Movie heroes usually appear in video games sooner or later, and Indiana Jones is no exception. But the result has varied from bad to mediocre over the past 25 years, according to critic reviews collected by Metacritic. This is a trend that Swedish Machinegames now hopes to break with "Indiana Jones and the great circle".
We've made a really good game. We dare to say that to 100 percent. This is the best game I've ever worked on, says Axel Torvenius, who has been responsible for the visuals, sound, and animations.
Expensive and fine
The Uppsala-based studio has gained access to Lucasfilm's image archive and thousands of photographs of a young Harrison Ford.
And then we got a really fine, really expensive 3D sculpture of Harrison Ford, says Torvenius.
This is then layered as a skin on top of the facial and body movements that actor Troy Baker has recorded in a motion capture studio.
People think Troy just does the voice, but he also acts with his face and does the whole body, says Torvenius.
"Very effective"
Machinegames is a significantly smaller studio than what usually lies behind this type of giant project, even though understudios in, among others, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and England have helped out. The recipe is spelled efficiency, notes director Jerk Gustafsson.
We don't waste anything, we make sure to use what we do. Once we've decided what we're going to do, we do it, he says.
In terms of gameplay, "The great circle" is reminiscent of "Uncharted" or "Tomb Raider", although Gustafsson sees more similarities with the 1992 point-and-click classic "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" and "The Chronicles of Riddick", a Starbreeze game that several Machinegames veterans worked on.
What stands out is the first-person view (that you see almost everything through Indiana Jones' eyes, except when climbing, when the perspective changes). Torvenius describes the view as giving an intimacy, that you can almost stroke along the ancient temple walls with your hand and scrape off the moss from the puzzle wheels. The second advantage he sees is in the fights.
It's really cool to see the fist land in the face of a villain.
+ The game's music was composed by composer Gordy Haab ("Jedi: Survivor", "Star Wars: Battlefront"), and recorded by a symphony orchestra at the classic Abbey Road studio in London and Vienna.
+ Indiana Jones may look and sound like Harrison Ford, but is played here by voice actor Troy Baker ("The Last of Us"). Alessandra Mastronardi ("Falling in Love in Rome") portrays Gina Lombardi, and Emmerich Voss is played by Marios Gavrilis.
+ More than 3.5 hours of cutscenes have been recorded for the game, which is roughly equivalent to two feature films.
+ "The great circle" is based on the idea of a straight line around the Earth, passing through many classic locations such as Giza, Easter Island, Sukhothai, and Machu Picchu – several of which are visited in the game.
Machinegames was founded by defectors from Starbreeze in 2009. The following year, the fresh studio became part of the larger Zenimax/Bethesda, which was bought by Microsoft in 2021 for 7.5 billion dollars.
The head office is located in Uppsala with a satellite office in Sundsvall, and the company has around 180 employees.
Machinegames has so far released "Wolfenstein: The New Order" (2014), "Wolfenstein: The New Colossus" (2017), and "Wolfenstein: Youngblood/Cyberpilot" in 2019.
"Indiana Jones and the great circle" will be released on PC and Xbox Series on December 9 and on PS5 next year. The game is also included in the subscription service Game Pass from day one.
