By most s, MachineGames’ Indiana Jones and the Great Circle captures much of the magic found in the whip-cracking adventure hero’s best-loved adventures. Storied video game voice actor Troy Baker (The Last of Us, BioShock Infinite) channels early 1980s Harrison Ford as Dr. Henry Jones, Jr., as players engage in a story that takes the archaeologist to ancient sites around the globe. Set in 1937, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle takes place in the gap year between Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as Jones once again tries to hunt down a priceless artifact before it falls into the hands of power-hungry Nazis.

ScreenRant’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle review praises the game’s film-like style, and it’s hard to imagine anything Indiana Jones feeling authentic without music steeped in the style of John Williams. Thankfully, composer Gordy Haab is an expert in the subject. Haab has written musical scores for some of the best Star Wars games ever made, including the rebooted Star Wars Battlefront games and Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi series. As he did with Star Wars, Haab took an approach on Indiana Jones and the Great Circle that involved blending his own style with Williams’ and incorporating Williams’ iconic themes where appropriate.

ScreenRant spoke with Haab about his work on Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. The composer discussed his approach to themes new and old, the difference between scoring Indiana Jones and Star Wars, and how the experience on this project tied into his first-ever video game gig. Haab also shared his thoughts about the game’s glowing reviews and whether he knows anything about a sequel.

Gordy Haab Discusses His Full-Circle Journey To Indiana Jones & The Great Circle

The Composer’s First-Ever Video Game Score Was For A Different Indiana Jones Adventure

ScreenRant: Todd Howard produced this, and I know he’s wanted to make an Indiana Jones game for 15 years or so. How early did you get involved, and did he give you a lot of direction personally?

Gordy Haab: I definitely got direction from Todd, but usually through sort of a surrogate, if you will. [I worked with] the audio director for MachineGames, this chap Pete Ward, who's fantastic and a fantastic musician in his own right as well. We were able to really collaborate, and I and received thoughts and from Todd through him.

The project was probably already in production for about a year before they started doing a search for a composer, which is actually pretty early for a video game. Sometimes the production schedules are upwards of five years or more, so to come in on the second year is relatively early. I have been on the project for about three years to this date, which is pretty fantastic. That meant that I had the luxury of time to really absorb the story and the narrative, create new themes, fail a few times, create new themes, fail again—it gave me the opportunity to really sculpt the thing over time and make it something that I was proud of.

I saw that your first video game score was an Indiana Jones game. Was there anything you wished you had done better on that, that you got to do here?

Gordy Haab: Everything [Laughs]. So, my very first video game was Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings, and I landed on that game because I had written the music for this five-minute-long Star Wars fan film called Ryan vs. Dorkman. It was just two of my buddies, and they were fighting with lightsabers. They choreographed the whole thing, but they were just in their regular street clothes, in a factory, fighting with lightsabers. That's the only thing it had to do with Star Wars, but they wanted this epic Star Wars-style score. I wrote this thing for them and somebody at Lucasfilm had seen it and they were looking for a composer for an Indiana Jones video game. That's actually how I ended up landing my first game.

I got launched right into the deep end, so to speak, jumping into a beloved franchise like Indiana Jones and having to learn to swim really quickly. And [I was navigating] everything it came with, [like] the nerves of knowing how big the franchise is and what the fans would expect. I got to cut my teeth in that.

But fast forward almost 20 years later and I've had this somewhat storied career in games, most of which fell into large existing franchises like Indiana Jones or Star Wars. Over the course of my career, I've learned how to handle that pressure quite a bit more. I've also learned how to lean into my own personal aesthetic more and reserve legacy themes, for example, for just the perfect moments [and] not to just use them as a crutch to lean on.

I've learned quite a bit since that point. I'm still very proud of that score that I wrote—I think it was appropriate for the time in my career—but I feel like I've definitely evolved musically, and also in how I handle that fan and franchise pressure that comes with working on something like Star Wars or Indiana Jones. The way I have learned to approach that is to remind myself that I, too, am one of these fans that I'm trying to please.

I approach it from the perspective of, as a fan myself, “What would I hope to hear from a composer writing the music for this?” To me, that has always been something new, something original, and something creative, but also that has just enough to hold onto that makes you feel like you're part of that world that you love so much. That's been my approach to this game as well as the Jedi: Survivor and Fallen Order games. That's always my take on it: do something original, do something that's truly me, but flavor it with just enough to remind everyone where they are.

