You do some pretty terrible things to dogs in MachineGames' Wolfenstein games, so I was prepared for the worst in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. But when I pointed Indy's revolver at an enemy pupper and pulled the trigger, tears streaming down my face, they merely ran away. Crisis averted.
"[Indiana Jones] is a dog person," MachineGames Creative Director Jens Andersson explains in an interview with IGN, evoking the famous line from Last Crusade in which Henry Jones gruffly notes that his son took his nickname from the family dog. He also mentions that "this is obviously a little bit different than Wolfenstein as well, where the dog will explode."
IGN's Twenty Questions – Guess the game!
IGN's Twenty Questions – Guess the game!
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Why the shift? "It's a family-friendly IP in many ways," Andersson says. "How do we do that well? Well, these are the kind of things that we do. We have dogs as enemies, but you don't really hurt the dogs. You scare them away."
Indian Jones isn't exactly immune to ultra-violence, of course — one of the most famous gifs in Internet history depicts a Nazi's face literally melting in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Andersson and Lucasfilm Games executive producer Craig Derrick mostly skirt around the question of whether The Great Circle will have any similar scenes.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle – October 2024 Screenshots
"We don't really have jump scares necessarily, but we have the creepy crawlies sometimes. And there's a couple of moments when you'll see Indy in a precarious situation and you'll feel like it's claustrophobic," Derrick says. "You'll feel like it's a little bit scary and still in the safest possible way, but I think we bring much of that, as you say, authenticity of the films into this game throughout it. It's an extraordinary experience to go through.
One way or another, it seems like you are safe from having to Google whether the dog dies in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. The pups are just fine. As for the rest of game, our final preview of The Great Circle is now live, where we delve into all of the ways that it's an "adventure-action game" rather than an "action-adventure game." And of course, check out our full interview as well.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is under development for Xbox Series X|S and PC and will release on December 9. A PS5 version will follow in spring 2025.
Kat Bailey is IGN's News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.