Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has a face-melting 4 hours of cutscenes: 'This is the biggest and longest game that Machine Games have ever done'

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle launches in just under two weeks, bringing a heaping helping of puzzle pondering and Nazi hurting—a helping so heaping, in fact, that Machine Games says it's the longest game the studio's ever made.

Amidst a flurry of 141 questions in a quick format interview with MinnMax, Machine Games creative director Axel Torvenius and design director Jens Andersson were asked just how long of a game they've made out of Indy's next adventure. While he didn't provide a specific hour count, Torvenius said that "by far, this is the biggest and longest game that Machine Games have ever done."

If we're going by completion time estimates on HowLongToBeat—which has Wolfenstein: The New Order as Machine Game's longest released game with a main story completion time of around 11.5 hours—we can assume that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will take somewhere upwards of 12 hours to beat the main story.

But based on what Torvenius says about the amount of cutscenes we'll be watching in the Great Circle, 12 hours might be lowballing it. According to Torvenius, the game has "roughly three hours and 45 or 40 minutes" of cutscenes, "or something along those lines. It's a lot."

To put it in more familiar times, watching all the cutscenes in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will take as much time as watching about 1.72 Last Crusades. That's damn near almost two Temples of Doom! If you don't have a lot of time to spare, I hope you're a quick hand at navigating ancient temples. Still, if you're eager for Indy, it sounds like there's no risk that the Great Circle will leave you underserved.

If you're interested in more quick tidbits about the Great Circle, the MinnMax interview is worth a watch. Also detailed is the mechanic which allows Indy to avoid death if he's able to crawl to and retrieve his hat, indicating that it serves as a sort of lich-like phylactery anchoring Dr. Jones to the mortal plane. Profound implications.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will launch on December 8, 2024.