‘Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’ Interview: Director and Lucasfilm VP

From near-death experiences via boulder chasing, tangling with deadly snakes, stopping fascist organizations in their tracks to communing with aliens, archaeologist Indiana Jones has done it all. In Bethesda’s MachineGames studio’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, the adventure continues a year after the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark. After a breakup with his fiancée Marion Ravenwood, we find our whip-cracking hero elbows deep in an unwinding mystery after an artifact is stolen from the college where he teaches. Upon discovering that the artifact is integral to one of the world’s most spiritually imbued sites connected by “a great circle,” he sets off to uncover the links between locations before his fellow archaeological nemesis Emmerich Voss can steal them for the Third Reich.

Below, Deadline speaks to MachineGames game director Jerk Gustafsson and Lucasfilm VP Douglas Reilly about tackling a new approach to an iconic character and bringing classic elements to life.

DEADLINE: When were you brought into the conversation between Lucasfilm and MachineGames? 

JERK GUSTAFSSON: Todd [Howard], he’s a big Indiana Jones fan. He’s been wanting to do this game for many years. He talked to people over at Disney, and I’m honored to say that Todd thought that MachineGames was a good fit to make an Indiana Jones game. So basically, he called me and asked, “Would you be interested in doing this game?” Of course, I was excited about it, and I knew that the team would be as well because it’s such an iconic character and brand. We had a lot of back-and-forth discussions between Todd and me. I did the first high concept of the game, about what I wanted to do with the gameplay, etc. Also, I did a little on the high-level story part because Todd brought us the overarching idea of the great circle for the main story. We then thought about how we can do that from a MachineGames [standpoint]. Those discussions happened before we started direct contact and research with Lucasfilm. 

Then, when we got in contact with Lucasfilm, that opened up this vast library of knowledge about everything Indy, which was extremely useful for us when we really wanted to go into the depth of what we wanted to do with the story and how we wanted to evolve the character of Indiana Jones in our game. 

REILLY: [From that library] we draw from everything, but to be grounded in the original source material, we start with the films. It’s what people are familiar with. It is how we’ve defined who the character is over the years. There are all kinds of other inspiration that we can draw on, from the attractions at Disneyland to the many other Indiana Jones games. And then teams at Lucasfilm craft new stories, environments and characters that are authentic and connected to those source materials.

DEADLINE: What is your relationship with the Indiana Jones franchise? 

GUSTAFSSON: I grew up with Indiana Jones [in Sweden]. Raiders of the Lost Ark came out in 1981. I was nine, but we rented these movies in the mid-80s as they came out on VHS. Raiders was one of those major childhood moments that you don’t forget. Taking part in that great adventure shaped a lot of our collective and creative minds and our creative output in a deeper way than I think we might understand. Those types of matinee adventure movies were so entertaining and special in their own way. That’s why I also loved to work on this game: We used Raiders as our key reference to try to create something that resembles those ’80s adventure, matinee adventure movies. I hope we have succeeded to some extent, but because it’s something that I kind of miss today, I would like to see more of those types of games. We still have amazing adventure movies and games coming out, but [I’d like to] try to focus on that ’80s nostalgia. We said early at MachineGames when we started working on the game that we wanted to feel like a lost Indiana Jones adventure from the 1980s. 

DOUGLAS REILLY: I’m a kid of the ’80s. I had the pleasure of seeing Indiana Jones in theaters with my dad. These are some of my favorite films of all time, and I’m really excited about bringing them to life in the game space.

DEADLINE: Why do you think Indiana Jones still has such relevance in the pop culture space? 

 REILLY: What makes Indiana Jones timeless is that he’s an everyday guy. He’s a professor, not some highly trained operative. He’s an archaeologist who gets in a little bit over his head, and then has to use regular tools and his intelligence to get out of scrapes and tight situations.

DEADLINE: Now that the game is out into the world, have you seen any responses that resonate with you? 

GUSTAFSSON: We are very happy about the reception, of course. What I like is that people are talking about the game in a positive way but also about how MachineGames has taken risks because we always try to do something. We knew that we were taking some risks by doing something different compared to other titles in this genre. From the start I knew there would be some discussion, maybe controversy, around the first-person perspective we decided to go for. Even internally, there was a lot of, “Should we really do that?”

Regarding Indiana Jones himself, Steven Spielberg said, “He’s a non-superhero superhero.” I think we have really tried to embrace that. He’s a professor. He’s like 35+ years old. He’s fit but not acrobatic; it’s tough to climb a ledge. We tried to find that balance of staying grounded in the movement and how he acts in these more traversing the environment situations. That has also been received rather positively, which warms my heart as much of the focus was on the camera and puzzle-solving. 

DEADLINE: While it’s not rare for games these days to look incredibly cinematic, there is something about The Great Circle that feels straight out of a movie and sometimes does pull scenes from past Indy films. What is rare is that you worked with an actual cinematographer. Talk about working with Kyle Klutz.

