With Indiana Jones and the Great Circle releasing to critical acclaim late last year on Xbox Series and PC platforms (and to a fair amount of green eyes in the PlayStation community), Hollywood’s favourite, whip-cracking, wise-cracking and treasure hunting adventurer has finally made the leap to PS5 and PS5 Pro. Ably manifested by the endless pool of talent at MachineGames, we spoke John Jennings, Production Director and Axel Torvenius, Creative Director at MachineGames, to understand just what went into Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to make it a true realisation of the Indiana Jones fantasy.
PlayStation Universe: Thank you for giving us the opportunity to interview you. Would you mind introducing yourself to our readers and outline what attracted you so much to the project?
JJ: Hi, I’m John Jennings, Production Director at MachineGames. I’ve been here at MachineGames for 11 years now and have loved everything we’ve worked on from the Wolfenstein titles and now to Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. I grew up in the 1980s so I have an extremely soft spot for Indy and everything Lucasfilm so, the chance to work on this game was a dream.
AT: Hello, I am Axel Torvenius, Creative director here at MachineGames. I have been with the studio since 2011 and was the Art Director on all the Wolfenstein titles and then moved into Creative Director for the Indiana Jones game. I also grew up in the 80s so my childhood memories definitely has Indiana Jones in there! A true bliss to be able to work on this franchise.
PlayStation Universe: Indiana Jones and The Great Circle is set between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade – what kind of challenges did you come across when it came to creating a story that fit between the two?
JJ: Well, we knew we needed to fit into the official Indy timeline! Even though there are only a few big-screen adventures, there’s a huge amount of other Indy material out there. Our writers knew their subject matter well, but the Lucasfilm Games story team were always there, reviewing our ideas, to make sure we were holding true. We also had access to Lucasfilm’s Jedi Archives (which they’re genuinely called!) to help us along the way and that was great fun to explore. It’s been nice to help fill out some of the story changes between Raiders and Last Crusade too; how did Indy react to the breakup with Marion after Raiders, or how did he lose his job at Marshall College in between the films?
AT: One of the big ones was to actually make a game and not a movie! There are so many different aspects to making a game that is in some cases much easier to do for a game than for a movie, but also the other way around. We do not have the luxury to just have the player go exactly where we want them to or confine the player in certain locations. To make a fun and interesting game, we, of course, WANT the player to really go behind the set, peak around that curtain and look around the next corner. We also never fully know what the player will do. We believe strongly in the player agency and that the player is in control. So, there are definitely aspects of making a game that often came under review in terms of “would Indy do that?”, and sometimes we encountered
PlayStation Universe: The Great Circle begins with a remake of a classic scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark – with shot-for-shot remakes of classic setpieces. Did you set out to have the rest of the game follow this style of cinematography?
JJ: We always set out to make a game that felt like it could be part of that classic series of films. The influence of Steven Spielberg and Douglas Slocombe was strong. To help us hit our goals it was important to adapt our shooting style for the performance capture. In previous MachineGames titles our camera work was done in post-production, using a virtual camera system, but for the Great Circle we knew we’d need to have physical cameras there in the scenes while we were shooting. We worked with Kyle Klutz as our Director of Photography, who built camera set-ups that helped give us that authentic feel. We had a set up with cameras on Dollies and Jibs, just how the original films were shot. It went a long way in helping to define the shots we were taking, and I think it was really helpful to the actors to know exactly where the lenses were pointing.
AT: The cinematography of the earlier Indiana Jones movies really is a big part of the identity. Setting out to try to achieve the look and feel of the 80s Indy movies was really crucial we hit that. Dissecting and focusing foremost on Raiders frame by frame, trying to find the keys to achieve that look. Also a lot of storyboards were created to make sure we can plan all the shots and pans to really be in control to achieve that style.
PlayStation Universe: When you set out to make an Indiana Jones game, did you set out with the goal of making it an immersive experience? Even in small moments like turning a key, there’s an element of interactivity that feels quite rare today.
