How Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Takes Full Advantage of PS5 Pro

Bethesda and MachineGames’ Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is now available on PlayStation 5. Based on the legendary film franchise, the game allows you to step into Harrison Ford’s iconic shoes and go on an epic adventure. It is also a technical marvel, as it is one of the most impressive PS5 Pro games […] The post How Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Takes Full Advantage of PS5 Pro appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Apr 18, 2025 - 14:31

How Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Takes Full Advantage of PS5 Pro

Bethesda and MachineGames’ Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is now available on PlayStation 5. Based on the legendary film franchise, the game allows you to step into Harrison Ford’s iconic shoes and go on an epic adventure. It is also a technical marvel, as it is one of the most impressive PS5 Pro games available.

PlayStation LifeStyle spoke with Machine Games Production Director John Jennings and Creative Director Axel Torvenius to learn more about how the game takes full advantage of PS5 Pro.

PlayStation LifeStyle: I was blown away by how great Indiana Jones and the Great Circle looks on PS5 Pro. Can you speak to the advanced ray tracing that MachineGames has been able to implement and how that helps the game transport you to these stunning environments?

John Jennings: Our colleagues at id Software had been working on a ray-traced global illumination system that could scale well across consoles and still let us hit that hallmark of our games, which is a 60fps minimum, no matter the hardware. We were only too happy to integrate that into the game as part of the ongoing collaboration we have on technology with them.

It works especially well on the PS5 Pro thanks to the new hardware that lets us accelerate the process of that even further. The thing I like most about the system is the bounced light that shows off especially well in indoor environments, where the colours of the surrounding space get reflected in the light you can see on all of the surfaces. It helps ground the scenes just that little bit further.

One thing I loved about the PS5 Pro version is that you don’t have to choose between fidelity and performance. I always struggle with those different modes and wonder what I’m missing out on. How was it finding that balance and deciding that separate offerings weren’t needed for PS5 Pro?

Jennings: Yes, we see 60fps as a core component of all of our games, wherever possible. That in itself helps make most of the decision for us. We want the player to be able to play at that frame rate, and so we tailor the visual experience around that. We also like to offer a native resolution as the default experience, rather than relying on upscalers. Choosing a single target lets us fine-tune the game experience, both visually and from a gameplay perspective, rather than having a variety of different targets that might result in compromises being required to find an acceptable experience across all of them.

I am a big proponent of the DualSense controller and was so glad to see the adaptive triggers and haptic feedback being used. What are some of your favorite touches of the DualSense integration in the PS5 version of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle?

Axel Torvenius: It’s a such a great opportunity to being able as a game developer to push the immersive aspects of the game even further! The haptic feedback and adaptive triggers really do add to the experience. It adds attention todetail,l and I think the addition of the camera button “click” is one of the coolest.

I love the Indiana Jones movies, so it was a real trip getting to play through the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark and do the boulder run in the prologue. It feels like such a statement to faithfully recreate one of cinema’s great moments, and it be just as thrilling as you hope it would be. But it’s also a risk because if it fell flat, then the game would start off in a disappointing manner. What was the biggest challenge in using that as a tutorial, while also letting it wow as a moment of spectacle?

Torvenius: There are several very interesting things to it, and they all mesh very nicely in the end. The biggest is the expectation factor. We wanted to be sure we set an expectation of how you will experience the game in terms of its pace. We allowed the game to be almost slow at points, taking down velocity quite a bit. The intro is, up until the boulder, not an action-packed roller coaster, but it allows you to take your time and explore the environment – just like the rest of the game!

It also sets an expectation in terms of visual quality and fidelity, putting good use to the GI and the raytracing technology, and at the same time, shows our intent with how true and honest we are to the original franchise. All of us are really hardcore Indiana Jones fans, and I think this shines through in the beginning, that our passion and love for the original movies is a perspective that was very true and important to us.

I love how much personality is in the combat in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Nobody was ever better at almost losing a fight in a film than Harrison Ford. What was MachineGames’ philosophy when it came to making sure the combat was full of character and charm? It’s very different than Wolfenstein but fits the character perfectly.

Torvenius: Indeed, hand-to-hand combat is integral to crafting and delivering a believable Indiana Jones experience. We spent so much focus and iteration specifically on this part of the game. Our Game Director, Jerk Gustafsson, had a very strong vision of what he wanted to do with the hand-to-hand fight system, and he never backed down from that vision. Even when the iteration was tedious and maybe not the most awesome, he had his mind set on what needed to be done to make sure we would eventually have a solid system. And like all great things, it really is the sum of its parts.

There is so much animation work done by the animation department, there is so much work done by engineers to make sure the AI behaves and reacts as they should. 3D character work to make sure Indiana Jones’ hands look great and that the enemies you fight look threating and hulking. There are numerous iterations in balancing the systems and metrics from the game designers. All the environments that need to support a cool fight and how it plays out. VFX to give you that saliva-spit-out feedback as you land a great hit. And the sound! It wouldn’t be a fistfight in Indy style without that meaty punch! And the icing on the cake is, of course, the very snappy and cool VO lines Troy Baker delivers, acting out Indiana Jones as he lands a heavy finisher – “Thats professor to you!”.

The post How Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Takes Full Advantage of PS5 Pro appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.