Indiana Jones Returns to His Roots in “The Great Circle”

Theo May

Photos Editor

“Indiana Jones and the Great Circle” is a game that feels unconventionally traditional. Over its 25-hour runtime, it rejects the objective markers and tutorialization that have become common in modern video games and instead lets players uncover its world at their own pace. This might sound like an exercise in frustration — and at moments it can be — but this helps it lean into the sense of exploration the series is known for. And while it doesn’t push into any new ground, this is the closest anything Indiana-Jones-related has ever come to matching the heights of the original trilogy.

That familiarity extends into the story with a premise that feels like a direct homage to the films. After a break-in at Marshall College leads to a precious mummy being stolen, Jones discovers a medallion with the Vatican’s crest among the wreckage. Shrinking his teaching responsibilities once again, he boards a plane and sneaks into the fascist-controlled Holy City to retrieve it. Jones soon realizes that the mummy contains one of many pieces of the titular Great Circle, an ancient relic of immense power. The Nazis, led by archaeologist Emmerich Voss, seek to assemble this artifact to achieve world domination. 

Jones and his companion, Italian journalist Gina Lombardi, set off on a globe-trotting journey to prevent the circle from falling into Nazi hands. This is all very standard stuff for the series, but the more interesting part is how the tenets of the films are translated into an interactive medium.

There are a couple of key aspects that make Indiana Jones movies enjoyable. Firstly, there’s a constant forward momentum, a balance between slow-paced tension and the action that it inevitably boils over into. At every point in the movie, there’s a clear goal — think the race to discover the Ark in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” or Jones trying to uncover what happened to his father in “The Last Crusade.” 

The second is bombastic set pieces. Besides just being entertaining to watch, they serve as a contrast to the slower-paced moments, rewarding the audience for their attention. And while the Indiana Jones movies has never had particularly standout character writing, it’s an important part of why these movies are beloved. Characters are likable and relatable, and you can empathize with their struggles despite the larger-than-life scenarios that they often find themselves in. “The Great Circle” fundamentally works because it successfully translates all of this into a game.

I had my doubts about whether the developer, MachineGames, could accomplish this. MachineGames is known for over-the-top violent shooters like the “Wolfenstein” series, and while parts of that would’ve meshed with Indiana Jones, something would’ve been lost in translation. So I was pleasantly surprised with how restrained the game ended up being. The majority of the game is spent exploring three vast open-world areas, unraveling riddles, and uncovering artifacts. While you can still get into explosive shootouts, it only makes up a small fraction of the game, just like in the movies. It’s clear how much these developers cared for the source material and that they wanted to adapt it properly.

But going back to that sense of discovery, how exactly does that manifest while playing the game? When exploring a new area, players can quickly find a map, but it’s nothing like the objective-ridden messes present in many other open-world titles. It only shows a vague outline of the area, so the player will need to naturally explore to fill it out. They’ll feel a genuine sense of surprise when they swing down a mineshaft into a dusty tomb because there was no way they could’ve known what was in there. Most of this content is entirely optional; if you’re not exploring, there’s a good chance you’ll miss it. But that makes the discovery all the more rewarding as you’re not led to an inevitable conclusion; instead, you forge your own path.

In many of these secret areas, you’ll find another highlight of “The Great Circle” — its puzzles. Most are hidden in notes and files scattered around the game world, and you’ll have to use context clues to decipher them. A personal favorite was a puzzle underneath the pyramids titled “Cloud Atlas.” If you looked at the weather log in a weather station, you could decipher the cloud patterns into a code that granted you access to a cache. None of them are particularly demanding, but every ah-ha moment further enhances that feeling of discovery.

Unfortunately, the game’s technical side is a little less polished, with the final major area of the game having a myriad of unfixed bugs. A particularly obnoxious one made me replay a ten-minute sequence after a critical character wouldn’t appear. Performance is another major problem: No matter what settings you change, “The Great Circle” will not stop stuttering. None of these issues ever render the game unplayable, but it’s a constant immersion-shattering reminder that you’re playing one. Patches over the last year have improved performance, but at this point, with post-launch support drying up, it’s looking like it’ll stay this way. It would’ve been easy to make a bog-standard shooter, but MachineGames took it in a unique direction that leans into the exploration and discovery that the movies are known for. The best way to play “The Great Circle” is with a notebook, scribbling down clues and puzzles that you’ll piece together along with the protagonist. It sounds cliché, but this game really makes you feel like Indiana Jones.