man of many hats. In this new chapter, Indy is true to classic form as a professor, archeologist, and guy that punches Nazis.
It's a neat little showcase of what will hopefully feel like a true-to-form Jones adventure. He shows off classic staples like his whip and revolver alongside the camera and journal additions. Those pieces make more sense looking back to Phil Savage's MachineGames interview at Gamescom, where creative director Jens Andersson explained how the Great Circle sets players up to solve puzzles with their in-game tools only:
"We have it [Indy's camera] as a hint system, so if you do get stuck, we don't want you to go to YouTube to look up the solution, because that's immersion-breaking and bad," said Andersson. "We want to keep you in the game. But we do recognize that skill levels vary. So you can snap a photo of the puzzle, and Indy will help, give you a suggestion, you can keep going if you need more information."
Here's the first Indiana Jones teaser and gameplay reveal
For a few years, we only had the one teaser trailer from Bethesda's surprise announcement to rewatch on repeat, but it featured several interesting objects that gave us clues as to where Dr. Jones is heading next, which fans on X investigated in detail.
Since then, the trail has grown a little hotter, and we've seen glimpses of a few new mysteries to investigate in Indy's journey. During Microsoft's January 2024 showcase, the first gameplay trailer introduced more on the upcoming 1937 setting, and the somehow still surprising Harrison Ford face reveal.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle's setting and gameplay
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle preview
With a background like Indy's, an action-adventure game with a major emphasis on the 'adventure' part makes the most sense, but he's not quite the pioneer of the genre in games as he is in film. In Robin Valentine's Indiana Jones and the Great Circle preview, MachineGames introduced its heist with some shared understanding of the sentiment, promising this isn't "a cinematic skin over the studio's usual FPS combat," but it's not quite the distinctly Indy-style journey we expected.
That's not to say it's anything bad, but Robin's three hours with the Great Circle was mostly what you'd expect from a stealth game wielding some star power. It's got plenty of cinematic Indiana Jones moments to love, but perhaps there's not "a ton of meat here for those who do love a tense stealth experience."
As for the movie parts, Robin says the team nailed it, finding himself especially smitten with "remarkably lavish, and clearly painstakingly researched" environments and some rather touching moments with Jones. Maybe it's not an experience particularly new to games, but it's at least got that Dr. Henry Jones charm down.
What's the setting for the new Indiana Jones game?
Best guess: there'll be a few. In the Great Circle, it seems like Indy will be piecing together the mystery of—you're never going to believe this—the Great Circle: a globe-spanning ring of sites ancient and mythological. In its Developer Direct 2024 reveal, MachineGames mentioned the temples of Sukhotai, the pyramids of Egypt, and the Himalayas as places Jones will be traveling to in the Great Circle.
From the first teaser trailer in 2021, we can tease out a few additional destinations we might see. The teaser features an orange plane ticket destined for Rome, dated October 1937. This is resting on a map of Vatican City, in which we can just about make out the Sistine Chapel. There are a few pencil marks on the map, which indicate that we'll probably travel to those places of interest at some point. Using a real map of the area for reference, we can see that St. Damaso Courtyard and Belvedere Courtyard are on Indy's radar.
When will the Great Circle take place on the Indiana Jones timeline? How will it connect to the greater Indiverse?
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will feature an entirely original story taking place in 1937, placing the game between Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Last Crusade. In other words, we'll be playing as an Indiana Jones who's seen a Gestapo agent's face melt off, but who hasn't watched some guys get beheaded by a big, biblical sawblade—a complicated phase in anyone's life.
Seeing as a drawing of the Golden Idol is visible in the teaser trailer, it looks as though MachineGames are keen to attach it to the movies. Hard to know if they'll include any nods to earlier Indiana Jones games, though. Some of Indy's early gaming adventures are a few decades old at this point, and probably belong in a museum themselves. Andy has kindly put together a brief history of Indiana Jones games to remind us of all the sticky situations Dr. Jones has found himself in over the years. With regards to setting, the first Indy game to arrive on PC, Indiana Jones in Revenge of the Ancients, was set in 1936, just before the new one. Considering this was first released on the NES, Atari 2600, and Commodore 64, I doubt it'll get a nod when MachineGames takes the reins, but you never know. Maybe Fate of Atlantis will get a shout, at least.
What will gameplay be like in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle?
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will, primarily, play in first person for most of its Nazi-fighting and ruins-exploring—unsurprising, considering the pedigree of MachineGames. However, the game will transition into third person for cutscenes and environmental traversal sequences, to provide a greater cinematic sense where appropriate.
And yes, that means we'll be getting a healthy dose of First Person Whipping. Aside from its most obvious application of hurting bad guys, Jones's whip can be used for traversal, disarming enemies, and even as a distraction while sneaking. Personally, if I was involved in anything that had a chance of Indiana Jones showing up and wrecking shop, I would simply lie on the floor if I heard a conspicuous whip crack. But that's just me.
Beyond that, it wouldn't be Indiana Jones without plenty of ancient, environmental puzzles to solve. And, probably, traps to trigger.
What else do we know about the Great Circle?
Who's been cast in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle?
While we'll be seeing the familiar digi-Ford face of Indiana Jones, he'll be voiced in the Great Circle by Troy Baker, who you might recognize as Joel from The Last of Us and, y'know, half of everything. We'll also have a second story protagonist in the Great Circle: Gina Lombardi, an investigative reporter who apparently has "a personal stake in getting to the bottom of the core mystery," voiced by actress Alessandra Mastronardi.
Of course, we'll also need a villain. In the Great Circle, the primary antagonist will be one Emmerich Voss, "an intensely psychological man" who is "obsessed with the human mind and manipulating it." Voss will be played by voice actor Marios Gavrilis, who played Bruce Wayne in the German-language version of Gotham Knights.
In the gameplay reveal, we also briefly saw a CGI Marcus Brody, originally played by the late Denholm Elliott in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Last Crusade.
Todd Howard has been trying to get an Indiana Jones movie made for a decade
"I think I originally pitched Lucas in 2009 and I’ve been trying to find a way to make that since," Todd Howard said in an interview. "I think the work Machine Games have done, they’re just phenomenal developers and storytellers. And when I started talking to them about it, it was a good fit. And we got to the opportunity to talk to Lucas and Disney about it and they were super excited.
"I really like Indiana Jones but never thought I’d have the opportunity to make a game. And you’ll hear about more of that in the future. But the team at Machine Games are the best team in the world to pull this game off and they’re doing a phenomenal job."
Will the new Indiana Jones game be an exclusive?
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is not an Xbox exclusive game. On PC, Indy's available on both the Steam and Microsoft storefronts, launching the same day as the Xbox Series X/S version on December 9 — or December 6 with the whole pre-order access thing.
PlayStation 5 is a different story, with a general "Spring 2025" window announced at Gamescom. Regardless, you've got a couple of avenues for a PC copy, so there's no wait to sync up with later console releases.
