Professor Indiana Jones in 2024 is taking lessons from Vin Diesel in 2000. Xbox’s marquee game this year is “Indiana Jones and the Great Circle,” developed by MachineGames. Billed as a first-person adventure, players will be a young Indiana Jones (voiced by Troy Baker of “The Last of Us” fame) preventing Nazis from obtaining treasure.
It aims to replicate an Indy adventure that’s less about first-person shooting and more about solving puzzles, laying on the charm and punching Nazis – in sharp contrast to Xbox’s bloodier blockbuster this fall, “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.” This is all thanks to the rich résumé of the developer: MachineGames was created in 2009 by former employees of Sweden-based Starbreeze Studios, which in 2004 created the Vin Diesel game “The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay.” Against all odds, this spinoff title from the cult 2000 sci-fi movie “Pitch Black” ended up becoming one of the finest first-person games ever made.
MachineGames has since been making games that evolve the immersive adventure formula established in “Riddick,” a game that let players negotiate and socialize with the prison society in making their escape. Now 20 years later, echoes of “Riddick” live on in the latest MachineGames title, made in partnership with Disney and Lucasfilm for release in December. Game director and studio co-founder Jerk Gustafsson confirmed that Indy has Riddick’s DNA.
“‘Riddick’ was the first game whe.