You’re one of the best there is at taking the colors of John Williams’ music and building it into something else. How different is Indiana Jones John Williams from Star Wars John Williams in of what you’re pulling from?

Gordy Haab: It is interesting. I can get very technical about it, harmonically. There are a lot of big differences, but at its core, what I think makes Indiana Jones so unique is this ability to not take itself too seriously. There's a playful nature to it, and I've really kind of enjoyed leaning into that. There are obviously very serious moments as well, but there's always this other side to it, which is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. And in some cases, when you want to amp up the comedy, you purposely take it seriously even though it's not serious. It kind of accentuates the comedy a bit.

I like that there's a bit of comedy in Indiana Jones. I think he's just kind of waltzing through life, bubbling around, and finding himself in stupid situations. [It’s] something I can absolutely relate to as an adventurist myself, I love to travel the world and try crazy things, and I find myself in stupid situations all the time. It's like, “I can relate to this character. There has to be some fun involved in the music that goes with it.” I think that's what John Williams was able to capture, and hopefully I was able to capture that as well.

Haab Shares His Favorite Themes & Talks Revealing Character Traits Through Music

“The Great Circle” Theme Has Plenty For Music Nerds To Appreciate

There was one moment early on that I loved, when we’re getting a sense of where Indy is at this place in his life, and you sneak in a little bit of Marion’s theme. What did you want to get across about him as a character?

Gordy Haab: The game takes place between Raiders and Last Crusade. It’s just off of a, probably pretty sad, breakup for Indy and Marion. I wanted to give some depth to his character, because I think every person has experienced that kind of loss in their life. To lean into that a bit and make him feel more human, I think, was the key. [With] using Marion's theme, for example, I didn't want to hit it over the head. I just wanted to subtly weave it in there to create just a bit of emotion so you can feel the internal struggle that Indy’s going through. I wanted to make sure that it still felt like it was a fresh relationship that had ended, without making it sappy or too sad. It’s really more like a melancholy approach. It was important to lean into that without going too far, so you only hear it a few times, but when you do, it is sort of in a potent moment. That's what it called for, I think.

Gina is instantly such a perfect character for this world. What did you want to get across with her theme?

Gordy Haab: Something that John Williams has always done with writing the themes for the love interests in various films—particularly Indiana Jones, and Star Wars a bit as well—is that they always have this soaring, beautiful kind of theme. But I saw this character differently. I saw her, in many ways, sort of as a parallel to Indy. She's kind of a badass herself, and an adventurist as well, so I wanted it to be something that was more exciting and fun with a bit of playfulness, but also just a hint of what could potentially come to be a love interest between her and Indy.

Do you have other favorite original themes from this?

Gordy Haab: There are a couple. The opening track on the soundtrack is appropriately titled “The Great Circle”, but there's a theme for the Great Circle. This is something I was getting very nerdy about when I was writing these themes: following the actual concept of the Great Circle itself. The concept is these points around the globe that all connect, and when they do, they create this Great Circle that can open up these sort of magical powers.

Musically, I wanted to have individual, sort of pointillistic, pitches that traced an outline that, eventually, would wrap up, tie itself back around, and repeat itself. For all the music nerds out there, it is these single-note intervals of going up a sixth, then down a third, then up a sixth, then down a third, almost creating steps. It ends up ultimately hitting every note possible in the chromatic scale before it wraps itself back around and creates this musical Great Circle. Conceptually, I wanted to do something nerdy like that. I always love leaning into that kind of thing.

Then, there's a theme that's on the soundtrack called “The Flood”. It’s the big over-the-top dramatic theme with the choir and that kind of thing. There's always a great one in every one of the Indiana Jones scores. The Ark theme, for example, had this awe-inspiring element to it. I wanted to make sure that I had something that had that awe-inspiring element, and really leaned into choir and big grandiose sounds. That was a really fun one to work on.

Haab Shares How Gameplay Aspects Influenced His Musical Choices

The Composer Had To Navigate Cutscenes, Adventuring & Puzzle Solving

There are a lot of cutscenes in this game—it’s like a movie—and music also comes in a lot when a puzzle is being solved, or when you first step into a new area. Did [elements like] that affect how you approached this game compared to others?

