MachineGames is doing what MachineGames does best.
As videogame marketing clichés go, there may be only one line more overused than “See that mountain? You can go there,” and MachineGames just trotted it out to pitch its new Indiana Jones game, The Great Circle. “In this game, you aren’t just playing as Indy. You are Indiana Jones,” says director Jerk Gustafsson.
No matter how good Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is—and I do think it’ll be good!—I can’t imagine truly feeling like I’m Indiana Jones. In real life I’d constantly be self-conscious about looking dumb in the hat. There’s no way I could hit anything with a whip. My fists don’t make that deep Foley pow when I punch things. But Indiana Jones has never aimed for relatability, anyway; the bombastic films were loving riffs on even hokier pulp serials and dimestore novels of the 1930s and ’40s. What Gustafsson is actually trying to do with that cliché, though, is justify a design decision that’s apparently taken a lot of players by surprise with today’s reveal: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a first-person game.
The reveal keeps coming back to this point again and again, playing marketing madlibs with the same message. “Our game is all about putting you in Indy’s shoes, letting you see and feel what he sees and feels,” says senior narrative designer Edward Curtis-Sivess. “For us at MachineGames, we do that best through first-person. It’s the ideal perspective to bring you into the rich, exciting interactive world we’ve built. We believe that being up close and personal to the adventure is key, making each action feel like your own.” Bethesda even played up the line in a tweet.
The first-person camera has immediately become the thing most people are talking about post-reveal. Check the Twitter comments, the r/games thread, the 24 pages and counting of debate on Resetera. Some people are disappointed, some immediately declare they won’t be playing, and others offer the counterpoint that if you won’t play a first-person game your brain’s been poisoned by too many Sony exclusives. It’s the most up-in-arms gamers have gotten about a camera since CD Projekt revealed Cyberpunk 2077 was a first-person shooter in 2018.
Despite not buying into the whole “be Indiana Jones” hype, I’m thrilled to see MachineGames following up its two Wolfensteins with another first-person game. Curtis-Sivess wasn’t wrong when he said it’s what the studio does best.
Well, specifically what MachineGames does best is let you kill Nazis in first-person, a specialty that The Great Circle absolutely seems to be carrying forward.
