I Want More Games Like Indiana Jones And The Great Circle, Not Star Wars Outlaws (2024)

Star Wars Outlaws is breaking new ground as a huge, open-world Star Wars experience, but as fun as that might be, I'm a lot more excited about the other upcoming Lucasfilm adventure in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Although its scope doesn't look as intense as Star Wars Outlaws, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a big moment in its own right. It's been a long time since the last major Indiana Jones video game, with fifteen years having passed since the release of LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues.

The recent lack of Indiana Jones games definitely felt like a waste, as the episodic potential of the franchise has plenty of room for more adventures. I spent some time last year with 1999's Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, and even a particularly challenging implementation of tank controls didn't stop that from being a thoroughly fun experience. It's not just the fact that it's Indiana Jones that has me hyped about the new game, however, but a difference in game design that ultimately looks more attractive than Star Wars Outlaws does.

Indiana Jones And The Great Circle Looks More Focused

I'm Hopeful For Consistent Fun & Creativity

Indiana Jones movies are traditionally propulsive adventures, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle seem like they are locked into this concept. Although the amount of gameplay shown so far has been fairly limited, nothing has highlighted the kind of wide-open spaces and possibilities for exploration that Star Wars Outlaws is emphasizing. Instead, it's all about the action, whether that action is dodging traps, swinging from Indy's whip, or the good old-fashioned act of punching Nazis in the face.

There's obviously merit to either of these approaches, but the path that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle takes feels both refreshing and entirely appropriate. I love Indiana Jones movies because they're incredible set-piece extravaganzas, stringing together inventive action sequences that never settle on one idea for too long. Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom see Spielberg fling aside most of his typical pathos to focus almost entirely on consistent fun, and even the more emotionally charged Last Crusade doesn't let up on the gas.

This guiding ethos translates incredibly well to video games, and it's an obvious inspiration for titles like Tomb Raider and especially Uncharted that attempt to keep the ball rolling all the way. With Indiana Jones, the game medium actually feels more capable of carrying the torch than films do. While the spirit of Raiders of the Lost Ark has been kept alive in other films by directors like Gore Verbinski, I didn't love Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which felt too burdened by Harrison Ford's age and director James Mangold's more reflective approach to ever truly soar.

I Expect Star Wars Outlaws To Be A Mixed Bag

Open-World Ubisoft Games Definitely Have Their Appeal

It makes sense that Star Wars Outlaws is headed in a more expansive direction, especially considering that no single-player Star Wars game has ever been truly open-world before. The galaxy far, far away is full of interesting places to explore, and Ubisoft is certainly capable of rendering them with immersive detail. Although Ubisoft's Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora had its fair share of problems, I fell in love with simply wandering around its environments and taking in the sights and sounds of Pandora, something Star Wars Outlaws could at least partially replicate.

If previous Ubisoft open-world games are anything to go by, however, the scale of Star Wars Outlaws is certain to bring an over-reliance on formula and repetition with it. While the game may very well have its memorable moments, they'll likely be sandwiched between missions that follow copy-pasted structures and open-world points of interest that offer little more than checking off a box on a map. The Star Wars films are more willing to take it slow than Indiana Jones traditionally was, but none of Lucas's ever stooped to settling into a rhythm, something that I, unfortunately, expect here.

Indiana Jones Makes A Better Model For Licensed Games

Focused Adventures Are More Viable For Most IPs

Star Wars isn't in desperate need of more linear adventures, with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Survivor recently offering something to fill that niche. When it comes to the wider market, however, I'm a lot more interested in seeing tie-in games follow the lead set by Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Great blockbuster films don't tend to have filler, and most franchises couldn't sustain the kind of budget and resources necessary for a massive open world anyway. I miss the pre-HD heyday of decently fun tie-ins, and that was only ever made possible through projects of limited scope.

There's still no guarantee that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will be as consistently exciting as I want it to be, and I wouldn't say the cutscene shown in the game's most recent trailer is fully operating at a Spielberg level of ingenuity. There's one detail that really grabs me, however — a bit where Indy draws a diagram of the titular great circle in lipstick. It's minor, but Indy having to grab lipstick in lieu of a pen is the kind of thing that the films love to do, giving extra life to conversational scenes through small creative sparks.

Although exciting set pieces and lipstick diagrams might be very different things to celebrate, they both represent what I want out of licensed games. Fifty hours of decent fun can quickly start to lose its luster, but ten hours of something that really understands what makes its source material great is worth replaying. For all I know, Star Wars Outlaws could end up being a better experience than Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Based on what we've seen so far, though, I'm more than happy to place my bets on the latter.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Franchise

Indiana Jones

Platform(s)

PC , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S

Released

2024-00-00

Developer(s)

MachineGames

Publisher(s)

Bethesda