The Great Circle shines when it forgets about Indiana Jones

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle kicks off a brand-new adventure with nostalgia. The start of the game, serving as a tutorial, is pretty much a one-to-one re-creation of the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark. You get to incarnate Indy, but only slightly — you’re constantly interrupted with cutscenes featuring dialogue and camera frames matched to the original film. It’s a showcase of how, 40 years later, CG technology can recreate movies to a painstaking degree of fidelity.

This sequence’s presence is passed off as a flashback dream for Indy. The rest of The Great Circle takes place a year after the events of the homaged movie. But even if the tribute is a commendable effort, it sets a precedent for the experience as a whole. The clear obsession to deliver a cinematic story around the character of Indiana Jones constantly clashes with this modern video game rendition of the films. Which is a shame, because there are plenty of interesting ideas when you actually have control.

Developed by MachineGames of Wolfenstein fame and published by Bethesda, The Great Circle is a first-person action-adventure game. After an ominous character breaks into Marshall College to steal a specific treasure in exhibition, archeology teacher and renowned tomb raider Indiana Jones is tasked with retrieving the item. The search leads you to travel across multiple locations, presented as open areas to explore, while gradually uncovering a web of leads around the namesake mystery.

During some cutscenes, of which there are many (almost four hours of them), the scene freezes and you’re given a button prompt to perform certain actions. Not in quick-time event form, but almost in a Telltale-esque fashion. In the introductory Raiders re-creation sequence, playing on PC, Indy lifts his hand to activate the light trap with W. Removing the spiders from Alfred Molina’s back with Indy’s whip? That’s A instead. Even traditional cutscenes manage to be disruptive. Oftentimes, after you’ve completed a puzzle and gained access to a secret room, you have to investigate the area for clues, which usually involves manually picking up evidence. The way it plays out? Move to the object, grab it, watch a short cutscene. Repeat this two or three times until you get a longer cutscene, and then you’re finally allowed to move to the next objective.

The overall intrigue of the story is interesting and prone to hook you in, although you may know what to broadly expect if you’ve watched the original trilogy. Thankfully, there’s plenty to do aside from watching cutscenes, which helps with the pacing. The open areas are packed with collectibles and side stories, some leading to one-shot puzzles while others unlock more involved quest lines, such as an underground fight club (sorry for breaking the first and second rule). Whether you’re looking for clues or just admiring the accurate historical re-creations of each locale, there’s one tool that ties Indiana Jones and the Great Circle together: a camera.

To my surprise, you spend a ton of time taking camera shots of evidence and historical architecture for the main story, but also of people doing random and funny things. Some side missions involving the camera are quite silly, reinforcing this; in one, you have to search for a lost cat who happens to be all the way up on a rooftop inside the Vatican, take a picture of it, and then return to the wanted poster to place the cat picture on top of it.

Some of my favorite moments didn’t come from a clear objective or lead for a side mission but rather from helping people out in small ways: picking up a book from a tall shelf for a nun, retrieving a lost paintbrush for a group of workers, fulfilling photo requests. You find these by literally listening to NPCs, which is a great motivator to ignore fast travel and instead take a different route during inevitable back-and-forth moments in hopes of encountering something new.

For all of these activities, you’re awarded Adventure Points. It’s a similar concept to how MachineGames tackled skill progression in the Wolfenstein series (with the exception of Wolfenstein: Youngblood). In short, you’re rewarded for your actions, rather than gaining experience simply by completing objectives. Instead of a menu with skill trees, you have to acquire Adventure Books. Some are scattered throughout levels, while others are part of side quests with vendors involved. In the Vatican, for example, the Nazis have been hoarding medicine for themselves, and you can find bottles hidden throughout the level. You can then use them as currency and trade them for a few books. On paper, it sounds like your usual fetch quest. But there’s always a story tie-in to make them feel organic rather than tedious. And again, they’re optional.