Gordy Haab: It did. Like you said, in these cutscenes, if you string them all together, you end up with a feature film which actually has quite a fantastic story.

The idea with scoring anything—film, games, television, whatever it may be—is to stay out of the way of story, because the point is the narrative. With this having such a great storyline, it almost wrote itself in many ways, so I kind of approached it like writing a film.

But then, for the actual gameplay, it's very much environmental. I wanted to set tone for environments, so, like you said, when you walk into a new environment, there's music that comes in that sort of themes the environment right away. That’s something that [came] after studying the scores from the Indiana Jones films. It's like every new opening scene has some kind of musical swell-up that puts you in the place, in the time period, and in the moment, so we wanted to make sure we had that as well.

For the puzzle solving, it was a fine balance of making sure that we still feel the weight of having to solve this puzzle and we feel the environment that we're in, but we're not being distracted from having to actually figure out these puzzles. Writing the puzzle music was a tricky challenge of doing everything that the music should be doing without getting in the way of this puzzle-solving moment.

“We’re All Nervous”: Haab Reflects On Nervously Anticipating Fan Response

“Nobody Ever Really Knows How Things Are Going To Be Received”

This game has gotten such a good response. It's getting amazing reviews, and people are loving it. Compared to the other games you've worked on, how was development for you? Did it feel like it was going to be a game that was received as well as it was?

Gordy Haab: [Laughs] Good question. It was very smooth. The whole process was very smooth, but with every game I've worked on, nobody ever really knows how things are going to be received. We're all nervous. When you're playing in a sandbox as big as Indiana Jones or Star Wars or Harry Potter or something like that… even Halo. When I worked on Halo, it was like, “Man, you're working on something that already has a built-in legacy.” There's automatic nervousness that's like, “Oh my God. What if the fans don't like it?” That was ever-present all the way through production, but we really just enjoyed [the process]. We were having fun and, at the end, I think the reason it has been so well-received is because we had fun with it.

And there is a lot of fun in the game. It's serious at times, but it's also tongue-in-cheek, it pokes fun at itself, and it's playful. These are things, in my opinion, that make Indiana Jones so great—the fact that it's sort of self-referential and it laughs at itself. The fact that we were able to capture that, I think, is a big part of its success. But, I will say that nobody expected [it]. We all hoped that it would be that well-received, but I've had experiences where we expected huge results and then it got completely panned. That happens too, so we didn't know what to expect. We were very pleasantly surprised at the reception that it had.

The Developers Purposefully Ignored 2023’s Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny

“It Had The Potential To Have An Effect”

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny came out not that long ago, while this was in development. Did any part of that, including the response to it, have any effect on this game?

Gordy Haab: It had the potential to have an effect, but we actually intentionally sort of ignored it. With this game, we had our own narrative, it was something that had been designed and settled upon between multiple stakeholders, and everyone was very happy with it. Yes, of course, a film comes out and it's going to have some impact on your expectations, but at the same time, we just thought, “We have something great here. Let's just ignore any noise, whether it's positive or negative. Let’s just stay focused, keep [the] blinders on, stay the course, and try to make the game that we wanted to make.”

In doing so, we were able to create a story that doesn't have much reference to that at all. It fits in its own timeline, snuggled right between, in my opinion, two of the greatest films ever made—Raiders and Last Crusade—and I feel like it fits right into that world. So, that was our goal—just to stay the course.

Will There Be A Sequel To Indiana Jones And The Great Circle?

“There’s A General Hope”, Says Haab

I know there’s DLC coming out at some point, but do you know if there are ideas for a sequel? I feel like every time an Indiana Jones project comes out, it might be the last, so I’ve got to ask.

Gordy Haab: I don't know if there's a plan for that. I do know there's a plan for DLC, but I think there's a general hope that [a sequel] might happen. You never know how things are going to be received. In this case, it was very well received, so I think that probably has sparked some interest internally to see how much further we can take the franchise. So, maybe, but I don't know the right answer, and I wouldn't want to say the wrong thing. But yeah, my hope is that we would have a sequel.

About Indiana Jones And The Great Circle

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is an action-adventure game from MachineGames. Players take on the role of Indiana Jones (played by Troy Baker) as he races across the world to stop dangerous forces from harnessing the power of the mysterious Great Circle. The game is set in 1937, between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is out now on Xbox Series X|S and PC. The soundtrack can be streamed on digital platforms.