JJ: Yes, it was a key component. I’m sure you’ll have read in other interviews about the game that we wanted the player to not just play as Indiana Jones, but we wanted you to feel like you are Indiana Jones. That led to many things, such as the choice of first-person perspective, but also the physical interactions with the world around you, so that you felt grounded in the environment around you. The door and key interaction were actually one of the first things that we started to prototype. It took a lot of iteration to find the correct level of complexity there; we wanted it to feel immersive, but not cumbersome or tedious. I think we found a good balance.
AT: It has been monumental to us to make sure we have done everything we can to really put you into the shoes of Indy. There is so much exploration going on in the game. We pick up items, artifacts and notes to inspect. We brush the dust of walls to uncover secrets, we push levers and move debris close up to the camera with the player’s hands, and we do of course, punch the hulking enemies in front of you with your fists straight in the face. All of this is crucial and key to make sure we get the best immersive experience we could craft.
PlayStation Universe: Linking to that question, there are moments where the perspective shifts to third-person to show Indiana in certain situations. What made you decide to shift between perspectives for these particular moments and how did you make sure it never became disorienting?
JJ: We always want to use the camera perspective that we think works best for the gameplay. When you’re there, picking up and interacting with the items in front of you, or experiencing the entrance into a grand temple hall, the first-person experience makes that much more immersive. But, for traversals, such as when whip-climbing up a wall, the third person camera is rather useful so you can get a better sense of perspective to help you plan where you’re going to jump or swing off to in quite a helpful way, rather than just looking at the wall you’re climbing, two inches away from your face. It’s an approach that goes right back to the older games that some of our core team worked on, like The Chronicles of Riddick.
We spent a lot of time iterating on the camera transitions, finding what worked best. We tried hard cuts, gradual camera zooms, having the camera go into Indy’s head from the back, or come in from the side; lots of iteration. One of the things we found that helped the most was finishing the action in the “new” perspective. So, for example, when you’re climbing a ladder in third person, we switch back to first person in the last steps of exiting the ladder, rather than switching back after the action is complete. That made things feel a lot better.
AT: Indeed, and as John points out the balance here took a lot of time and iteration. We also -do- love the iconic look of the character! So while we, of course, get to see his heroic face and icon hat-silhouette in the cutscenes, it is a great opportunity that throughout the minute-to-minute gameplay, we also get plenty of screen time of the full character, not just the hands in fps. We even put some great effort in to make sure we planned out and positioned the lighting set up in such way that the character always would look as good as possible, both in first person but also making sure that in the locations we know he will be in third person traversals, we took extra are to make sure he really comes off as good as possible. We even have the very interesting middle stage in first person, where the sun and lamp locations sometimes cast your shadow projection in front of you – so that even if we are in first person, we still get to see a representation of the silhouette. Almost a bit of movie magic there.
PlayStation Universe: The first person perspective is shared between your work on Wolfenstein and this; what other lessons did your work on Wolfenstein bring to the table during development?
JJ: One of the most important components for our sense of immersion was having full body-awareness. You’re not just a pair of floating disembodied hands in this game. If you look around, your full body is always there. All animations are full-body animations, even when viewed in first person. This helps “keep us honest” with how we do actions in the first person, so we can’t “cheat” things, and it results in the movement feeling more natural. This led to a lot of extra development in Indiana Jones. For the Wolfenstein games, BJ is largely just interacting with weapons. In Indiana Jones, you’re performing a far wider variety of actions; picking up all kinds of artefacts, turning them around in your hands, carrying heavy objects, brushing the dust away from something ancient. We didn’t want to have a “Press X” and the object magically teleports into your inventory; we wanted to be sure that Indy was reaching out, picking it up, and then letting you inspect the object held in your hand. It’s an important part of the feel of the game.
AT: Oh a great question and something we most likely could write a book about! But to try to keep it short, for me 2 big learnings from the Wolfenstein series is context and environmental storytelling and the second is identity. In the Wolfenstein games we have always pushed hard to make sure that there is context for the environment and by doing so, most of the time finding interesting ways to tell a little story. To create a memorable space or a snippet of narrative, even if it is -just- another room or mundane corridor. This is definitely something we brought with us into the world of Indy. The second thing is that one of the most important things to me is identity. You need to make sure that you understand what your identity is and that you as a developer understand how and when to push it. This is easier said than done, but ever so important. This is a principle that was very true to put into practice for Indiana Jones as well.
