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Hey, I'm Adam Orth.
Welcome to the Game Maker's Notebook.
Today, I'm speaking with Jens Andersen and Axel Torvinius of Machine Games about developing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
In this episode, we discuss the controversial choice to make a first -person Indiana Jones game and how it proved to be the absolute right decision, why they recreated the iconic opening scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark and how important it was to anchor the game experience, and Troy Baker's now legendary, award -winning, and Harrison Ford -approved performance as Indiana Jones.
Hope you enjoy the episode.
Welcome to The Game Maker's Notebook, a podcast featuring a series of in -depth one -on -one conversations between game makers providing a thoughtful, intimate perspective on the business and craft of interactive entertainment.
The Game Maker's Notebook is presented by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, a member -driven organization dedicated to the recognition and advancement of interactive entertainment.
Jens and Axel, welcome to the Game Maker's Notebook.
Thank you. It's good to see you guys today.
You're here at DICE.
We're recording this on February 12th.
When this episode comes out, you will either be Game of the Year or somebody else will be.
And it's great to have you guys here.
I can say this because podcasts will be coming out later, but i did vote for this game for game of the year cool nice to hear love the game love machine games love yens i've worked with yens before at lucas so we have a lot of indiana jones common dna in us and this game is what every indiana jones fan wants and i don't need to keep telling you that because you already know that because everyone has said that.
It's universally adored in that respect, and I want to talk about all that today.
I want to talk about what it was like making it, all of the challenges of perfectly sticking the landing of an Indiana Jones game that, in my opinion, stands next to things like like alien isolation, Riddick, in terms of truly nailing an IP for a video game.
It's one of the greats, in my opinion.
Kind words. Yeah, thank you.
Well, it's, you know, I'm not the first person to say this to you, gentlemen.
man. So what I usually like to do in these episodes is usually I'm only interviewing one person, but we have two here today.
So I would just love to get a quick intro from both you guys, what you do for our listeners.
I already know. And a little bit about, you know, your journey in game development and ultimately to Indiana Jones and the great circle.
cool i can start yes please so first off thank you so much for having us here today it's super cool to be part of this episode so much appreciated um and i'm axel turvenius i'm creative director at machine games and i've been working as creative director on indiana jones and the great circle so my journey into game industry actually began back in 2006 as a concept artist i I started as a company called Star Breeze, worked there for a number of years, a number of games.
I worked a tiny bit with Jens back then also actually, and then moved over to Machine Games around 2010, 2011, something like that.
Been art director on all the Wolfenstein titles and then into the position of creative director now in this last adventure that we had at Machine Games with Indiana Jones.
Awesome. and i've been working on games forever yes you have um was part of founding starbreeze back in the days um so that's sort of where i grew up that's where my original game development family were uh which is why machine games is so cool because they are still that's still that family talk about DNA yeah exactly so starbreeze with Chronicles of the Riddick and the darkness spent 10 years ish there then I decided to do different things colors did some homebrew yeah before the indie in before indie was indie did some stuff uh and then i spent a couple of years at lucasarts in san francisco
with you among others among others um and then i set out to do indie for real so i did that for 10 -ish years uh did colors a painting game did yokosan express express an open world pinball game um and while i was doing that i i helped out machine games so machine games was basically the the original team from from starbreeze reformed into a new studio so um helped out a little bit on on the wolfenstein games and then the indian eons project project came along.
And that was too good to not jump in head first. It all actually worked out in the end.
Yeah. So I was Design Director on that project.
So first of all, I'm a huge fan of machine games.
I cannot tell you how many hours I've put into all the world of design games.
So, you know, when I heard that, um, you guys were going to be doing Indiana Jones makes perfect sense to me.
Right. Um, I don't think we have to go over the, the well, um, trodden, uh, first person versus third person thing, but it is important to touch on because, um, again, the DNA, this keeps coming up.
