MachineGames, Bethesda, and Microsoft revealed Indiana Jones and the Great Circle at the Xbox Developer_Direct presentation earlier today, and naturally, we saw a great deal of Indy’s whip in action. From combat to stealth to traversal, the whip can be used for a variety of gameplay actions, and MachineGames has spoken about the process of ensuring that it felt right when players were in control.
In an interview published on the official LucasArts website, game director Jerk Gustafsson revealed that the whip in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is “fully simulated” from end to end. According to Gustafsson, though that made its implementation more of a technical challenge, it also allows it to feel grittier and more grounded.
“Our main goal has been to make it as useful and versatile as possible,” Gustafsson said when asked about what players an expect from The Great Circle’s whip. “What usually comes to mind when thinking about the whip is as a traversal tool to make your way around the environment, swinging and climbing. But as we started working on it, we focused primarily on combat, as we knew that would be the most challenging part of the feature. Not only making it work well in combat, but also in combination with other important combat tools, like hand-to-hand and use of in-world items. We also decided to go for a fully simulated whip, which made it challenging from a technical perspective, but we gained that gritty and realistic feel to it that is so important to us.”
MachineGames has also confirmed that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is going to primarily be first-person game, though it will use a third-person perspective during cutscenes and some gameplay sections, like environmental traversal. It’s also been revealed that Troy Baker will play Indiana Jones in the game.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is set to launch later this year for Xbox Series X/S and PC.