Indiana Jones And The Great Circle Combat Not Focused On Guns

Summary

WhenIndiana Jones and the Great Circlelaunchesin December on Xbox Series consoles and in 2025 on PlayStation 5, there will be guns in the game, but that isn’t the focus of the game’s combat.

In an interview with Edge magazine, MachineGames' creative director Axel Torvenius reiterated that gunplay isn’t how things will operate, going as far as saying that it isn’t even encouraged.

“We do not encourage gunplay. It’s not being pushed as the primary way forward. The primary way forward is always trying to use your wits and your whip.”

Instead, it’s a “fallback solution,” according to the interview. That’s because, despite its pedigree in the shooter genre withWolfenstein, MachineGames is focused on honoring who Indiana Jones is as a character. For all intents and purposes, Jones is an educated everyman and not a gunslinging outlaw.

“It wouldn’t be true to the character to have him constantly shooting camps for all enemies constantly, and the team at MachineGames wants to emphasize the danger level,” Torvenius explained. “We’ve been trying to capture that sense that, if you need to engage in combat, it’s very dangerous to be shot at. It’s also very dangerous to shoot at enemies, because they will have an alarm system and reinforcements coming in.”

Instead, Jones will use his whip, his wits and his fists to dispatch enemies. Game director Jerk Gustafsson even described a scenario of Jones picking up a gun to use it as a melee weapon, instead of its intended purpose. “That’s a very in-character use of a gun for Indiana Jones,” he said.

This Isn’t The First Time MachineGames Has Discussed Combat

Just a few weeks ago, Jens Andersson, the design director at MachineGames,told PC Gamer in an interview that an Indiana Jones game “should never be a shooter.”

“He’s not a fighter, that’s not his nature, even though he ends up in fights all the time,” Andersson added at the time. “He’s an unlikely hero, lucky⁠—how can we replicate that into gameplay, make the player feel that humor, how do we get that across?”

It seems like MachineGames is dedicated to letting people know to set their expectations accordingly when it comes to the game’s combat. More than that, to also showcase the reverence they have for the character and desire to stay true to his origins.