Unchartedwas the logical way to turnIndiana Jonesinto a video game.Naughty Dog’s action-adventure series captures the full breadth of what makes Indy work. Nathan Drake travels the world, hunts for rare artifacts, has brushes with the supernatural, romances multiple women despite being destined to settle down with the female lead from his first outing, solves puzzles in ancient ruins, gets involved in vehicular mayhem, and fights a lot of bad dudes. That’s basically Indy.
There are areas where Drake’s approach diverges from Dr. Jones’, sure. He’s much more fond of guns; there’s, like, one memorable death by gunshot in the Indiana Jones movies, while Drake’s adventures are defined by shootouts. But gaming’s love of firearms aside, Uncharted diagnosed the things that made Indiana Jones tick as a movie and successfully translated them into video game form.
Indiana Jones: Through The Looking Glass
So, whenMachineGamesstarted working on an actual Indiana Jones game, it had some ahem pitfalls it needed to avoid. It couldn’t just be Uncharted but with Indiana Jones; that wouldn’t do justice to the Man with the Hat.
So, MachineGames made Indiana Jones and the Great Circle an immersive sim. All the reviews told me that when it came out onXbox, and yet now that I’m finally playing it onPS5, it’s kind of shocking. I’m having a great time so far, but I can’t get over how bizarre it is that the first big-budget Indiana Jones game of the century essentially plays like Dishonored.
I’m still in Vatican City (RIP Pope Francis), so I can’t speak to how the game handles Indy’s brand of adventuring later on. But I can say that it feels pretty strange for an Indiana Jones game to be this slow-paced. You arrive in an area, and then you basically have free rein to look around for as long as you want. The Uncharted games aren’t restrictively linear —- Naughty Dog strikes a really great balance, delivering games that are fast-paced but not on-rails — but they don’t feel like this.
As open-ended as Uncharted games (especially the fourth entry) can be in moments like the Western Ghats, they are always moving forward. Drake fights along the roof of a train, or gets dragged behind a Jeep, or chases after a kidnapped Sully on a horse, or makes his way up a jungle river on a jet ski.
And for The Lost Legacy heads, Chloe rides a motorcycle alongside a speeding train, too.
What Does It Mean To Feel Like Indiana Jones?
These games are constantly pushing you forward, and the influence of the Indiana Jones movies is largely responsible for that focus on driving the pace and earning the pause. Young Indy’s formative adventure in The Last Crusade involved fighting bad guys on a moving circus train, not unlike Uncharted 2’s locomotive set piece. Raiders of the Lost Ark’s car sequence set the template for Uncharted 4’s. Temple of Doom gave us the definitive minecart action scene. These movies tend to be paced with the speed of that horse the elderly Indy rode through the New York subway system in Dial of Destiny.
So, I find it fascinating that The Great Circle is soheady. Games likeMarvel’s Spider-ManandBatman: Arkham Cityreceived praise for ‘making you feel like’ the superheroes they star. When critics say that, they tend to mean that players feel like they’re living through the action set pieces of the movie, swinging and gliding over the city with all the adrenaline that entails.
But Indiana Jones and the Great Circle makes you feel like Indiana Jones in a different way. It makes you feel like you’re Indiana Jonesbetween the big moments; like Indiana Jones off-screen, for the most part. The clue-collecting and problem-solving that the movies handwave is Great Circle’s bread and butter. This is an Indy that is really good at finding clues and helping people, at solving puzzles and sneaking around.
The Uncharted games focused on recreating what made Indiana Jones cinematic, but they aren’t cinema. MachineGames seemed to realize that there was a ton of uncinematic stuff happening between the scenes that would nonetheless work great in game form. It was a galaxy-brained choice, but it seems to have been worth its weight in golden idols.