but it wouldn't make sense for you guys to make a third person indiana jones game and you know for people listening was there ever even a consideration no good no it wasn't and i mean it gladdens me to hear that you think that we were a perfect fit to do this game based on the previous portfolio that we made with with the other wolfenstein titles because we obviously saw some comments in the beginning you know yeah what is uh you know what's this you know machine games making indiana jones and so i mean in the end it turned out all good but the um no there was never we didn't even consider this doing
anything else than first person uh for numerous reasons yeah so i mean one of the biggest reasons is we believe strongly that the game this is this is what's best for the game this is the way to experience this type of game in our mind the type of adventure game that we wanted to do and then there are other things that comes into it of course as you know what we're good at and what we have a long long long experience in doing what type of game mechanics and what type of perspectives you know down to the systemic stuff of how the player moves around and traverse the world and all the first person animations
and all of that but it was never really it was never really a hard decision for us no no we talked about it of course a lot because we knew there would be an expectation that people think that modern adventure game should be in third person so we were very much aware of the expectations and the challenge to to convince everyone that this was right for the game yeah you don't have to convince anyone who's played any machine games games it's it's more of like the general audience who want what they want and sometimes don't actually know what they want until they get it and um you know how did you
tackle that like what was the first kind of path you took to saying this is how we're going to convince people that this is it's a first person game and it needs to be and this is the right thing to do that kind of speaks to like when we start the first time we show the game like uh and that was like that was a year ago now when we showed the game for the first time i have to say that i don't want to get off track on this topic and and this question but this game felt like it was announced and then it was out yeah it felt so fast i know it wasn't like that and i think that that um also says a lot
about the way you guys make games it felt it felt very fast and it was like oh i'm hearing about indiana jones and now i'm playing it and i would have expected it to take a much longer time until i realized who was making it anyways yeah now i you know we announced it a year out and and you know that's kind of the answer to your question we knew from the get -go that the first thing we need to show for the uh about this game would be to show that this is a first -person game and why we think that's that's the way to go with this game we knew that that would be the topic of conversation so that whole
announcement we did there uh was was very much focused on on the first person question and and that's exactly what's happened uh as well when we showed it that was the question that people asked and i remember being very very happy with how that played out because for every person who said like why is this first person you know should be third person there was a person on the other side in that comment thread or whatever saying like no this is machine games it needs to be first person so they kind of had gone through the exercise that was so natural for us that we knew what we wanted to make with this game
and and saw that it has to be a first -person game because of our heritage and and what we want to do with it but i think it also comes down a lot to i mean it's it for us at least i feel that it very often comes back and comes down to us Trusting the process, believing in the mission that we have and believing in the decisions that we're taking and then stick to them and execute on them.
And we would never of course sway around due to a comment field somewhere saying like, this should be third person.
Okay, let's change.
We also knew that when people will get their hands on this, which is also another big beat, at least in my mind, when we started to see the hands on in terms of media and people people actually start playing and testing it those type of comments also start to just like Avalanche in terms of like no no now I've tried it it makes perfect sense I was you know skeptical or I thought that it could be weird but then when people have actually tried it's like no no no it makes perfect sense so that of course he has you know kind of um not justified but it was good to to say that the mission that we believed
in and that we knew for us was true, turned out to be true for more than just the devs. So what was the first kind of mechanic you guys tried in first person to, I shouldn't say to prove it to yourselves, but you knew you had to prove it to others.
Like, what was the thing that you guys did, or maybe not the first thing, But the first thing where you were like, this is going to solve this problem.
I think there's different aspects of this that we can talk to.
I think that one thing that very quickly we, of course, identified was the things that we do not feel we need to prove, like shooting a gun in first person.
That's like, we know we can do that.
Kind of figured that out.
Yeah. So let's put that aside.
Let's do not even think about that for the moment.
what other core components of this character will actually emphasize the sensation of adventure puzzles the whip you know traversing the environment the platforming aspect so i think depending on the the different levels of difficulty in terms of developing those vastly different components in the game kind of staggered up in terms of when in production we start looking at them yeah so and and in many ways it was a tricky game to make in that sense because like it all came back to always came back to like we want you to feel as indians we want you to be indians and you know that doesn't come for free
that needs to bleed into every mechanic of the game and you know that was also the strongest argument against like the question like you're making a first boss in game we are not gonna see in the annuals how are you gonna present the character so you know working on every across the bar on every mechanic on every situation on everything to to build that up that was kind of the thing that we knew and we needed to do but it took the whole length of the project to really to really pull that off um so it was a constant not struggle but you know something we had to keep push push push constantly throughout
but i think there was also a moment in time in the production cycle you and i often talk about this where things have started to fall into place like how how do we see the blend in between the first person second to second minute to minute gameplay how do that actually transforms and translates into the going out to third person in traversals mixing that up with you know getting the right amount of cut scenes in which of course also shows you in your full glory with hats and and jacket and face and all and when we actually start seeing a fully playable sequence of the game where all these components
were fairly correctly implemented i think that's a moment when we also started to feel that okay this will actually become really really cool but that all of that stuff is is so hard because you know i can't say a day when it happened no i can you can yeah or for me when that happened what was actually the the no i can't no i don't know we had we had a vertical slice uh video uh or when we have the announcement like when when you put something together like this this uh build of the game uh that's playable and you also cut together a video to show it to executives and whatever that you know shows
