Indiana Jones and the Great Circle won’t see Indy kill any dogs: "This is obviously a little bit different" from Wolfenstein "where the dog will explode"

Indiana Jones and The Great Circle - Indiana peers out from the shadows in stealth
(Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle seems to be an intriguing stealth adventure game set in the dangerous, dusty world of its namesake archeologist. Since it's also filled with Nazis you can slap around, the upcoming game is a perfect fit for developer MachineGames, which has become a leading expert in decimating Nazis through its Wolfenstein series. But, whereas those games are happily brutal, MachineGames promises Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will be a little softer — at least, for dogs. 

"We made it so you can't shoot the dog directly," creative director Jens Andersson tells IGN in a new interview. And, if you weren't already sure, Andersson confirms Indy "is a dog person." Lore decrees that Indiana nicknamed himself after his favorite childhood dog, after all. 

"This is obviously a little bit different than Wolfenstein as well, where the dog will explode," Andersson continues. 

Yeah, there's a lot of dog slaughter in the Wolfenstein games. At the start of Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, for example, you experience a flashback in which your monstrous father goads you into killing your sweet dog with a shotgun. Then, throughout other Wolfenstein games, you destroy genetically modified German Shepherds, some of which are strapped to bombs and, indeed, explode.

There won't be any of that in MachineGames' Indiana Jones. 

Indiana Jones is "family-friendly IP in many ways," Andersson says. "How do we do that well? Well, these are the kind of things that we do. We have dogs as enemies, but you don't really hurt the dogs. You scare them away." Dog fans, rejoice. 

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a "spiritual successor" to a 32-year-old adventure game, Fate of Atlantis.

Ashley Bardhan
Contributor

Ashley Bardhan is a critic from New York who covers gaming, culture, and other things people like. She previously wrote Inverse’s award-winning Inverse Daily newsletter. Then, as a Kotaku staff writer and Destructoid columnist, she covered horror and women in video games. Her arts writing has appeared in a myriad of other publications, including Pitchfork, Gawker, and Vulture.