This game could be amazing…or it could really suck. Bethesda has just dropped the very first reveal trailer for their brand-new Indiana Jones game, and it does look fantastic on the surface level.
It really sucks that “it’s still a Bethesda game” is now a cautionary label, but here we are.
In what has been a really testing time for Bethesda and all Bethesda fans, the fading gaming icon might have just published a potential Game of the Year contender as their reveal trailer for the new Indiana Jones game looks really good. Still, we have to be EXTREMELY vigilant and diligent in getting to overhyped for Bethesda games nowadays.
I hate that I have to preface my entire article with “it’s still a Bethesda game” given my (and many other’s) admiration for the studio and what it once was, yet I’m obligated to be honest with you all and say that everything below should be taken with a grain of salt. With that being said…this game still looks amazing!
Apart from the terrible title (Indiana Jones and the Great Circle…really? That’s all Bethesda and MachineGames could think of? That might actually be worse than Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny), nearly everything shown off in the teaser trailer for this game looked great.
The character models were amazing, the different locations and landscape designs for regions of Africa (which was specifically stated), the Amazon (I’m guessing this was the jungle area), and probably somewhere in 1930’s Vatican City (I’m guessing that’s what the city-environment was given the details about the game) appeared to be really well polished and detailed, the Nazi villains were both comical and threatening as one would expect from an Indy project, and the man, the myth, the legend himself, Indiana Jones, looked and sounded spectacular.
Not only did Bethesda and MachineGames appear to have perfectly captured Harrison Ford’s likeness and image for their Indiana Jones, but getting the great Troy Baker to voice Indy’s lines was a brilliant move as he sounded very much like young Harrison Ford.
Now, this surface-level, graphical-compliments are really as far as I can go for now with this game as aside from a few staged combat sections (which made the gunplay and whip mechanics look decent), the rest of the trailer was pretty much just cinematics, choregraphed gameplay, and semi-cut scenes. Obviously, Bethesda and MachineGames are not going to show off EVERYTHING in the first trailer, so I’m not really too bothered by this.
If I had to liken it to something this early on, it looks and feels like an Uncharted game meets Wolfenstein. The first reference should be obvious given Uncharted’s inspirational roots within the Indiana Jones movie franchise, while the second reference should be just as obvious for avid Wolfenstein players given the same developer, MachineGames, is responsible for both IPs.
However, the one issue/concern I really have for this game is not the characters and their models, combat, landscapes and environments, or even the writing/plot (though, I will be more concerned about it if they pull some kind of Last of Us II on us), but rather the developer and publisher in charge of this game: MachineGames and Bethesda, respectively.
(Microsoft/Bethesda-Indiana Jones And The Great Circle-Official Reveal Trailer)
MachineGames has done great work on the Wolfenstein franchise in the past (Wolfenstein: The New Colossus and Wolfenstein: The Old Blood being their two best games IMO), but their last two titles, Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot, were utterly atrocious and indicative of the larger issue here. And, yes, that being Bethesda.
I don’t care how many times the Xbox fanatics bought Starfield, the game is still WELL BELOW the standard Bethesda used to have for their open-world titles. And that goes double for all of the smaller titles and IPs, such as the two Wolfenstein titles, Redfall, Rage 2, Deathloop, Mighty Doom, and their larger titles, such as Fallout 76, The Elder Scrolls: Blades, and now Starfield.
Not all of their published games have been duds (Tango Gameworks is a very productive and efficient studio under their reign), but enough have been poor to make me question whether or not this game is just more Bethesda fool’s gold.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Microsoft/Bethesda) (Official Gameplay Reveal Trailer: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (youtube.com))
In Text Image 1: (Microsoft/Bethesda) (Official Gameplay Reveal Trailer: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (youtube.com))
