The ‘Indiana Jones And The Great Circle’ First Versus Third Person Debate Is Pointless

Xbox showed off a number of games at its Developer Direct showcase on Thursday, the highlight of which was MachineGames’ upcoming Indiana Jones game, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a long-term project from Todd Howard, now becoming a reality under Microsoft ownership.

MachineGames, maker of the recent Wolfenstein games, has opted to make its Indiana Jones game first person rather than third person, and this has now sparked a debate about whether that was the right call, but as you might expect, a good amount of this is bad faith console warring.

It was indeed my first reaction to go “huh, I figured this would have been third person,” but then I thought about it for eight seconds and it really did make more sense, in context.

First, this is MachineGames who again, made the recent Wolfenstein games which are all in first person. While it’s not unheard of, it is at least somewhat rare for an FPS developer to switch to third-person, or vice versa. Halo to Destiny. Mass Effect to Anthem. Dishonored to Redfall. Now Arkham to Suicide Squad. It just…doesn’t happen often. So why would you drag MachineGames out of their comfort zone to contort them into making Indy a third-person game when there’s no real evidence it’s losing something of massive significance by being an FPS?

The second thing here is that this is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. If MachineGames had taken Indiana Jones third person, there would have been endless comparisons to Uncharted and Tomb Raider, and accusations of copycatting Sony franchises (which are largely third person). This is despite, of course, Indiana Jones inspiring the likes of both Uncharted and Tomb Raider in the first place.

And in many ways, the game is splitting the difference. It’s going third person for certain traversal segments, and then in a number of cutscenes where Harrison Ford’s likeness, voiced by Troy Baker, will appear for story sequences.

This all reminds me of one example which did see a developer change dramatically, CDPR going to only-FPS for Cyberpunk 2077 after its third-person classic, The Witcher. Cyberpunk didn’t just go FPS, it didn’t even have separate third person cutscenes featuring V. Everything was in first person. And that…actually worked out amazingly well. So I just don’t think the doubts here about Indy are warranted, given both MachineGames history and that it looked very solid as an FPS as well. First person bullwhipping! Come on!

Anyway, I would be annoyed if this discourse lasted longer than a day, but everyone always needs something to yell about, I guess.

Follow me on Twitter, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.