Todd Howard celebrates the Indiana Jones game he's spent years trying to make by stealing a golden idol from its developers

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle plot
(Image credit: Bethesda / Xbox)

To celebrate the first trailer of Bethesda's upcoming Indiana Jones game, executive producer Todd Howard stole a Golden Idol from the developer working on it. 

One of the highlights of yesterday's Xbox Developer Direct 2024 was getting our first proper look at Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Not only did we get the game's very first trailer and find out its 2024 release date, but we also heard from the developers working on it at MachineGames and Todd Howard himself - who has been trying to get the Indiana Jones game made for over a decade.

In the presentation, Xbox visited MachineGames in Sweden and towards the end of the video, game director, Jerk Gustafsson, thanked everyone for watching and revealed that the game is set to release "later this year." If you were paying attention during this part, you may have noticed a very subtle cameo from Todd Howard who quietly swipes the Golden Idol perched on the desk behind Gustafsson. 

Howard is clearly loving working on the Indiana Jones project, and it's got fans even more excited for what's to come. "You know they are fans," one Twitter user responded to the tweet above. "I didn’t even see this! Love it," another responded. Others have noticed a big flaw in the Bethesda bosses' move, pointing out that he should have left a bag of sand otherwise than ball is "definetly going to get him." 

Elsewhere in the presentation, Todd Howard said he's been sitting on everything about the Indiana Jones game "forever", including "what Indy was going after," the "arc he was going to have," and even what stage of his life the archaeology professor would be in. It was also revealed that, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is set between the stories of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade.

Find out what else we've got to look forward to with our upcoming Xbox Series X games list. 

Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at 12DOVE before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.