Axel Torvenius Reveals the Secrets Behind Indiana Jones and The Great Circle

In an exclusive interview, Axel Torvenius, the creative director of MachineGames, delves into the creative journey behind Indiana Jones and The Great Circle. With over 43 years of lore to explore, Torvenius and his team face the challenge of bringing something fresh to the beloved franchise while staying true to its iconic roots. From the narrative-driven design to the careful crafting of puzzles and character dynamics, Torvenius shares insights into how MachineGames is redefining the Indiana Jones experience. As the launch date approaches, he also hints at what fans can expect in the upcoming DLC, The Order of the Giants, slated for next year.

Indiana Jones has been around for 43 years. There’s a lot of lore in this brand: movies, the TV show, comic books, video games. How did you manage to bring something new, something that hasn’t been seen before, while staying faithful to all this established lore?

Really good question. I think the easy answer, though it’s not an easy task, is the narrative. When you look at the IP as a whole and start to dissect what Indiana Jones is, at the heart of it, there’s always an interesting story. The narrative, along with the character, is deeply integrated into that story. And there’s always this great mystery—you get curious about what’s next, what’s happening, why these events are unfolding. By keeping that at the core, we crafted this game to stay true to that essence. Whether it’s a success or not, we’ll see, but that’s how we approached it: putting the narrative at the center, paired with the adventure aspect.

For us, that approach comes somewhat naturally. At MachineGames, we always start with the narrative and then flesh out the other elements, like how much action, guns, and intensity should be there. But it always starts with the narrative and with creating a world that feels intriguing and makes sense to the player. Identifying the importance of the narrative was relatively easy, though crafting a new story within the existing, much-loved franchise was a challenge.

I’ll just add, I think the story we’re telling in this game is one of the best stories MachineGames has ever told.

MachineGames is really good at creating experiences where players can take down a bunch of Nazis. But in your past games, it was really about the combat, while now it’s more about approaching situations with stealth. Was it difficult to switch from the FPS, action-driven side of your studio to this more stealthy, adventurous approach?

Yeah, I’d be lying if I said it was easy. It’s by far one of the biggest challenges of this production—essentially rewiring MachineGames’ DNA, because action has been our focus for such a long time. It wasn’t easy; it was a big challenge, but also an obvious one. For us, it was never about trying to turn Indiana Jones into a super action hero, because that’s not who he is. Early on, I, along with others, set out to dissect the IP and the character, trying to identify what makes up the character and the world of Indiana Jones. A lot of us have been working very hard with that focus.

Once you have that framework, you can clearly see which parts fit into this new puzzle we’re building and which need to go. Like I mentioned briefly in the presentation, Indiana Jones isn’t an action hero who kicks down doors and fights or shoots like a maniac. That’s not who he is. So it became very clear to us that wasn’t the direction we could take. Getting that mental shift around was definitely a huge challenge, but I’m very happy with where we are now in terms of balancing it.

How did this whole cooperation with Lucasfilm start? What was the starting point for MachineGames to work on the new Indiana Jones game?

The starting point is Todd Howard, our long-term friend. Todd has had the idea for many years that he wanted to make an Indiana Jones game. He's a huge Indiana Jones fan, and he had this core concept of the story—a ‘great circle,’ as he put it. He took this idea to Lucasfilm Games, pitched it, and they were excited and thought, ‘Yeah, this sounds interesting and cool.’

After that, Todd considered which studio would be the right fit for the project, and he thought of MachineGames here in Sweden. He came to us and said, ‘Guys, we have an opportunity here, and I think you’d be a good fit for it.’ Naturally, we jumped at the chance to work on this IP.

Since then, throughout the entire production cycle, we've been in constant, recurring meetings with Lucasfilm Games, accessing their invaluable knowledge and expertise on the character and the IP. This ensures that they feel we're representing Indiana Jones in a way that fits within the existing IP while also allowing MachineGames to create the game we envision.

There’s a huge difference between making a game and making a movie, and I think a lot of Indiana Jones fans would be interested in how this cooperation with Lucasfilm works. What kind of access do you have to the Indiana Jones brand, and are there any limits on what you can do with the characters, setting, or overall story?

Speaking from a global perspective on the IP and the franchise, I’d say there are definitely restrictions on certain elements that wouldn’t fit within the Indiana Jones world. But we were never really interested in pushing boundaries to those areas that wouldn’t feel like Indiana Jones. We set out from the beginning with the goal to create something that feels authentic. For me, one of the most important missions has been to ensure we have a strong representation of the Indiana Jones we know and love from Raiders of the Lost Ark. That’s always been our guiding beacon for look, feel, audio—everything. And, of course, that aligns with what Lucasfilm Games also felt was a good approach.

There are, of course, limits; for example, if we proposed having Indiana Jones drive a spaceship, they’d probably say, ‘That’s not on-brand.’ But we wouldn’t be interested in doing that anyway. Our mission has always been to portray the most lovable, authentic version of Indiana Jones that we can.

Were there any ideas that got scrapped during the process?

Some ideas did get scrapped, mostly due to time constraints. I’d say that from a core game perspective, everything we set out to do—the game we designed and pitched to ourselves at the beginning of the cycle—is the game we're delivering now. As a game developer, when you start something, you sketch out the full breadth of a game, and it’s always very large and ambitious. Soon enough, you realize you need to scale down certain components. We made those scope adjustments early on and have stuck with them, so not much was cut entirely. It was more about adjusting things to make sure we’d be able to finish the game on time.