The depth of exploration through the lenses of the camera as one of the game’s central mechanics is certainly welcome, as most portrayals of Indiana-specific traits don’t stand out as they should. Sure, the quips during combat are funny, and on par with Indy’s character. But I would often forget about the whip, which you can use to attack and disarm enemies. Given that there are usually plenty of melee weapons around, and that most enemies are happy with throwing fists with you in barehanded combat, the whip is strangely cast out of the spotlight. You do constantly use it for traversal, but that doesn’t feel that different than, say, a grappling hook — the only novelty being that the camera changes to third person to watch Indy slowly climb up walls after attaching the whip to a marked ledge. Even the fedora gets a more novel nod with the True Grit ability, in which you can get a second wind after you’re knocked down if you manage to crawl toward Indy’s hat and retrieve it before the time runs out.

Another mechanic that serves as a nod to the films is the ability to wear disguises. Don’t expect the complexity of the Hitman series, where switching your attire is a recurring activity with plenty of strategic options. Here, disguises let you walk more freely in certain areas (as long as you can evade the gaze of some specific enemies who get immediately suspicious on sight), but they contribute little else. Wearing one adds a little touch to cutscenes, as well as the occasional dialogue quip when bumping into NPCs. But Indy will immediately switch back to his default look when approaching certain main story moments. (Some players will have paid to get DLC outfits, after all.)

At times, it feels like the MachineGames team intended for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to lean more on immersive sim aspects at some point in development. The inclusion of disguises, as well as alternate paths to bypass enemies and Indy’s ability to pick up bodies and drop them in the nearest shadowy corner, all get tantalizingly close to the idea, not quite reaching the necessary depth and player agency that the genre is known for. You can throw bottles to distract enemies for a sneak attack, but you can’t turn off the light inside a room with an open door to prevent yourself from being discovered.

Another aspect in which player agency seems oddly compromised is the game’s puzzle design. At first, I had fun trying to figure out solutions from environmental cues alone, but some, especially those tied to the main story, ended up being quite straightforward. Moreover, once Indy’s new sidekick Gina Lombardi showed up, she was prone to share hints about what I should be looking for (she isn’t as talkative as Kratos’ companions in God of War Ragnarök, though). You can also adjust the “adventure experience” in the settings, choosing between light or moderate options, with the latter not holding your hand for exploration as much and making puzzles more challenging. Alternatively, you have the option to take a photo of the puzzle and get hints that way.

Reflecting on the overall experience, it’s the archeology side that remains in my mind. The journal, which collects evidence and clues, gets gradually filled by the pictures you take, rather than including preset ones. If you open the map (shown physically in Indy’s hands) before you get the actual area’s map, you’ll find a landscape sketch. These little details remind me of Heaven’s Vault, or the premise of the totally not canceled In the Valley of Gods. Combat sequences are fun enough — punching Nazis is always morally correct — but my biggest takeaway from these moments was a desire to replay the nü-Wolfenstein games. At times, the archeology and photography mechanics felt part of a separate game that, miraculously, was allowed screen time amid the demands of a film tie-in and evident desire to appeal to the widest possible audience.

The Great Circle is at its best when you’re rewarded for paying attention to your surroundings and going off the beaten path. Yet, when the story assumes control once again, it makes for dissonant results. During the Raiders of the Lost Ark section, the game uses the light trap moment of the film to teach you how to crouch. In the movie, the carelessness around this contraption leads to the immediate death of two explorers, with both scenes faithfully recreated in-game. After the cutscene ended, I immediately started sprinting, missing the tutorial prompt as I stepped into the light straight on. But to my surprise, it wasn’t the end of Indiana Jones’ story — the spikes barely made a dent in his health bar. The push for a cinematic feel is constantly looming over The Great Circle, hindering the potential of its genuine novelty elements. The promise of a modern Indiana Jones game that allows you to fully embrace the fantasy of inhabiting the character in a new light, rather than repeating his greatest hits, remains a mystery yet to be solved.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will be released Dec. 9 on Windows PC and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on PC using a pre-release download code provided by MachineGames. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.