Indiana Jones and The Great Circle is a game that stands out for a number of reasons, not least because it shone as one of 2024’s only true exclusive releases for the Xbox Series consoles. It’s also a spin-off to a beloved film franchise that, instead of being a tie in, treads its own path and narrative through this character’s ongoing adventures.
It’s an undeniable success, with Troy Baker’s turn as Harrison Ford playing Indiana Jones proving to be nothing short of remarkable. The story is classic Indy, with a mysterious set of events putting Dr Jones in the direct path of Adolf Hitler’s obsession with the occult, while menacing German archaeologist, Herr Voss chews up the scenery in vicious style.
It’s a game that could easily drag you in from beginning to end, consuming all of your gaming time for a week, but for whatever reason – eating more than my body weight in mince pies at repeated family gatherings being one of them – I’ve not been able to play huge swathes of the game, instead diving in episodically to beat a puzzle, take a few pictures of historic buildings, or indulge in the excellent cutscenes. I’ve been loving it, and if anything this is how Indiana Jones and The Great Circle makes the most sense, with the game mimicking the beats of the very movie serials that inspired Geroge Lucas to create Indy in the first place.
Serials rose to prominence in the first half of the 20th Century, with movies broken down into weekly episodic releases, tempting audiences to return time and time again to the theatre. In a lot of ways, they paved the way for TV series and episodic content that have come to define the way we consume television.
They were often action-packed, with a binary vision of good and evil, making stars of the stalwart heroes and the helpless maidens that they rescued, and each episode came to a close with a cliffhanger designed to bring you back a week later, the hero dangling from a precipice or seemingly destined to die at the hands of a nefarious
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