Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is celebrating its one-year anniversary today, December 9, 2025. Below, we look back at how it uniquely translated the adventurous and comedic spirit of the original movies in video game form.
There are several expectations that come with an Indiana Jones video game--it's a legacy franchise and a known quantity, having chugged along across various media since the franchise's inception in 1981. Among the checklist items for any Indy game are whip-swinging traversal, puzzle-solving in exotic locales, and fascist-punching action.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle certainly has all of the expected elements, but studio MachineGames went far beyond what anyone thought an Indiana Jones video game could be. In a post-Uncharted world, it would be hard to blame a AAA studio if it just followed Naughty Dog's cinematic game formula, made Indiana Jones basically Nathan Drake with a fedora, and called it a day with little shame.
Instead, the Great Circle places you in open sandbox worlds to explore, full of collectibles, side quests, and most importantly, opportunities to create your own swashbuckling moments of wish fulfillment. It's a magnificent game, with a story that truly feels like an Indiana Jones movie, with a convincing and uncanny vocal performance from Troy Baker, and engaging action and puzzle sequences.
But Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is also an extremely funny video game. Comedy might not be the first element you think of when it comes to the series, but visual humor and slapstick are essential elements of Steven Spielberg's Indy movies. Emulating Spielberg's approach to comedy was key to the success of the Great Circle, and it's not something I recall previous Indiana Jones games consciously attempting.
Say what you want about Spielberg, but the man knows where to point a camera. What defines his filmography, and by extension, the Indiana Jones movies, is a certain visual dynamism. His films often make use of long takes, tracking shots, and camera pans. All are fairly basic filmmaking techniques, but Spielberg uses blocking and choreography uniquely to add kinetic energy to scenes.
These comedic moments often contrast funny actions (like throwing a flaming shish kabob at a henchman) and violent consequences (in this case, a reflexive gunshot from the victim sparking a madcap sequence). Spielberg loves to stretch the moment out, often putting the setup and the punchline in the same shot, like one gag in the Last Crusade involving Sallah attempting to hide Brody. Even the comparably mediocre Kingdom of the Crystal Skull demonstrates Spielberg's comedic sensibilities well, with one early scene depicting a chain reaction of Indy's design that leads to an all-out brawl.
It's all carefully choreographed chaos, which many of the cutscenes in the Great Circle replicate effortlessly. The most commonly cited cutscene from the game is an awkward, close-quarters fight between Indy and deuteragonist Gina against main villain Voss and lackey Gantz. In less than two minutes, the scene degrades into a hilarious comedy of errors: Indy accidentally elbows an off-screen character in the face, the story's antagonist lets out an over-the-top scream before leaping onto Gina, who, shortly after, knocks herself out with a shelf. It's impossible not to laugh at the absurdity.
Those are just the scripted cutscenes, however. In the actual sandbox world, you're practically encouraged to engage in absolute nonsense behavior. In a catacomb within the depths of Gizeh, you'll find Nazis messing around with a generator, setting you up perfectly to mess with some levers and give them a shock, even with no instruction from the game itself. Throughout the entire game, you're allowed to pick up almost any environmental object as a weapon, giving you the opportunity to brute force your way through any situation, often resulting in uproarious events worth saving the video capture of.
Grab a frying pan, a shovel, a fly swatter--whatever's near you, and orchestrate a situation by the seat of your pants. It's not an eloquent or scientific term, but I like to characterize Indiana Jones and the Great Circle as a "pick-up-things-and-throw-them-at-people" simulator in the vein of Hitman, where I act on either elaborate strategy or complete impulse, and let the chain reactions from the game's system take me forward.
Often, the comedy from your sandbox-world encounters comes from randomness and luck, or rather from escalating situations when your plan goes wrong. I eventually lost track of how many times I attempted to cleverly sneak past guards through careful and stealthy means, only to be running for my life and getting cornered by countless goons in a less-than-ideal location. And, by nature of being a video game, there was something more thrilling about creating these scenes in real time, with physics and enemy AI adding to the variables. In some way, the farcical unpredictability that you can get up to in the game is very true to what Indiana Jones himself experiences in the movies.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
The triumph of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle isn't just that it makes you feel like you are in the role of Indiana Jones--it's giving you the feel of creating Indiana Jones action scenes. It's less about reenacting this part of his life and seeing the world through his eyes, and more focused on participating in the making of an Indiana Jones film. As you play the game, you basically become the choreographer, stunt person, and camera operator of your very own Indiana Jones action scenes.
By the time I rolled credits in the Great Circle, I felt a revitalized affection for the Indiana Jones series. After the most recent (and most likely final) feature film, the franchise felt like an ancient fossil, something that Dr. Jones himself would dig up and lecture about. But the work MachineGames put out was like a Holy Grail for the property, and what I saw as an outdated, overplayed concept felt fresh and modern for the first time in decades.
In reverse engineering Indiana Jones, MachineGames and Bethesda realized that what makes a good Indy video game isn't making an imitation of a movie--it's giving you the power to basically make your own movie scenes. And as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle reminds us, comedy is perhaps one of the most essential ingredients to any great Indiana Jones movie.
