How MachineGames Filled a Gap in Indiana Jones’ History (Interview)

I recently reviewed Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and I loved it. It was a true love letter to the franchise and a perfect entry into the series canon. I got to interview MachineGames’ Studio Director, Jerk Gustafsson, to talk about the studio’s efforts in making the game feel like a natural part of the series’ timeline — among other things. This was a really fun conversation and gave me a lot of insight into how the team made decisions during development.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Jerk Gustafsson’s ‘indiana jones’ credentials

I appreciate you taking the time to do this. First off, I loved the game. As someone who grew up watching the Indiana Jones movies, it was insane to see how detailed you guys were. You all are obviously fans as well. What was it like to recreate the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark?

JG: First off, thank you so much for your warm words. I think it all began with how we wanted to see the game. We said internally that we wanted the game to feel like one of these lost adventures from the 1980s. Using that prologue, I mean, it’s the best opening in the history of movies. And for me, it was a way of bringing the player into feeling like Indy. Getting to play through that famous opening set the tone, and that was our ambition, getting as close as possible to playing through that section and exploring outside of the movie. 

So, that was one part of it, just the tone and the pacing to make people feel like “I get to play as Indiana Jones.” But the timeline is also a very important part of that. We wanted to set the game between Raiders and The Last Crusade. One of the reasons for that was how we wanted to move the character through the game, and what can we at MachineGames do to continue to develop and evolve these well-established characters everybody fell in love with. 

respecting ‘raiders of the lost ark’

The main thing we wanted to focus on is this obsession of his that we so clearly see in Raiders of the Lost Ark. And I think this was important because he’s after this golden idol, and it’s something he loses and never gets the opportunity to get that back. So, the opening is important for the reasons I told you about, but also to set it as a continuation of the story of Raiders and focus on that obsession of Indiana Jones. But it was, of course, super fun to do but also really scary because we didn’t want to mess it up!

To piggyback off that, one of my favorite movies outside the Indy franchise is the Ray Charles biopic from 2004. And there’s a story about the making of the movie, where Jamie Foxx met Ray Charles once and never went back because he didn’t want to channel the older Ray in his performance. So, when making the game, how many of the other movies did you watch? Or did you try to stay away from them to get your own story in and make it work?

JG: That’s a good question! We’ve all seen the movies. But it’s something a bit different because we grew up with them. It’s part of these “magic movie childhood moments.” So, you go into it already with a pretty good knowledge of the character and movies. I think we spent a lot more time just talking through the character, especially with Lucasfilm because they have this vast knowledge of the character. I think that is where we got the most value when it comes to exploring what we wanted to do with the game rather than watching the movies over and over again.

how much the movies influenced the game

Those discussions were key to getting the story we wanted to tell in The Great Circle. But, the movies played a big part, of course. We wanted to focus on this obsession of his and place it in this timeline between these two movies. We felt there was a gap there, and we could do something good with that gap. And we can make sure that, while we want it to be an Indiana Jones game, we also want it to be a MachineGames game. I think that worked out pretty well for us, and I’m glad both [Director at Bethesda Game Studios] Todd Howard and Lucasfilm were very much on board with that idea.

Yeah, I remember once I finally got control of Indy, I looked down because I wanted to see his body and the jacket. People obviously know the fedora is iconic, but the jacket is just as iconic. How important was it to make sure you could see his body while playing?

JG: It was very important. But for me, it’s been important even in the Wolfenstein games. It’s something we’ve tried to do. But it’s hard because of the third-person transition. If you have a floating camera, you don’t have to rely on intersects and all those things. Here, we need to rely on the technology and everything over the years when it comes to cloth, especially with the jacket to make sure it feels natural, as well as the whip. We want to make sure the whip is on his hip. It’s just an important part of making you feel like Indiana Jones and like you are in the world. That’s something we’ll continue to do with our future games as well because it’s an important part of the process.

small details, big difference

Speaking of “wanting to feel like you’re Indiana Jones,” I really loved that when in Sukhothai, you’re standing there with Gina and hearing the foreign language but seeing it in subtitles, as if Indy can understand it but Gina needs a translator. That detail made me feel like I’m really this archaeologist who knows all these languages and others don’t. Was that something you decided on early or did it come later in development?

JG: No, that was a decision that came early. And I’m also one of those guys who will see a movie and there are German-speaking characters — I don’t like when they speak English. I think we should be past that. We should embrace the realism of that. Because I really like to embrace the cultures we spend our time with. And it’s good you asked — with Indiana being a professor, it’s important because he speaks so many languages.

We didn’t want to hand-wave it, so we even had a language coach in our performance capture sessions to help Troy perform the lines well in Italian or Latin. We spent a lot of time on it just because we felt it was so important. Not only because he’s a professor, but, as we said, to make you feel like Indiana Jones. And I also like the way he goes into this lecture mode.

how troy baker personified Indiana jones

There’s so much you guys did to make this feel more like the movies than a game. Part of that was getting Troy Baker to play Indiana Jones. If you closed your eyes, you couldn’t tell it’s not Harrison Ford. It’s an incredible job. How did you go about getting him? What was that process like: finding the right voice?