Since you mentioned scope, what can we expect in that sense? How long is the game, and how many side quests can we find?

I can't give you an exact number of hours or side quests, but I can tell you this: it’s by far the biggest game MachineGames has ever done. It’s hard to say exactly how many hours it will take because it depends so much on play style. I see that now, even just watching everyone play today—some people linger in Marshall College, exploring everything, while others rush through.

But for those who want to complete everything, find every note, read every postcard, and collect every little bit in the game, there’s a lot of content to consume. Even for players who follow the golden path and just focus on the main storyline, it’s still the longest game we’ve ever made.

Okay, I’ll get back to working with Lucasfilm. Obviously, your Indiana Jones isn’t Harrison Ford, but in a way, he still is. Could you take us through the process of creating the character when you’re not using the actor?

Well, I could probably talk about this for hours, but I’ll try to summarize. It’s a huge challenge—definitely one of the biggest—to capture the likeness of a character that so many people know and love. It’s a big undertaking.

There are several parts to this. The most obvious one is the performance of Troy Baker. During the casting sessions, he just stood out, especially when it came to capturing the voice. The first time I heard his test lines, I didn’t even realize it wasn’t a reference from Harrison Ford—I thought it was just a sample. Then they told me, ‘No, that’s Troy Baker.’ I was blown away; it was insanely good. But it doesn’t end with his voice. He’s doing full performance capture, spending countless hours in the motion capture suit, bringing out the character’s movements, gestures, and body language.

Beyond that, there’s also the facial animation. We have a rig and 3D model that looks like a younger Harrison Ford from that era, and that rig is driven by Troy’s facial motion capture data. He’s done a fantastic job with the little details—like how he squints, smiles, all those subtle gestures. So it’s the full body, the face, and the voice coming together.

Then, of course, there’s everything else involved in bringing it into the game. The tech animators, engineers, and animators go in to fine-tune the smallest details—the corner of the mouth, the look in the eyes, the lighting. They work to make sure all the features and materials, like the face, the jacket, the hat, look just right. There are so many components that go into it, and in the end, it all comes together to give us the Indiana Jones you see in the game. It’s a huge task.

Indiana Jones isn't just about Indy, even though he's the main character. It’s about all these other characters. There’s always an interesting female character, a lot of helpful characters, and there's betrayal as well. So, what can we expect on that front? And since the game is set in Egypt, will we see Sallah in the game?

On the first part of your question, I can say you will see all of that. As for Sallah, I can't comment on that at this point. What I can say is that there will absolutely be recognizable faces that you’ve seen before. For example, we showed Marcus Brody in the material today.

When it comes to the idea that Indiana Jones is more than just Indy himself, that’s ever so true. For us, it’s been a really interesting journey working with characters like Gina, played by Alessandra Mastronardi, who is an extremely lovable actress and has brought so much life to the character—more than we could have hoped for.

We also have Voss, played by Marios Gavrilis, who is an extremely creepy and scary antagonist, and Locus, played by Tony Todd. All these great actors have pulled out the best and enhanced the portrayals of their characters.

So yes, there is betrayal, and there are evil villains and interesting characters throughout. You will encounter some NPCs who will help you, guide you, and assist you at times.

Let’s get to puzzles, which are increasingly important in an adventurous game like Indiana Jones. How did you approach designing puzzles for the game?

The approach has been to give the player something new and interesting constantly and to make the puzzles feel contextual. They need to fit within the environment and make sense. I mean, some puzzles in the movies don’t make sense at all, so we always use that as a framework. Does it make sense that there’s a big giant swinging blade coming across the room? Not really. Is it cool? Yes. Does it feel like Indiana Jones? Yes.

So, there’s a bit of that in the puzzle design. The majority of the puzzle design is about ensuring that they can be challenging and intriguing. We also have a difficulty setting for puzzles, allowing you to scale them to be easier or more challenging. Some of the puzzles are very challenging, and there are hero puzzles that are bigger and more complex, while there are smaller puzzles that aren’t as challenging.

One aspect from the design group working on this has been to create interesting and challenging puzzles for people who enjoy smart puzzles.

Could you give me an example of a puzzle? How does it look on easier difficulty compared to challenging difficulty? What’s changed?

One easy example is in the beginning of Marshall College, where you need to place certain objects back. The difficulty setting controls how many items you need to get right to progress. So, it can determine how many components of a puzzle you need to hit in order to move further.

So, I played on normal, or whatever the difficulty is called. I had to put there three objects; the fourth one was the cat mummy the story is about.

That puzzle specifically might not be a good example because it’s designed to be fairly simple as an introduction, like, 'Okay, there will be puzzles in the game.' But later in the game, there can be more complex puzzles with a lot of different components, like cogwheels.

For instance, how many cogwheels do you need to put in the correct positions to solve this puzzle? If it’s on hard, it might be that it’s only the exact ones you need. If it’s easy, maybe it’s more generous in terms of how many pieces you can use or how quickly you can cobble things together, along with how many reminder lines you get and those types of things. So, it scales to something.

The game is almost completed, I guess. So, what’s next for Machine Games?

Right now, the focus is to get this out the door. The launch is on December 9th, with early access on December 6th. We’ve also announced that we’re working on the DLC, 'The Order of the Giants,' coming next year, so that’s the prime focus at the moment.

Any tidbits on what we can expect in the DLC?

Not at this point that I can reveal. Other than it will be awesome, of course.