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There are several expectations that come with an Indiana Jones video game--it's a legacy franchise and a known quantity, having chugged along across various media since the franchise's inception in 1981. Among the checklist items for any Indy game are whip-swinging traversal, puzzle-solving in exotic locales, and fascist-punching action.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle certainly has all of the expected elements, but studio MachineGames went far beyond what anyone thought an Indiana Jones video game could be. In a post-Uncharted world, it would be hard to blame a AAA studio if it just followed Naughty Dog's cinematic game formula, made Indiana Jones basically Nathan Drake with a fedora, and called it a day with little shame.
Instead, the Great Circle places you in open sandbox worlds to explore, full of collectibles, side quests, and most importantly, opportunities to create your own swashbuckling moments of wish fulfillment. It's a magnificent game, with a story that truly feels like an Indiana Jones movie, with a convincing and uncanny vocal performance from Troy Baker, and engaging action and puzzle sequences.
But Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is also an extremely funny video game. Comedy might not be the first element you think of when it comes to the series, but visual humor and slapstick are essential elements of Steven Spielberg's Indy movies. Emulating Spielberg's approach to comedy was key to the success of the Great Circle, and it's not something I recall previous Indiana Jones games consciously attempting.
Say what you want about Spielberg, but the man knows where to point a camera. What defines his filmography, and by extension, the Indiana Jones movies, is a certain visual dynamism. His films often make use of long takes, tracking shots, and camera pans. All are fairly basic filmmaking techniques, but Spielberg uses blocking and choreography uniquely to add kinetic energy to scenes.
These comedic moments often contrast funny actions (like throwing a flaming shish kabob at a henchman) and violent consequences (in this case, a reflexive gunshot from the victim sparking a madcap sequence). Spielberg loves to stretch the moment out, often putting the setup and the punchline in the same shot, like one gag in the Last Crusade involving Sallah attempting to hide Brody. Even the comparably mediocre Kingdom of the Crystal Skull demonstrates Spielberg's comedic sensibilities well, with one early scene depicting a chain reaction of Indy's design that leads to an all-out brawl.
It's all carefully choreographed chaos, which many of the cutscenes in the Great Circle replicate effortlessly. The most commonly cited cutscene from the game is an awkward, close-quarters fight between Indy and deuteragonist Gina against main villain Voss and lackey Gantz. In less than two minutes, the scene degrades into a hilarious comedy of errors: Indy accidentally elbows an off-screen character in the face, the story's antagonist lets out an over-the-top scream before leaping onto Gina, who, shortly after, knocks herself out with a shelf. It's impossible not to laugh at the absurdity.
Those are just the scripted cutscenes, however. In the actual sandbox world, you're practically encouraged to engage in absolute nonsense behavior. In a catacomb within the depths of Gizeh, you'll find Nazis messing around with a generator, setting you up perfectly to mess with some levers and give them a shock, even with no instruction from the game itself. Throughout the entire game, you're allowed to pick up almost any environmental object as a weapon, giving you the opportunity to brute force your way through any situation, often resulting in uproarious events worth saving the video capture of.
Grab a frying pan, a shovel, a fly swatter--whatever's near you, and orchestrate a situation by the seat of your pants. It's not an eloquent or scientific term, but I like to characterize Indiana Jones and the Great Circle as a "pick-up-things-and-throw-them-at-people" simulator in the vein of Hitman, where I act on either elaborate strategy or complete impulse, and let the chain reactions from the game's system take me forward.
Often, the comedy from your sandbox-world encounters comes from randomness and luck, or rather from escalating situations when your plan goes wrong. I eventually lost track of how many times I attempted to cleverly sneak past guards through careful and stealthy means, only to be running for my life and getting cornered by countless goons in a less-than-ideal location. And, by nature of being a video game, there was something more thrilling about creating these scenes in real time, with physics and enemy AI adding to the variables. In some way, the farcical unpredictability that you can get up to in the game is very true to what Indiana Jones himself experiences in the movies.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
The triumph of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle isn't just that it makes you feel like you are in the role of Indiana Jones--it's giving you the feel of creating Indiana Jones action scenes. It's less about reenacting this part of his life and seeing the world through his eyes, and more focused on participating in the making of an Indiana Jones film. As you play the game, you basically become the choreographer, stunt person, and camera operator of your very own Indiana Jones action scenes.
By the time I rolled credits in the Great Circle, I felt a revitalized affection for the Indiana Jones series. After the most recent (and most likely final) feature film, the franchise felt like an ancient fossil, something that Dr. Jones himself would dig up and lecture about. But the work MachineGames put out was like a Holy Grail for the property, and what I saw as an outdated, overplayed concept felt fresh and modern for the first time in decades.
In reverse engineering Indiana Jones, MachineGames and Bethesda realized that what makes a good Indy video game isn't making an imitation of a movie--it's giving you the power to basically make your own movie scenes. And as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle reminds us, comedy is perhaps one of the most essential ingredients to any great Indiana Jones movie.
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