JG: We have been lucky enough, ever since we worked on Chronicles of Riddick 20 years ago, we have been working with Tom Keegan, a voice director out of LA. He’s been working with us on Riddick and all the Wolfenstein games and Indiana Jones. As soon as we started to look into the casting and who our key characters are, of course we started with Indiana Jones.

And it was Tom who suggested we try Troy Baker because he’s a big Indiana Jones fan. We listened to some of the recordings he did, and we instantly noticed that Troy was good. Then, we had a meeting with Tom, Todd Howard, and Troy. We sat together and had a talk about the game and the character, and it was a wonderful meeting we had early on. After that, it was a no-brainer. But, it was Tom Keegan who should get the credit for getting Troy.

troy baker’s hard work and the value of a great villain

Troy being a big Indiana Jones fan has been helpful because game development, like any creative work, requires passion. You want to bring something new even though you’ve done it many times before. You need that passion to achieve that. Troy shows that. He’s a big fan, he comes over to Sweden and does the performance capture there. But, he also comes a little early to help with other sessions we normally use local actors for. So, he’s been invested and supportive in everything. A lot of the quality of the storytelling and performance of the actors is due to that passion as well. It was well done by Troy, and we are super happy to have had him.

Yeah, it’s clear there’s a bunch of people working in this who love Indy. Now, I loved Troy’s performance, but I felt the MVP was Marios Gavrilis as Emmerich Voss. I’ve always believed it’s gotta be insanely hard to create a villain for an existing IP that doesn’t feel made for the game. You could slot Voss into any of the Indy movies, and he’d fit right in. What was it like creating that character?

JG: I loved his performance as well, he was amazing. I also loved how he could keep calm in certain lines, but when he needed to go up to that crazy, it just explodes. Here, we looked at the characters from the movies, and we’ve done characters like this before in previous games. That’s an important thing we want to do with our antagonists: bring that depth to them. The key for getting that through was to have him be this — not “amateur,” but hobby psychologist. Someone who is trying to question and analyze everything the characters around him do.

the key to a golden performance

The moment when we discovered what we wanted that character to be goes back to what we talked about earlier with Indiana Jones’ obsession. If you look at Raiders, I don’t think Indy himself understands what that obsession does to him. And we wanted to tell a story about that in the game. Even in The Last Crusade, I don’t think he understands it. But, you can definitely see it reflected in his father.

And that’s something we then brought over to Voss, to make sure that was something he could use against Indy and try to focus on that in the dialogues with him. And that’s what makes those interactions so powerful, when he uses that obsession against him. That psychological part was key to bringing that forward.

Right, I thought his performance was perfect in that he was a mirror of Indy in some ways. And there hasn’t been a significant reckoning with his obsession other than Last Crusade where you could say, “Oh, that’s where he got it from.” But you did a really good job of showing how that affected his life and putting prime Indiana Jones through that.

JG: Thank you for saying that. I also think Gina is really good at challenging that obsession, with that “Why are you stuck in the past when the future of the world is at risk?” Those types of things we tried to convey through her as well.

pulling fear from the fearless

I have to ask about this because it ended up unintentionally being my favorite part of the game. The snake. Personally, I have no fear of snakes at all. But between the level design and Troy Baker’s performance and conveying the fear through his breathing, I was legitimately afraid. How did you bring that forward? That’s a hard thing to sell when someone doesn’t have a fear of something but you’re trying to immerse them in the character.

JG: That’s a hard question to answer, actually. We used Indiana Jones’ fear of snakes to our advantage here. We also thought about it quite a lot as far as “How much can we use it?” Because we didn’t want to overuse it, either. So, we decided that to do the “feeding the snake” part, you have to establish it for the audience who may not know Indiana Jones. And then, when you go into that area you’re talking about, we wanted to tease it with the small snake on the shoulder in the boat.

And then, we move into that threat in the water. Because for me, it’s not only about the snakes. It’s about if something is beneath you and you don’t know where it is, it adds that extra layer of fear in a way. Especially when you have to swim into it. I’m glad to know we succeeded! I think it was that combination of that fear of snakes and the threat you don’t see.

maintaining a strong sense of historical accuracy

Yes. I was trying so hard throughout the game to pick a favorite section, but the way this affected me, I was hesitant to move forward. As far as level design, you got really detailed in designing that 1930s-era world. Every location looked lifted from history books. What was that process like? Did you go to the locations and take pictures, then source from the internet?

JG: It’s a mix of both, I would say. There are a ton of resources available showing what the world looked like that we could use. But we also did have some artists travel to Italy and explore the Vatican. But usually, it’s a lot of research, especially when it comes to finding those old books and images from the time. Because you want to know how these things looked in the ’30s. And of course, you can’t get everything right, but you want it to be as close as possible.

