Despite some iconic action and firefight scenes, Indiana Jones is a fairly versatile brawler in his franchise. This is something MachineGames managed to build an interesting combat system around, to reflect his character in its upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and the studio managed it by emulating the core strength and weakness of using guns to solve problems.
Game Rant recently spoke to design director Jens Andersson about the way combat works in Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, and how it continues to embody the classic Indy fantasy. But it wasn’t without its challenges. As Andersson explained, “Guns being inherently more powerful than melee was an element of the design that we were really worried about as we started out this project.”
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Bringing Guns to Knife Fights in The Great Circle
Something that can be seen as a weakness of firearms is the level to which they escalate a situation. Minor altercations can become life and death when a gun is introduced, and that’s how it works in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. If players whip out a gun solo as Indy, every enemy is going to do the same as well. But if Indy gets into a brawl, then most enemies will maintain the same level of “escalation.”
Andersson explained that some enemies, like Captains, will also escalate on their own, but that means players should attempt to take them out quickly to prevent a firefight. In Andersson’s own words,
Enemies in this game mostly use guns only if you do something to escalate it to that point and if you take a swing at someone, they are going to match that and use their hands or melee weapons to fight back, rather than pull their own gun. Of course, if you pull your revolver yourself, they are going to respond in kind. There is also an enemy type, like the captain, that will escalate things if you are not careful. The result of this is that the player can always choose to use guns, but it’s the more dangerous playstyle.
This comes from a place of game balance but also fulfilling the Indy fantasy. Guns are not a first or second option for him in any case, only resorting to them when necessary, but at the same time, MachineGames didn’t want to take guns away from players. It’s a dicey situation, but as it turns out, emphasizing Indiana Jones and The Great Circle‘s melee combat over gunplay was relatively simple. As Andersson said,
We really didn’t want to steer players away from using guns, so we designed several systems trying to compensate for that with things like threat escalation systems. However, in the end it turned out to be very simple.
To achieve this, the team just needed to make Indy genuinely feel like Indiana Jones, so players would make decisions he would. They also just needed to make the gunplay more dangerous, although if someone wants to go in guns blazing, it sounds possible at least. MachineGames was making an intentional departure from their skill-based shooter experience with Wolfenstein since the fantasy of the two games is inherently different. While both games involve fighting the Nazis, the core focus of the games is extremely different.
With The Great Circle, MachineGames focused more on creating an adventure game accessible to all audiences. In the Indiana Jones spirit, The Great Circle focuses more on exploration and puzzles than gunplay.
Uncover one of history’s greatest mysteries in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle™, a first-person, single-player adventure set between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. The year is 1937, sinister forces are scouring the globe for the secret to an ancient power known as the Great Circle, and only one person can stop them – Indiana Jones. You’ll become the legendary archaeologist in this cinematic action-adventure game from MachineGames, the award winning studio behind the recent Wolfenstein series, and executive produced by Hall of Fame game designer Todd Howard.
- Released
- December 9, 2024