I’ve been working my way through Indiana Jones and the Great Circle over the past week, and I’m enjoying it more than most triple-A games these days. It’s restrained in how much it asks of the player, is well-written and well-paced, and the story unfolding is pretty compelling. It might be the best Xbox exclusive to grace the platform in the last few years.
What Do You Mean That’s Troy Baker?
But while playing it, I can’t stop thinking about the fact that I’m looking at Harrison Ford’s face and listening to Troy Baker’s voice. For what he sets out to do – which is a killer Harrison Ford impression – Baker does an excellent job. Even the developers couldn’t tell him apart from Ford. Harrison himself lauded Baker’s performance on the TGA stage last December, saying that if he’d known Baker was “so good”, he’d have done the performance himself.
In the run up to release, we saw interviews from MachineGames and Baker himself admitting that yes, we’re all sick of seeing this one guy in every video game, but unfortunately, he was the best guy for the job. Bethesda head and Great Circle lead producer Todd Howard himself apparently “rolled his eyes” when Baker was put forward for the role.
A lot of focus was put on making the character feel “authentic”, which meant that Indy had to feel, look, and sound like Harrison Ford. Therefore, the ‘best guy for the job’ really means ‘the best guy at doing a Harrison Ford impression’. But why did it have to be this way?
Can Indiana Jones Only Live Through Harrison Ford?
Indiana Jones has only ever been played by Harrison Ford, apart from when the character is shown at different ages in shows like the Young Indiana Jones Adventures. It’s arguably Ford’s best-known role, apart from Han Solo in Star Wars, which is pretty tough competition. A lot of people would say that Indy can’t exist without Ford, and that they’re synonymous, which is presumably why his likeness was used for the game.
But it strikes me as strange. The character is already iconic – it stands on its own. If you saw a silhouette of a man with a fedora and a whip, you’d probably know it was Indy. You don’t need to know it’s Harrison Ford, so why does every portrayal of Indy have to be with Ford’s face?
The Great Circle is a video game, and video games routinely draw from IP without using the likenesses of their Hollywood counterparts. We still recognise those characters for what they are, because they’re iconic. We’ve seen characters like Superman and Batman reinterpreted over and over, across different mediums and time periods. These characters get to be revitalised with new takes and new actors, over and over. Why can’t Indy follow in their footsteps?
It was hinted at the end of Crystal Skull that Shia LaBeouf might take up the whip, but this ended up not happening – maybe because he criticised the movie after its release, maybe because the studio got cold feet.
I’m not saying it was a bad decision, per se. Lots of people loved Baker’s performance. I don’t feel either positively or negatively about it, really, because I didn’t grow up watching Indiana Jones – I don’t have any nostalgia fuelling me to want to be Harrison Ford. But I do think that a video game adaptation was a great opportunity for a newer take on the character, to give it a new face and new voice. Indy will always be Indy. Indy doesn’t always have to be Ford.
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.