Indiana Jones and the Great Circle De-emphasizes Guns

Video Games

Indiana Jones will be able to use guns in his upcoming video game, but he may be better off keeping them holstered. In a recent interview with Edge, a UK video game magazine whose online presence is on GamesRadar (similar to Total Film), Axel Torvenius, the creative director for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, the upcoming video game that proves we’ve given up on thinking of cool names for Indiana Jones stories, talked a bit about the gameplay. Specifically, Torvenius gave some insight into how guns figure into the game, and his comments quickly spread, with Indy fans none too happy about how he and the game’s other developers view the world’s premier adventure hero.

“We do not encourage gunplay. It’s not being pushed as the primary way forward. The primary way forward is always trying to use your wits and your whip… Indy doesn’t have superpowers. Very often, you can tell that it’s not easy for him to be in a fight. At the end of the day, he’s a teacher and a somewhat clumsy archeologist. He just happens to have this passion that puts him in these weird situations constantly with enemies and traps… It wouldn’t be true to the character to have him constantly shooting camps for all enemies constantly, and the team at MachineGames wants to emphasize the danger level. We’ve been trying to capture that sense that, if you need to engage in combat, it’s very dangerous to be shot at. It’s also very dangerous to shoot at enemies, because they will have an alarm system and reinforcements coming in.”

I’ll admit that when I first saw headlines and X posts sharing pieces of these comments, I rolled my eyes. It sounded like modern lefty nonsense to try to make some half-assed political statement about guns using a character that has famously used them in all of his films (I think; I forget a lot of what happened in Dial of Destiny, partly because I tried really hard). Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is one of the most famous scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Indy is faced with a sword-wielding enemy who’s about to cut our hero down to size, then pulls his revolver out and shoots the guy dead, quickly moving on in his quest to rescue Marion. There are many other examples, like gunning down Nazis in the Austrian castle in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or that great moment where he fires one bullet that kills a whole line of Nazis in the same film.

But taking the whole quote in context, I think Torvenius is making a fair point. It’s not that Indiana Jones wouldn’t use a gun; it’s that Indiana Jones wouldn’t use a gun if it weren’t to his advantage to do so. The scenarios he describes are ones where stealth is necessary, and shooting a gun off would alert a whole Nazi encampment to Indy’s presence. And this is something he does in the movies. For example, when Indy fires the machine gun in the castle in The Last Crusade, the Nazis already know he’s there; when he’s sneaking around looking for his father, he punches out his enemies rather than shoot them. In the latter half of Raiders of the Lost Ark, he’s trying to evade detection from the Nazis on the boat Sallah secured for him and later at the submarine dock, so he avoids violence altogether in the former and punches his way to a disguise in the latter. Torvenius’ line about Indy not having superpowers is correct; Indy is always vulnerable, always at a physical disadvantage, always escaping death by the skin of his teeth.

That vulnerability is part of what makes Indiana Jones a great character and what separates him from the heroes to whom Torvenius is likely referring. I don’t think he means Superman or Spider-Man when he says “superpowers;” I think he means characters like John Rambo or virtually anyone Arnold Schwarzenegger has played, who will mow down armies of bad guys with guns, stealth be damned. I love those guys, but I agree; that’s not who Indiana Jones is. Amusingly, Torvenius says that you can play the game like that if you want to; it’ll just be much more difficult because you’ll be facing a ton of enemies who are all gunning for you. The option is there if you really want to make Indiana Jones and the Great Circle an 80s action movie (as opposed to an 80s adventure movie; we all know the difference), but they would rather gamers focus on thinking their way out of danger. And I believe that’s the right way to go with Indiana Jones. That being said, keep the pistol ready, just like Indy would.

Let us know what you think of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle focusing more on brains and whips than guns in the comments!

***

Get Your Geeks + Gamers merch here, including a fitted hat and a SpaceCon t-shirt featuring Idot! (Who is Idot?)