And then, we combined that with everything we make up, and that’s important because you have all this information and resources available from the area, the books, and the information Lucasfilm gathered prior. But, we also make a lot of things up, and we want to make sure that feels authentic, too, so that it resembles the tone of the realistic stuff. But, it goes to what I talked about with the passion. You really have to put effort into it to make sure you cover everything and make it as authentic as possible — even if it’s made up.

Indiana jones and the great hands

The authenticity really shines. If someone told me something was made up, they’d have to show it to me. The other thing that I liked was how solid the combat felt. Not just the feeling but the sound of it. When I explain Indy to friends who didn’t watch, I have to tell them, this dude is a history teacher. Not a superhero. How important was it to make sure that the combat was tuned right to where it didn’t push people towards the guns and, for lack of a better term, break the game if someone tried to shoot their way through?

JG: It was one of the most improbable parts. Especially for us, being used to the Wolfenstein stuff and guns blazing like crazy. We saw that as one of our big challenges. How do we make this game with the player freedom we want to continue to embrace? Because I’ve always had this design philosophy that you should try to always let the player do what they want to do. And try to limit restrictions on the player as much as possible.

So, we knew that we could do shooting because we’ve done it so much before. The big focus went into hand-to-hand combat and the whip. And we also said early on let’s focus on the whip as an entry point into combat. Let’s make sure it’s a good way of disarming enemies or making them stumble. Then, if the whip is the entry point to combat, hand-to-hand should be the core of it. The gun should be “If everything else fails, then yes, we go to guns.” That’s the way we tried to approach it.

stealth vs. fighting

I was surprised when we went to test the game, that we succeeded very quickly with it. Maybe it was the players’ intelligence, but as soon as we started bringing people in for testing purposes outside of the studio, we could see everyone’s approach was stealth first then hand-to-hand. Especially the use of different items in the world that everyone thought was funny to use: the throwing items and things like that.

Very rarely did people go for the guns. Sometimes, we thought we toned the shooting down too much and were too aggressive in promoting hand-to-hand and stealth. But, I think we’re happy where we are, and it made it feel more like Indiana Jones by doing this. And we still have it so, if you want to, you can pull your gun or take an enemy’s gun. The player can still do it. But, the way the game is paced makes players go to stealth.

Yeah, it was definitely still an option. The first time I fired a gun, though, and saw five exclamation points pop up, I quickly realized this was not the way to go. But, the game was better for it. I enjoyed actually being Indiana Jones. There’s the iconic scene where he gets fed up with the guy and just shoots him. But he’s always been a fist–first guy.

JG: One of the first things we did, when we started to explore the gameplay, we actually took that image you described of the sword fighter in Raiders. It’s a funny moment in the movie, but the first image we did to sell the concept of the game was that scene in first-person. When everybody saw that, they all went “Oh, that’s really cool.”

navigating the storied ‘indiana jones’ franchise

That’s a great way to sell the game! If you showed me that, that’s all I would need to say, “Yeah, you can do it, go for it.” Last question for you: what I really appreciated in the story was that there were references to characters we’ve known throughout the series. You mentioned Salah, Karen Allen does Marion, and Marcus is in the middle of it. What was the balance like in bringing these characters in but still fitting your own story? Did you want to do more with the existing characters? Or was it a decision to say, “No, we wanna make this our own thing,” and get Gina and these other characters involved?

JG: No, it was deliberate in many ways. We wanted Marcus there because we wanted the story to start at Marshall College, and he’s such an important part of that. And we also wanted to use the [Marcus] Brody we knew from Raiders because he’s quite different from Last Crusade. So, just have him be there as a guide for you to set up the adventure. Brody was an important part because he’s a character known to the audience, and it’s a perfect way to start the whole thing.

But when we actually go off on this new adventure, we thought now it’s time to introduce the characters we created here. And of course, we still have some Easter eggs and recurring characters. It was deliberate to try to focus on Brody to set up the adventure, but we didn’t see him as an important part of the continuation of the story. He still has some lines like at the hotel. He plays a part in it, but it’s not something we really focused on.

thank you for your time, Jerk Gustafsson!

It’s an incredible game, I thoroughly enjoyed every second of it. To close, I just want to thank you guys for putting together a great product. Like I said in my review, Crystal Skull does not count in my house: this game is the fourth movie to me. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me and walking me through how you did things.

JG: Thank you so much, it really warms my heart to hear that. You’re always nervous about what the reception will be and what people think about it. Is it too different with the first-person? And the way we approach it with the pacing. That was something everybody on the team was worried about as far as it being slow-paced. But, it goes back to this adventure. We want it to be this matinee adventure.

I think one of the best things I heard was one of the people at Bethesda played the game and he wrote me a note that his wife and young son wanted him to keep playing because they wanted to watch. And that is something that really makes me feel happy because that means that we were successful in bringing forward that classic ’80s matinee adventure everyone can enjoy.