The Indiana Jones game is in a weird spot. Despite how iconic the character is, it’s not a series that inspires a level of fandom similar to, say, Star Wars. Dial of Destiny made just $384 million in cinemas on a reported $300+ million budget. December is often a time for tie-ins that don’t quite have the sauce too, with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora flopping last year and Marvel’s Midnight Suns the year before. However, this is getting major promotion from Xbox, and comes from a studio with pedigree through MachineGames, and that’s before you mention the fact it’s published by Bethesda.
I’m not sure how I feel about it myself either. Excited about it one minute, forgetting that it’s due out in a little over a week the next. Having been firmly on the green team in my teenage years when the 360 ruled the Earth, I’m rooting for Xbox to turn it all around. But I can’t help feeling like the eggs are now all in one basket after the egg supply was decimated when the overly packed Starfield, Hellblade, and Microsoft Flight Sim baskets broke.
What Do Indiana Jones’ Cutscenes Mean For The Game?
What has got me thinking about this again, as well as the impending release I continue to momentarily forget, is the news that the game is packed with cutscenes. It’s based on a movie series and has Troy Baker in it, so wringing the value out of it doesn’t surprise me much. However, the revelation that it has four hours of them feels significant.
We already know this is MachineGames’ longest game yet. That’s a marketing phrase that usually scares me, as it often implies a lot of sawdust has been crammed into the meatloaf resulting in bland empty spaces. But given ‘longest yet’ could mean as little as around 13 hours, I’m not too concerned. I’d wager it will be more like 16-20, with the cutscenes therefore taking up a quarter to a fifth of the game.
That still feels like a lot right off the bat, but given I expect there will be a mix of longer exposition scenes and more active cutscenes in the middle of missions, it might just work. We won’t know how good the balance is until we play it (and then we might disagree, as readers very occasionally do with my opinions), but I think I’m on board with it. In considering this, I’ve realised why I’m a little conflicted on Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and also the Slightly Silly Name. What I want is for the game to be dated.
Indiana Jones Doesn’t Need To Be Cutting Edge
Gaming is the most technological major art form. There are still new innovations being made in movies and stagecraft, music embraces electronic influences all the time, but only gaming continues to strive for technological leaps with each new ‘generation’ – a word other artforms barely use. The best games are the ones that cost the most and do things other games cannot afford to do. It’s this deification of technological advancement that has led to the sawdust in the meatloaf as games expanded their maps ever larger just because they could, and ended up with no interesting way to fill them.
Indiana Jones has a lot of technical wizardry. It looks just like Harrison Ford, man, that’s like… the guy! I’ve read previews that praise the feel of the mechanics. It’s not a clunker. But it’s also not trying to be cutting edge. It’s not trying to do things no other game has done before. It might push MachineGames’ boundaries by allowing the team to do things they previously lacked the budget for, but mostly it seems like the aim is just to make a solid video game.
I hope therefore that it feels a little old-fashioned, something like Uncharted maybe, given that series is essentially We Don’t Have The Rights To Indiana Jones. I know this is a double-edged whip. Star Wars Outlaws was criticised earlier this year for its dated feel, and I compared it (more negatively) to Uncharted at the time. Its mighty franchise did not save it.
Maybe if I get my wish, The Great Circle will end up on the pile with Outlaws and Mad Max, bargain bucket bin to be appreciated more in a few years’ time when we’re more prepared to forgive dated features in pursuit of a good time. Maybe I’ve gotten this all wrong and Xbox will lay down a marker for its games stepping into a bold new future. Like everything else with The Great Circle, I have no idea what to think. But if it ends up not quite living up to expectations, maybe that’s just what it needs to surpass mine.
- Released
- December 9, 2024
- Developer(s)
- MachineGames