Xbox Exclusive Indiana Jones and The Great Circle Gets its First Gameplay Reveal

The Xbox team just aired its second Developer_Direct event today where it revealed more information about four exclusive games coming to the Xbox ecosystem in 2024. The highlight of the show was Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a game developed by Wolfenstein developer MachineGames.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will launch “later this year,” and it will be a first-person game set between the Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade movies. Of course, the Wolfenstein developer is an expert in nazi-killing games, and Indiana Jones and the Great of Circle will have lots of nazis.

Today’s gameplay reveal trailer shows that the series’ trademark humor is present, and while the face models can look a bit weird in some scenes, it’s going to be great to play Harrison Ford playing Indiana Jones. While the game will use a first-person camera, Indy will be visible during cutscenes and environment traversal.

The game will offer a mix of action and exploration, with various puzzles to solve and possibilities to avoid combat. Today’s first trailer showed fist fights and how Indy’s whip can be used as both a weapon and traversal tool.

Insomniac Games did a great job with the Marvel’s Spiderman series on PlayStation consoles, and MachineGames seems to be able to deliver the same level of quality and immersion you can expect from a game inspired by such a beloved IP. While Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has the potential to be the biggest Xbox-exclusive game of 2024, today’s Developer_Direct had other interesting moments.

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is another much-anticipated game that’s been in development for years, and it now has a release date: It will ship on Xbox Series X|S consoles, PC, and Game Pass on May 21. Dom Matthews, Studio Head at Ninja Theory also revealed on Xbox Wire that the game will be sold digital-only at $49.99.

You may remember that Hellblade II was the first next-gen game Microsoft showed when it officially revealed its Xbox Series X console at The Game Awards 2019 ceremony. The game is being developed with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5, and it could have some of the best visuals we’ve seen on Xbox consoles since the start of this new generation.

Microsoft also announced today that two other Xbox-exclusive games will ship in 2024. The first one is the grand strategy game Ara: History Untold, which will only be released on PC and PC Game Pass in Fall 2024. The game is being developed by Oxide Games, a studio founded by people who previously worked on the Civilization and Command and Conquer series.

Lastly, Avowed, a first-person RPG from Obsidian Entertainment will also ship in Fall 2024. The game has often been described as Obsidian’s take on the cult classic The Elders Scroll: Skyrim, but today’s trailer revealed that it could be much more than that.

Obsidian games are known to give players complex choices that really matter. After a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 put fantasy RPGs back in the spotlight, it looks like Avowed could be Obisidan’s biggest game since Fallout: New Vegas.

Today’s Developer_Direct event also had a surprise segment featuring Square Enix’s upcoming Visions of Mana JRPG game. This will be the first game from the Mana series coming to Xbox consoles in summer 2024, though it’s not exclusive and it won’t be coming to Game Pass.

If you were expecting Microsoft to shadow-drop another game like Hi-Fi Rush today, that didn’t happen, but this Developer_Direct event was pretty solid overall. You can watch the full replay on YouTube.