Indiana Jones and the Great Circle hands-off preview — a slice of adventure With his iconic fedora and whip packed and ready for adventure, we had a chance to see Indy in action via a recent Indiana Jones and the Great Circle gameplay preview. Tom West Published 20 Aug 2024 Follow topics Bethesda Softworks PC Game Pass Xbox Game Pass Xbox Series X|S Action-Adventure Tom West There we have it, Bethesda has announced that we'll be able to dive into the Indiana Jones and the Great Circle achievements on Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Xbox Game Pass on December 9. Over the last couple of months, we've been slowly fleshing out our round-up of everything we know about Indiana Jones and the Great Circle , becoming ever more excited to experience the globe-trotting adventure for ourselves.
So, when Bethesda invited us to a recent Indiana Jones and the Great Circle preview we jumped at the chance to see a legend in action — no, not Todd Howard with his fancy Xbox achievement ! Here's what we learned. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle hands-off gameplay preview Our Indiana Jones and the Great Circle preview was a digital hands-off affair, so we haven't had a chance to punch Nazis in the face for ourselves just yet, sadly, but we did get a good look at the whip-wielding archaeologist in action. The game is set between the events of The Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade movies, and opens with Indy waking up to a break-in and the theft of a relic.
The experienced adventurer soon learns that the relic is part of a grander conspiracy related to the so-called Great Circle, and many ancient monuments located around the world, including several fictional temples. Our preview opened with a look at some of the gameplay we'll find within the many temples and crypts we'll be entering during our time with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. After a short cinematic, which leads to a temple beginning to collapse, the camera swoops into a first-person perspective as the player takes control.
With the door now buried in rubble and sand pouring in through the ceiling, Indy's only way out of the chamber is through an opening high above him. The player begins to wade through the sand, gradually climbing the growing pile until they reach the doorway where they can hightail it down a corridor, jump onto a rope hanging from the ceiling, and swing across to a winding shaft that acts much like a slide. I got the sense that traversing the temples and crypts is a puzzle in itself, with a single right way to approach any given obstacle.
For instance, at one point in the preview, Indy comes across an area with a chasm surrounded by a tight path, although the path was blocked by yet another gaping hole. The player backtracked a little bit to find a spear, which they then threw at a wall to use as an anchor point for their whip, offering them a way to swing across. Elsewhere in the preview, Indy searches a room and notices a bricked-up section of the wall covering a way into a connected room.
After picking up a large, club-like item nearby, the player smashes through the loose bricks to enter the adjacent chamber. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle's game director Jerk Gustafsson says it's "by far the biggest game we've ever done, and that's not only the biggest in terms of spaces and scope, but also when it comes to our longest game." While what we saw in the preview is likely part of the more linear, story-driven parts of the game, MachineGames says there are other open-world areas to explore on your own.
"We do have these more story-driven, linear levels that we mix up with more open areas that really push exploration and that sense of discovery," Gustafsson said. "So, there's a lot of extra content, or side content, if you will, in this game too, but we have focused quite a lot to make sure that everything you can do in the game contributes to this overarching goal or overarching storyline. But these types of areas that we have, which allow you to explore and find things on your own, is very much optional as well.
So, there's a mix of both linear levels and more open spaces." The second portion of our preview focused more on the combat and exploration side, taking us to Egypt and the Great Sphinx of Giza, opening with a view of a sand-swept dig site featuring several Nazi soldiers patrolling the area, blocking Indiana's path to the inside of the Sphinx. It was our first look at how combat works, and your choices as to how to approach it.
Indy's experience as an adventurer means he is fairly handy in a fight, and as such, you have the choice to engage your enemies directly or use stealth and deception to pick them off. The preview showed Indy using his whip to swing down to one soldier, knocking him out, and then drawing his revolver and shooting another soldier, but you'll be free to engage with enemies how you like. When taking a more stealth-based approach, you can throw objects to distract, stun, and even subdue your targets, before hiding their bodies from any eagle-eyed adversaries that may be wandering past.
You'll also build up a collection of disguises along the way, which you can switch out on the fly to suit the situation you're in. If all goes to hell, or if you decide to take a more direct approach, Indy is just as capable in a straight fight. Whether wielding his whip, revolver, enemy weapons he's picked up, or simply his fists, you can take the fight to the enemy.
Hand-to-hand combat looks to be a focus here, and Indy can perform combos, blocks, and even finishers when in melee combat. Those abilities are enhanced further via an upgrade system called Adventure Books, which can be found when exploring the world. Exploration will lead you to discover a host of cool things in the world as well as activities to complete, and it rewards you with Adventure Points, which you can then spend on the skills found in the books.
"There's always more adventure points and things to find in the world," creative director Axel Torvenius told us. "So, the player should feel drawn to explore the world and the maps in the game." Speaking of exploration, we start the game with an empty journal and slowly fill it as we make our way through the game.
Notes, maps, pictures you take with Indy's camera, and the like will all be added to your journal, creating a book of memories that not only logs your exploits but also acts as a tool to use as a reference for any clues you may have found for the many puzzles in the world. MachineGames says there are a variety of puzzles in the game, ranging in difficulty, but you can always choose to play on a lower difficulty when starting the game if you'd prefer a slightly easier experience. "We do have some puzzles that are more hero puzzles.
They are bigger, more complex, and more challenging, and then there are smaller and less complex puzzles," Torvenius said. "But one of the ambitions that we had was to make sure that we at least have some components in the game that will be rewarding, challenging, and smart puzzles." Gustafsson added, "We do have a big variety of different puzzles, which each are rather unique, and within that bucket, we have those that are more challenging and those that are a little bit easier to go through.
" From our first look at Indiana Jones and the Golden Circle, it looks like an interesting love letter to the movies, offering players a beautiful action-adventure (or "MachineGames adventure" as the team has been calling it internally) to embark on. While its linear moments appear to be thoughtfully curated sequences, it'll be interesting to see how that transfers to the open-world aspects when the game launches. Thankfully, we don't have long to wait until we can try it for ourselves, as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle launches on Xbox Series X|S, PC, and leaves our list of upcoming Xbox Game Pass games on December 9.
head.ready(function() { getTimeAgo(); }) Xbox Game Pass Xbox Series X|S PC Game Pass Windows Written by Tom West Tom has been playing video games since he was old enough to hold a controller, experimenting with a number of systems until he eventually fell in love with Xbox. With a passion for the platform, he decided to make a career out of it, and now happily spends his days writing about that which he loves.
If he’s not hunting for Xbox achievements, you’ll likely find him somewhere in The Elder Scrolls Online or fighting for survival in Battlefield..
