Indiana Jones and the Great Circle gets extended reveal and release date of December 9

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle got an extended reveal in a demo before thousands of game fans at Gamescom’s Opening Night Live.

The long demo at Geoff Keighley’s ONL event was meant to show how much detail the developers at Machine Games poured into the action-adventure game that is arriving this fall at a time when it will be the biggest form of entertainment in the Indiana Jones universe on any medium. Microsoft’s Bethesda Softworks division will publish the title on Windows and the Xbox Series X/S. The game comes out on December 9 and it will be out in the spring of 2025 on PlayStation 5.

I had a chance to see a hands-off preview of the reveal and get an exclusive look among a small group of game journalists and creators. Fans will get access to this demo on the show floor at Gamescom, the big expo that takes place this week in Cologne, Germany.

The studio tried to convey how Machine Games Jerk Gustafsson, who served as the game’s director, and the team labored to make a game with an original narrative that Indiana Jones fans would love. The game is set between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) — a setting that suggests that Bethesda and partner Lucasfilm Games are going for a cross-generational strategy, catering to older gamers and their offspring or just brand new fans.

“We can say it’s the biggest game we’ve made so far,” Gustafsson said. That says a lot, as the Machine Games Wolfenstein games were pretty massive single-player games.

The story follows archaeologist Indiana Jones in 1937 as he tries to decipher the mysteries of the Great Circle, which shows that mysterious sites around the world are connected in a perfect circle when drawn around the globe. The game will hop through real-world locations including Rome, Thailand, Egypt, Shanghai and the Himalayas.

You play the game from a first-person view, but it switches to third person for in-game moments such as interacting with the environment. Players control Indy, who is paired with Gina Lombardi, an Italian investigative reporter. During the extended trailer, we learn she is looking for her lost sister. As they uncover clues, they learn they’re unraveling a much bigger conspiracy.

As Indy, you get access to his signature whip, which, as in the movies, can be used as a weapon, a tool to disarm enemies, and a way to traverse obstacles in the game world.

There are a variety of gameplay styles that Indy can use. He can operate in stealth and sneak past guards or get into direct combat with the Nazi enemies who are seeking to thwart Jones from solving the Great Circle mysteries first. There are a lot of puzzles in the game with a variety of difficulty levels.

And, like in the familiar action-adventure game series Uncharted and Tomb Raider, there is climbing and traversing across various environments in the game. Of course, when we think about how Indiana Jones inspired those games, we get stuck in a big debate about who got inspired by what.

Jones is voiced by Troy Baker, and I had various moments where I felt like he was talking just like actor Harrison Ford and other times when I thought it was Troy Baker doing the talking.

During this time, Jones has left his fiancée, Marion Ravenwood, the lead female character in the first Indy movie. He investigates the theft of an artifact by going to the Vatican, and he realizes that sites of interest around the world form a perfect circle around the globe. Indy and Lombardi (voiced by Alessandra Mastronardi) as they race against Nazi ally Emmerich Voss (Marios Gavrilis) who tries to manipulate them.

Todd Howard, executive producer of the game and a veteran of Bethesda’s big Elder Scrolls and Fallout titles, conceptualized the game’s story but he doesn’t have a hands-on role in the game. We have Howard to thank for pitching an Indy game to George Lucas in 2009. That planted the seed for the Bethesda’s involvement in the eventual game. But it took many years to work out an actual agreement, which was unveiled in 2021. Microsoft, which now owns Bethesda, unveiled the first footage in January 2024.

In June, at the Xbox showcase, Microsoft unveiled a long video that featured Indy and Gina as they searched for a relic in the Himalayas. The video showed off narrative twists and exciting set pieces to deliver an experience that feels like a true Indiana Jones experience, Gufstafsson said.

“What it is like to actually play as Indiana Jones and experience his adventure, to look through his eyes as he uncovers the mysteries of the Great Circle, how he interacts with the world around him, how he traverses the environment and how he deals with the enemy,” Gustafsson said. “We also want to highlight some of the key tools of any good archeologist, like this camera and journal.”

One of Gina’s tools is the camera, which you use to capture images of puzzles that can be solved with more context. The journal archives events in the game, and in the course of the journey you find “adventure books” via exploration. You can get both completionist points and skills from the books.

Gustafsson said the team wanted to make a game that is rich with detail, intriguing environments and hidden secrets, something that will evoke a sense of curiosity for temples and hidden ruins that were covered in growth for years.

Peter Ward, audio director at Machine Games, said in a press briefing that you’ll use tools like the fedra hat, the whip, the revolver and more as you step into the boots of a legend. The game is designed around the charm and resourcefulness of the hero, Ward said.

“You will be thrown into this story-driven journey where Indy must hunt for clues to uncover the Great Circle’s mysteries. This race for answers will take you to ancient crypts, lost civilizations and much more,” he said. “The focus for this game is adventure. When you venture into the unknown, we want exploration to feel truly rewarding.”

Photos can reveal historical insights and important clues. The journal starts as a blank slate, but it becomes a detailed archive of your journey with maps, photos and letters. It’s a reminder of where you’ve been, and for the sharp observer to hint about where to head next. You will enter restricted areas where wearing a disguise is important. But some guards can spot trespassers.

“Solving these puzzles will make you feel like the world’s greatest archeologist,” Ward said.

When you choose combat, you can use your weapons like the whip to distract, stun or subdue enemies while remaining unnoticed, Ward said.

As you complete missions, you’ll earn adventure points to expand your skills, which you can customize for your play style. In one scene in a tomb-like place near The Sphinx in Egypt, Gina has to grab Indy to stop him from falling down into a trap with deadly spikes. Then he has to uncover a passage that can take him around a gate and eventually find a way to unlock it and let Gina through. In another scene, Gina and Indy have to shine a bunch of mirrors on targets to direct light inside the crypt to solve a puzzle.

As for humor, the team analyzed the tone and the narrative beats when it comes to capturing the comedy of the Indiana Jones series, said Axel Torvinius, creative director at Machine Games, in a press briefing. The tone has to shift between scenes that have a lot of action to those that have a lot of humor.

“We worked in terms of making sure that the comedy, the tone and that whole vibe is translated into the game experience in several different ways. We either have parts of it in gameplay, we have interesting things and nods to it like in a fist fight. Then you take down a guard with a finishing move and shake his hand,” Torvinius said. “e have a lot of it represented in cut scenes and in a lot of dialogue and how the narrative is written. So we’ve been trying heavily to incorporate those aspects throughout the entire game experience.”

Gustafsson said that a few sections of the game are more open and there are sections of the game that are linear. At least three sections are open enough to allow for a lot of exploration, he added. The game tries to balance action and narrative/exploration. Players can scale up or down when it comes to puzzle complexity.

“We have been working with these characters based on movies and franchises for a long time. We have been finding a way to evolve them into something that we feel is our own,” Gustafson said.

There are limits on how much the game can create while still staying respectful of canon.

“I wouldn’t say that it has impacted us in any way when it comes to the work we do to create a good story. We wanted to continue the story arc of this character that everybody learned love from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and then just take it from there, and we have this gap between Raiders films that is very interesting to us, where we can find and pick this Great Circle story in timeline,” Gustafsson said.