GUSTAFSSON: This is the first time we have worked with a DP. For the Wolfenstein games, we have done the performance captures in this big volume when you have the suits and the face cameras. Then, we did the in-game cameras internally in the studio after the shoot itself. This time, we decided to because, obviously, we all know that it’s going to be very hard to try to be Steven Spielberg, right? [laughs]. We were looking at the prologue, the movies that Steven Spielberg has done, and the camera work he’s doing, and we really wanted to get as close as possible. Because we start with this fabled section of the intro to Raiders of the Lost Ark in the game, we wanted to try to set the tone here and set the pacing of the game. By doing that, we wanted to try to continue with a similar feel throughout the game. So that’s when we started to talk about bringing in a DP for the performance capture session. We wanted someone who could actively work with a camera, was knowledgeable about Steven Spielberg’s work, and tried to get as close as possible to the scenes we were going for in the game.

Kyle was so helpful, especially in the blocking session, so it’s very likely that we will work with a DP again. We prepared all the scenes and made sure we had the correct camera angles, and then we got to shoot when the actors were there [in the studio]. We were just better prepared in every way so that we could have a better idea of what would be seen on screen. It was quite interesting and educational for us as a team to have Kyle helping us out. 

DEADLINE: What were some non-negotiables that absolutely had to make it into the game adaptation? 

GUSTAFSSON: It was important that even if this is an Indiana Jones game, I still wanted to make sure that this was also a MachineGames game. There are important things that I talked about with Todd in that first call. One of them was that if we were doing this game, I wanted it to be in first person. That was one of those things that for me, it wouldn’t be a MachineGames game if we didn’t do it in first person. The other thing was I pushed hard to get the [photo] camera in. Even if we haven’t seen Indiana Jones use a camera in the movies, it was a very important tool for puzzle solving, exploring the world, and integrating this hint system we have for puzzle solving. Then you also have Indiana Jones commenting on the photos you’re taking as well. We always start with where we want to start with the story and where we want to end, and then we try to build out the big story beats, and then we usually just take it from there. So, it has been a pretty smooth ride in that sense. Obviously, it’s very difficult and challenging to make games. We all know that. But I think what we set out to do and what we did when it comes to that very first synopsis, very first high-level concept, it’s also what we delivered in the end. So, we are usually pretty good at sticking to our plan. 

DEADLINE: The game also has a little bit of a third-person element. Was that a compromise that had to be made? 

GUSTAFSSON: Not really. I would rather say that we went back to our roots a little bit because we did a very similar thing when we did a game called The Chronicles of Riddick. That was 20 years ago, but we had this character played by Vin Diesel. It was a similar situation where we took this character from the movies, looked at the character and started to think, how do we want to evolve this character in our story and in the game? As for now, the same as it was back then, for me, it’s important that we don’t just want you to play the character Indiana Jones; we want you to be the character Indiana Jones. That’s where it all starts. It’s about immersion. Immersion is an overused word, but it leads to presence, and I think that’s the important part for me when I play, when I explore environments, when I walk around, it feels like you’re in the world, and that’s what we wanted to achieve.

But we also understand that these characters are very clearly defined. So, we continue to stick to what we always have done. Of course, we want to display them in first person and present them in first person when it comes to cutscenes and cinematics. But here, we also have the opportunity to use it to our benefit in gameplay. The whip is a good example. Because if you have climbed the whip and you just face the wall, it’s very hard to see where you are to get a good overview or where you climb in first person. But if you pull the camera back, we get to see Indiana Jones a little bit more, but we also get a better overview of what to expect from pay. So, I think when we use the third person, it’s very much to our benefit and makes a better game as well. I like the mix of it. It’s the best of both worlds for me.

DEADLINE: In adapting this game that takes place between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, there seems to be a lot of freedom in terms of exploring iconic and new locales or adding more to Indiana Jones’ personality. What were the challenges or benefits of being able to explore this? 
GUSTAFSSON: One of our strengths and what we have done throughout our careers is taking these well-established characters and finding new ways of evolving them. There was a reason why we decided to put it between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. First, I think the initial part was that at the end of Raiders, he’s together with Marion and has this love interest, but in the beginning of The Last Crusade, he’s not. So, what has happened there in between? We all know also that his obsession with the past is also something that has made it very difficult for him to keep these relationships. That’s something that we wanted to explore deeper. And I think that’s one of the main focuses when it comes to character development in the game too.

REILLY: One of the challenges of making a great game is that you have to give players agency and freedom to do things and the ability to improvise and use things in ways maybe you didn’t expect. I think the whip is a perfect example of that balance. Getting that right was crucial, and we spent hours talking about what the whip can do, what the whip looks like. How does it animate? What kind of situations do you use it in, or not use it in? That facilitated really interesting gameplay while still not feeling like we were turning Indiana Jones into a different character than the one you know.  Same thing goes for the gun. You have a gun. You know Indiana Jones uses a gun in the films, but he uses it very sparingly, and so we gave players the opportunity to have a gun, but you probably don’t want to use it all the time, and when you do use it you need to be very careful about how you use it.  

We applied that thinking to everything. Whether it was puzzle-solving, or traversal, it was always through the lens of trying to make it feel authentic to the films and the way they work while rethinking them and reimagining them in a way that made for fun gameplay. MachineGames did a great job of finding that balance, and not pushing those things so far that they didn’t feel connected to the character.

[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]