PlayStation Universe: In bringing the game over to the PlayStation 5, how much consideration went into making use of the haptic feedback of the DualSense controller? Immersion is clearly a focal point of The Great Circle, did these additional features present some exciting opportunities?
JJ: Yes, it’s been a lot of fun over the last few months setting up the different cases for haptics and adaptive triggers. Given the physicality and “body awareness” of the game that I was talking about, having far more granularity in the feedback of the objects you’re holding is great. You can feel the resistance on the trigger when you’re taking a camera photo, and you get that nice sense of “click” as it completes, just like an old school camera. It really does make a difference. Feeling the whip ‘crack’ or bounce off objects is great too. The rudder controls for the boat in Sukhothai feel really nice as well.
AT: It really is a feature that enhances some of the core mechanics and fits well into the gameplay we have. A happy marriage!
PlayStation Universe: Troy Baker puts a stellar performance forward as Indiana Jones; was Harrison Ford at all involved in nailing the character’s direction and performance?
JJ: Not directly. They got to meet at the Game Awards, which was a fun moment to watch of course. Troy is himself a huge fan of Indiana Jones so he knew the films, and Harrison’s performance, inside out before even taking the part in the game, and that went a long way. We got to work with many great people from Lucasfilm Games who’ve worked within the Indiana Jones world for many years.
AT: And if it wasn’t for the legendary and iconic work by Harrison Ford made back in the 80s, we wouldn’t be sitting here talking about this at all. A monumentally important achievement and contribution to modern cinema and the adventure franchise as a whole within the entertainment industry. True honor to be able to be a little part in carrying this epic legacy forward.
PlayStation Universe: Troy’s performance is so authentic that you could almost be fooled for thinking that it is actually Ford. Did Troy Baker bring a unique perspective to the character of Indy?
JJ: His incredible professionalism and dedication brought so much. He put in so much preparation time, and real thought into what he was doing. Troy’s talked about some of the moments of self-discovery that occurred during the filming of this game. It was a long production; we were shooting over a four-year period, so Indy was a character that he lived with for a long time. I recall him saying how he discovered, thankfully, relatively early on that focusing entirely on the perfect Harrison Ford impression would only take him so far. In fact, his obsession with that ended up being counter-productive and leading to frustration at times. But he had a moment where he realised that Harrison Ford was never doing an impression of Indiana Jones; he was being Indiana Jones. From then on changed his process around to focusing on that feeling, and bringing those inherent traits of Indy to his performance. The confidence, the swagger. That was the point when it clicked and he began to feel comfortable in the role. It’s been great working with him throughout the game.
AT: Fun and actually a true story (!) is that the first time I got to hear the audition lines from Troy I was like “Ah yes yes, that was the reference lines from Raiders, now let me hear Troy’s lines!” – only of course to realize that those lines -were- the test lines from the audition! A truly great performance and delivery by Troy. What is also very interesting and a fact that I do think most people aren’t aware of is that Troy Baker is not only doing this great reenactment of Indiana Jones with his voice, he is also doing the full performance being in a mocap suit covered in dots, his face is covered in small dots that are hand place all across his face, and he has a pretty heavy camera rig on his head, an HMC (head mounted camera). On set and in the mocap volume, he then first off is doing the great voice, he is then also mimicking the body language and movement of Indiana Jones with his entire body, but he is also using his face mimicking the facial gestures and poses to nail the iconic smirk or lifting his eye browses in the right moment. And all of this, while most of the time playing against other actresses and actors, listening to directions and memorizing all the lines. A truly remarkable achievement to say the least. It is Troy Bakers face that actually drives the in-game mesh of Harrison Ford with animations and performance data.
PlayStation Universe: Thank you so much for your time and insights. We hope you have a great launch on PS5!
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is out now on PS5 and enhanced on PS5 Pro.
You can catch our review of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on PS5 here.
A big thank you to 47 Communications for arranging this interview.