Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is shaping up to be one of 2025's biggest games. This is largely thanks to its novel approach to first-person action and near-photorealistic visuals, which bring to life young Indy like no game before it. It looks like a truly tremendous effort from MachineGames, one that will be perfect for newcomers and hardcore fans alike.

Great Circle previews have pointed to it being a thoroughly enjoyable action adventure and exciting new trailers have backed this up. New gameplay footage has showcased a number of ways that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is innovating, as well as how it is addressing perhaps the most frustrating gaming trend of all time.

Indiana Jones And The Great Circle Makes Hints Optional

Players Don't Have To Deal With Constant Hints

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has a lot of innovative new mechanics that will make adventuring across its various regions all the more exciting. It showed this all off in a recent gameplay deep dive trailer, including one novel addition that fixes the frustrating trend of constantly giving players hints to solve puzzles. Indiana Jones is a renowned explorer, so it makes sense that he'd be up to solving the puzzles by using logic and intuition. As a result, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle won't just hand out hints constantly.

Instead, players can use their camera to take pictures of important objects, and, if they so desire, get a hint alongside that photograph. This is a much better alternative than Indy talking to himself about how to solve it like a lot of triple-A games have their protagonists do. Additionally, players can check their diaries to get clues about the surrounding area and where they may need to go next. It ensures that all the puzzle-solving can be done logically by the player as opposed to the main character randomly shouting out the solution.

Diegetic UI Is Perfect For Indiana Jones

It Feels In-Line With The Films

This form of diegetic UI is perfect for an Indiana Jones game as it ensures that it feels cinematic at all times. One of the Great Circle's best features is that it makes players feel as if they're adventuring through one of the films rather than playing a game. It's a novel quality, one not often utilized by video games, but that fits perfectly here. Removing video game-style hints and replacing them with in-universe solutions makes the most sense and is a smart move from MachineGames.

Undoubtedly, this will come as great news to those who hate the constant hints from games found in games like God of War Ragnarök and Horizon Zero Dawn. Hopefully, future games will learn from Indiana Jones and the Great Cricle's book and think of more innovative ways of implementing puzzle hints. Of course, it's not the very first game to do it this way, but Indiana Jones and the Great Circle's more cinematic approach to it is far more compelling.

Source: Xbox/YouTube