Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is yet another globetrotting adventure that follows Indy’s quest to retrieve ancient artifacts before they fall into the wrong hands. The story begins with a break-in at Marshall College that leads Indy to the Vatican, where he discovers an ancient order of giants who are sworn to protect a collection of stones of mysterious origin. And while Indy doesn’t discover the purpose of these stones until the game’s climax, knowing the Nazis want them is a good enough reason to find them first.
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Chronologically, Great Circle is set mere months after the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and its story follows a lot of the same beats too. Indy is in a race against a rival archeologist who seeks a magical relic that will help the Nazis achieve global domination. And just like in Raiders, it’s questionable if Indy actually manages to accomplish anything at all.
The ‘Indy Did Nothing’ Critique
You’ve probably heard the common criticism that Indy didn’t actually do anything in Raiders, but you may not know that the idea actually came from an episode of The Big Bang Theory. In the episode The Raiders Minimization, Sheldon’s girlfriend Amy breaks it down: Indy is always one step behind the Nazis throughout Raiders of the Lost Ark until he eventually catches up with them at the burial site of the Ark of the Covenant. Though Indy finds it first, the Nazis catch up with him and open the Ark, which instantly vaporizes them.
The argument is that had Indy not been there, the Nazis would have eventually found the Ark, opened it, and died. Indy could have stayed home and everything would have worked out exactly the same way. The Big Bang Theory boys are devastated by this realization, feeling that Indy’s lack of impact on the story somehow ruins Raiders of the Lost Ark.
There’s some flaws in the theory. For one thing, Indy brings the Ark back to the states at the end, ensuring the Nazis will never get their hands on it. We also don’t know how things might have been different had Indy never gotten involved. Even though the Nazis would have found the Ark eventually, they may not have opened it right away if Jones wasn’t there antagonizing them.
Who knows, maybe the Nazis would have brought the Ark back to Hitler and opened it there, vaporizing him. Indy might be the villain of Raiders in the end.
In any event, Indy’s role in Raiders is certainly minimized by the fact that the Nazis ultimately killed themselves by opening the ark. So considering how closely The Great Circle follows the same beats, how does MachineGames avoid falling into the same narrative trap?
In The Great Circle, Indy Does Something
Just like Raiders, Indy is almost always one step behind the Nazis. From Vatican City to Sukhothai, the Nazis always manage to beat Indy to the next stone, or catch up with him as soon as he’s retrieved it. In Gizeh, the Nazis find Indy buried in the sand, holding a stone right after he found it, and take it from him. By the end of the game, the Nazis have recovered all but two of the stones, which is when they kidnap Gina and lure Indy to Iraq, leading them to secure the final stones from Jones and finally revealing their purpose.
Just like the end of Raiders, the Nazi’s hubris leads to their downfall. Voss inserts the stones into Noah’s Ark and reads the ancient Ademic written on them, which initiates a biblical flood that threatens to destroy the world once again.
There are two important differences between Raiders and The Great Circle, and this is the first: once the Nazis accomplish their mission, they don’t just kill themselves, but their actions threaten the entire world. If the flood isn’t somehow stopped the world will be destroyed. It’s not like Indy had to reseal the Ark to stop the holy light from spilling out of it and dooming the world, but the stakes are higher in The Great Circle.
The second major difference between the two stories is the role of Locus. The Nephilim who has been pursuing the stones in tangent to Indy and the Nazis is ultimately the hero of The Great Circle. He is the one who knows how to deactivate the stones and stop the flood in the end, not Indy.
We finally get to the big question: does Indy do anything? It seems his role in The Great Circle is minor, but essential. As soon as the flood begins, Indy manages to free himself from his binds using Gina’s hair pin. He then starts a fight with Voss that ends with both of them hanging off of the side of the ark. That distraction gives Locus the time he needs to deactivate the stones and stop the flood.
So while the Nazis do get the stones in the end, and they do complete their mission, and it is Locus, not Jones, that saves the day, Indy still played a small role in saving the day here. One might argue that Locus may have been able to keep the stones away from the Nazis if Indy hadn’t intervened in the first place, but then we wouldn’t have a video game to play, so I’m glad he did.
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.