Indiana Jones and the Great Circleisn’t a shooter. Thank God, because if it was, it would be a pretty bad one.
In theIndiana Jonesmovies, guns are incredibly powerful, but rarely used — not unlike the Ark of the Covenant. In one of the most iconic moments in Raiders of the Lost Ark, a swordsman challenges Indy to a duel, swinging his scimitar with great showmanship, only for Indy to pull out a revolver and shoot him dead.
The lore goes thatthis was a compromise. Steven Spielberg had an epic sword fight planned, but Harrison Ford had a travel-related stomach illness, so they cut the choreography in favor of a quick visual joke.
Indiana Jones And The Grating Cylinder
In Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, guns are a great hassle. If you go loud, the Fascists will goosestep to your position in unison, and it’ll take more than one bullet to get them down. If, God forbid, you realize that your revolver isn’t loaded, good luck getting the bullets into the chamber in time to do anything. Reloading in the Great Circle is a truly maddening affair. As painful as feeding Nawal’s snake is for Indy, feeding bullets into his revolver is worse.
That’s because in order to reload your gun, you need to press R2 to raise your gun, hold R2 to check the cylinder, then hammer on R2 to feed rounds in. If you find yourself in a gunfight with an empty gun, your best option may be to turn your pistol around and whack Nazis on the head until they fall over or, more likely, until your gun breaks. Then you may find yourself running for cover so you can repair your pistol to get back to square one: actually loading it.
Nerfed Guns, Not Perf Guns
Is it realistic? Sure, reloading a revolver round by round would be tedious and tough under pressure. Does it make for a better Indiana Jones game? Kinda. Indy doesn’t shoot very often. That scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the few times the Man in the Hat becomes the Man with the Gat. He hoists a rocket launcher later on in Raiders, while attempting to rescue Marion and the Ark from Nazi clutches, but he ultimately doesn’t fire it. There are other times he holds or fires guns, but his iconic weapon is a bull whip. It’s the one weapon he totes on the posters for all five movies.
Though a machete makes an appearance on Temple of Doom’s posters,and a gun holster can be seen on Raiders' re-release one-sheet.
So, if guns had to be in Great Circle — andgiven how much some players complained about the game being in first-person, it isn’t difficult to imagine the tantrums that eschewing firearms entirely would prompt — maybe MachineGames found the right approach. Make them difficult to use, but not impossible. Make them a last resort, not the first thing Indy reaches for. This is reinforced in other aspects of the game. You can’t carry big guns up ladders with you. If you want to turn Indiana Jones into American Sniper, you better hope there’s already a fascist holding a rifle in your chosen perch.
Reloading being obnoxious isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. Great Circle was, after all, made by the same team that gave usWolfenstein: The New Order and The New Colossus, which knew how to keep the Nazi-shredding rounds flowing freely. Maybe my annoyance is the point. Doesn’t mean I’m not annoyed, though.
