Bethesda announced last week that MachineGames, the team behind the Wolfenstein series, will be working on a new game based in the world of Indiana Jones. The only pieces of information we know of is that Todd Howard, head of Bethesda Game Studios, will be executive producing the game, and that it is a bit far out.
STORY
One of the great things about taking a film franchise and bringing it into the video game world is that there is so much lore already.
Indiana Jones has four movies that can help shape the story for this new game.
In a follow-up tweet about the game, it is mentioned that this is an original story. It would be fascinating to see a story featuring a younger Indiana, compared to one that already has treasure hunting experience like we see in the movies.
In the game’s teaser, we see Jones already having his iconic hat and whip, along with some other pieces of equipment such as a typewriter and a camera. That tells me we won’t be playing as a young Indiana Jones. I would like to see this adventure be about his years as a treasure hunter after college.
In the first Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana is 37 years old. He is already a traveling archaeologist discovering treasure in Peru. In that film, the US Government contacts him about finding the Ark of the Covenant. I want to live through his adventures that let him be so notorious that the government hires him for a secret project. Let the story tell us how Indiana got to where he is, and let us live the adventures that helped him get there.
According to the Indiana Jones Fandom page, between 1927 and the start of the first film in 1936, Indiana spent most of his time travelling the globe and having plenty of adventures, including the search for El Dorado.
My dream pitch for this story would be for Jones to search for something related to his parents, or a piece of treasure that his parents were never able to discover. The adventure spans over a handful of countries, none that have been showcased in the films. Whether we see Indiana search for El Dorado or create a treasure just for the game, I think that time span will be a great spot for the original story.
Like most of the other treasure-hunter games, it usually involves a few smaller treasures that all give clues to the bigger prize they are after. I would love for this to remain the standard for this game without it being stretched out too long.
If MachineGames is able to give us a 10-15 hour story, spanning four to five countries, with each one having a treasure leading us to the ultimate prize, gamers would be happy with the overall game.
GAMEPLAY
One of the first remarks made about this game is its comparison to the Uncharted and Tomb Raider series.
While Nathan Drake has a gun, and Lara Croft specializes with her bow and arrow, Indiana Jones is known for his whip.
While this could simply be an extra weapon on the weapon wheel, it will add a tool that we haven’t really used before when we play as Lara Croft or Nathan Drake.
One decision that can set this game apart is to make his iconic whip the main weapon and only let the player use a gun when it comes to a larger action sequence that you usually find when you finish a chapter. That will add some difficulty to it and will force the player to take on the situation in a different way than you would in an Uncharted title.
Tomb Raider lets you craft and upgrade your weapons to make them stronger and give them extra durability, more damage, and so on, but it would be fascinating to see if Indiana Jones has an upgrade system just for his whip.
Some ways the whip can be upgraded is to increase the equip speed when you are taking on enemies, the amount of damage taken by enemies can be increased as you unlock skill points and how far the whip can extend so you can take down enemies from a farther distance.
There are different tricks you can do with the whip, such as having it catch enemies and pull them towards you, but to keep this game realistic, I don’t expect you to have the ability to wrap them in the whip and move them to cause damage to surrounding enemies.
Solving puzzles is the cornerstone for these treasure hunter games, and you can expect that to be the case for this title.
I hope Indiana Jones will be more puzzle oriented. Whether it’s navigating an area full of booby traps or lining up figures on a wall for it to grant you access to the next section of the map, I love when these games make your mind work and I would love to see MachineGames push that to the next level.
We don’t know much about this title, but I’m hoping it will follow suit with the Uncharted games and be more linear. You will be able to explore open sections of a certain area but I don’t believe an open-world environment would be great for this title. If the game does fairly well, then maybe a sequel can take on that challenge, but for the first game in the series, I expect them to keep it tight. If future installments are made for this new franchise, I would love to see Indiana driving his jeep through unexplored areas, similar to the driving aspect in Uncharted: The Lost Legacy.
Indiana Jones will most likely have those big action sequences where Jones runs toward the camera as an enemy or a giant rolling boulder pummels behind him but I hope we don’t have to scale the side of a cliff to avoid enemy detection like we are used to doing in the Uncharted franchise.
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