This new Indiana Jones title from MachineGames looks like 2024 GOTY material

MachineGames and Bethesda Softworks, the pairing that brought you a duo of mighty Wolfenstein titles in 2014 and 2017, have just revealed their latest project, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. We don’t want to be hasty here, but it’s definitely going to be the best thing about 2024.

Announced at Microsoft’s Developer Direct 2024 games show, it sees the return of archeology’s surliest whip-cracker on consoles for the first time since LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues graced our screens in 2009.

This new game capture’s Harrison Ford’s visual likeness very closely, but the veteran Hollywood actor’s not reprising his role in the recording booth. Instead, The Last of Us actor Troy Baker delivers a convincingly gruff Indy.

Visually it looks like luxurious triple-A stuff designed to show off what Xbox Series X/S can do (it’s coming to PC too, don’t worry) and takes an unusual design call: first-person gameplay. Prior Indy games throughout history have functioned either as Tomb Raider-style, third-person action-adventures, or legendary 2D point-and-click Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

But the way he cracks that whip around enemies to disable them and tugs at the mechanisms of ancient puzzles in first-person has made believers of us.

Plus, MachineGames has prior at delivering wonderfully varied, blood-pumping first person experiences, most recently in Wolfenstein: The New Colossus and its co-op spinoff, Youngblood.

The release date’s simply ‘2024’ at present, but don’t expect it next week. Our ancient game-predicting artefacts are telling us it’s likely to be a Q3/Q4 drop.