Indiana Jones and the Great Circle marks the triumphant return of Machine Games. This is the studio’s largest game to date and the first to deviate from the Wolfenstein series on which its reputation was built. It also gives us our first look at the latest tech developed in tandem between id Software and Machine Games – and while it boasts its very own label, this new technology looks to right the many wrongs we’ve come to expect with many AAA releases powered by Unreal Engine 5, including support for ray traced global illumination (RTGI) while targeting 60fps at high resolutions. Today we’ll run through some of the great visual features on offer, both from a technology and artistic standpoint, while covering off the nuts and bolts of performance and image quality and the gameplay itself. Let’s swing into adventure.
With its release in the summer of ’81, Indiana Jones as a franchise grew up alongside video games as a medium. With Harrison Ford so successfully bringing this dashing character to life, Indy’s success would spawn countless offshoots and adjacent products including video games – the first of which arrived just one year after the film’s release on the Atari 2600. Raiders of the Lost Ark, as rough and confusing as it may be, would be one of many video games that would attempt to recreate iconic moments from the very first film.
That brings us to the modern era. The Great Circle is an original story, but it opens in a familiar way. The introduction from Raiders has been meticulously recreated for this new game and it feels like a statement of intent – as if the designers at Machine Games studied this sequence – frame by frame to fully comprehend the way Steven Spielberg told the story. By duplicating it, the team has come to grips with how best to tell a story in this world. It also allows us to compare the game directly to the film which, in turn, reveals some of the game’s visual wins.
First and foremost, unlike prior Machine Games titles, all cutscenes featured in this game are rendered in real-time, which is a positive step. This also demonstrates that character models are largely excellent, better than I expected pre-launch. There is a surprising amount of detail visible and while there is a bit of an uncanny valley element to these scenes, I feel like the team has largely captured the look of the actors. Alfred Molina’s portrayal of Satipo during this sequence feels surprisingly authentic, with his over-the-top facial expressions and persistent level of bewilderment as Indy goes about his business. The animation, expressions and recreation of iconic camera angles is all beautifully handled during the game’s introduction.