Perhaps the biggest game of the giant Gamescom expo — which drew 335,000 fans to Cologne, Germany — was Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a game being published this fall by Microsoft’s Bethesda division and developed by Sweden’s Machine Games.
I spoke with Axel Torvenius, creative director, and Jens Andersson, game designer at Machine Games, after seeing the preview for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Their studio made major games for Bethesda in the past like the Wolfenstein series, and now their game is coming on December 9 on the PC and the Xbox Series X/S.
It struck me that they had created an amazing first-person shooter series where you were able to kill Nazi soldiers in the most gruesome ways with the Wolfenstein games. And here they were in charge of the family-friendly mainstream property of Indiana Jones — where you still kill Nazis.
After creating so much joy and humor from creating bloody situations with over-the-top violence, they had to find humor in a different way, based on the style and characters of the Indiana Jones franchise. The development team had to switch gears and make a game with plenty of shooting but without blood and guts. Yet the team got over this notion very quickly.
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“The most appealing thing was just being able to work on such an iconic, classic IP,” said Andersson. He added later, “It was obvious early on that certain aspects we might have indulged in earlier projects wouldn’t be a good fit for this project….This time around it’s more of a Machine Games adventure, rather than a Machine Games shooter. It’s still very much a Machine Games game.”
Indeed, the thing that the Machine Games titles share in common, they said, is the quality of the experience. The goal is to create an experience in a familiar genre that is fresh while staying faithful to the franchise.
Of course, while it’s good to give players agency in a game, they should not be able to mow down everybody in sight. When in doubt on what to do in a scene, the team asked themselves, “What would Indy do?” That’s the approach the team has to getting to a game that can reach the widest audience possible.
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview. Disclosure: Devcom paid my way to Cologne, where I moderated two panels.
GamesBeat: How many years has this been in development?
Axel Torvenius: Quite a few. I think we’re somewhere in the region of four years for some people.
GamesBeat: Was there some appeal to being able to kill Nazis again?
Torvenius: It’s appealing for lots of different reasons.
Jens Andersson: The most appealing thing was just being able to work on such an iconic, classic IP. To get the opportunity to work with Lucasfilm Games on this, that’s the greatest appeal, I would say.
GamesBeat: Did any of your earlier work feel like preparation for this?
Torvenius: All your earlier work is useful for the next game you’re making. We’re bringing a lot of what we like to do into this game. This being a first-person adventure game, that’s absolutely influenced by our previous work. The story-driven approach, story being a major driving force of the game, the cinematic presentation, the immersion, all that stuff.
GamesBeat: It feels like you toned down the violence for the Indiana Jones style.
Andersson: Exactly. It became very obvious to us early on in the process, as we started dissecting the IP and take apart the character–what is this world? What is the world we’re entering? What do we want to craft within it? It was obvious early on that certain aspects we might have indulged in earlier projects wouldn’t be a good fit for this project. It was obvious in the early days, where we needed to go.
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