the game as it's meant to be rather than what it is yes a lot of the times and and that in some ways resets your own view of what you're making because now it's you can evaluate that snippet that slice of what you're doing and and this game game is a sum of so many different parts uh like global trotting adventure but you know all the mechanics all the different gameplay styles of puzzles and fighting hand to hand and shooting and everything so how does that feel like that's that's something that you can't answer before you build it and that's a question that you need to the whole team needs to
understand that to be able to finish to build the finished product uh and that takes a lot of time to to get all those features to a level of of completion where where you can feel it um and and that was came in late like a year before we shipped this when we started seeing oh this is the game we're making yeah i i think that so i'm just looking at my notes i want to go back a second because it's relevant to what you're talking about new order old blood new colossus young blood cyber pilot loved it what do you guys see in in the great circle from those games so many many things um and i think
i would i would even refine that question to say like what were the things from those games and what you guys do so well excuse me that you knew had to be in this game there's there's one thing that i often called out and i've said it many times before i quickly mention it again but it all comes down to philosophy and yes how we operate as devs we usually or at least in my mind and you know we we do have something that i usually refer to as like our three core pillars of machine games this is what i want to know you know so one of them is obviously art and that then lies you know everything within animation audio
and and art everything that is in my jurisdiction at the moment then of course we have gameplay trying to push the envelope constantly but also try to push the experience throughout the campaign so that you get the sensation that you are encountering new combat systems or you know get new toys to play with or wow this environment looks like that and due to that context i can now do these type of things and then the um the one that everything starts with with which is the narrative and then we have kind of that you know holy or unholy trinity whatever you refer to is binding together by by the tech
and enabling all of those three to to work together and shine as much as they can and any good developer game studio has those guiding principles so if you're listening in your studio and you don't have some kind of guiding pillars that go from game to game you should probably do that it's very very important it is because i do think that what we've been trying to do for many many years in many many games is that you constantly also need to try to respect those pillars in relation to each other throughout production because me coming from you know primarily an art focus from the beginning one
could of course imagine that i would only care about art you know make the game as pretty as possible but who would play that game exactly and i think you know from my perspective coming from more of a design perspective i want to you know build on what you're saying because the narrative i think you know i don't know how it works in different studios but but at machine games everything starts with the script with the narrative yeah like in the first couple of months of the project we have more or less locked down what the you know the whole story all the characters all the important moments that's
where the mechanics come from and yeah and that's the thing like you that's that that's where you start yeah and then again what i think might be different at machine games is that there is an enormous respect to to staying true to that like obviously we change stuff we you know we remove stuff we add stuff but the story needs to be prioritized all the way down to you know micro grow gameplay interactions they need to support the story coming across pointless without it yeah yeah so when I work on a game or I'm at a studio whether it's someplace I'm working or in the past has been my own studio
I am absolutely psychotic about respecting the pillars of either either the project or the studio or both.
Ideally, you have game pillars that feed into the studio pillars.
And that's the virtuous cycle that everyone kind of strives for.
Are you guys at Machine so cognizant of the pillars at all times that if something's happening that it's not supporting those, it's out, it doesn't belong?
Because I truly believe that that's how I operate.
I'm curious if you guys do that, because there are, in my opinion, only a small handful of game development studios where you can see the vision of the entire company in every game and sticks true to that.
You guys are one of those studios.
Thank you. To answer it, you know, at least from my point of view, is that there's also a subset of rules when making a game like this that kind of the ip comes with its own pillars also yes and then you need to start you know chiming pairing those up with the existing pillars that we are working from you know from a game point of view so one thing that i was kind of trying to iterate quite early on in the prog that project was what would indy do you know what would indy do because because that could inform a lot, right?
Because for us, it summarized a lot of the things to make this feel and look and behave like an adventure game from the 80s, or, you know, since the Raiders and the Lost Ark and the movies is from the 80s, set in the 80s, or made in the 80s, but set in the 30s, but in production 2024.
And that comes with a whole subset of things that you need to look at and think about and try to counterbalance and when you specifically when you're saying like you know how strict can you be about the core pillars of the studio is if this is breaking this then it's out or is breaking that then it's out yes to some extent we are very harsh on you know as yen says down to the grittiest detail even if it's a small puzzle on the side route somewhere in the game happening that still need to respect the the core that we're set out to do nothing is too little to be neglected in the most perfect perfect
world but sometimes you you could get conflict in terms of is it better to stay strict to do this principle that we're following is that really strengthening the experience or of the character or the ip or the brand and sometimes you have to do some juggling there and bending the rules like now this is actually maybe not what exactly what we would do but this makes the experience feel more like this Indiana Jones experience that we want to do and we have there been examples throughout the production when we have been having a lot of discussion debate in terms of how should we trigger that cut
scene or how should we interact with this thing and in the end we we always try to find a nice common ground that at least respects the quality of the product because that's the end goal.
But having the guiding principles paired up with the pillars and the guiding principles that you get from identifying the IP and the brand that you're working with, then you have a very, very good framework.
Yeah, perfect triangle, right?
Studio pillars, game pillars, IP pillars.
It's interesting, though, I think, with pillars.
pillars the word pillars because i don't think we have that outlined anywhere for this like what are the pillars like we have various sets of of you know one you know powerpoint slides that defines it doesn't have to be like a poster on the wall yeah it's obviously it's what you're describing it's innate to the studio but there are some of them that are unique to this project of course but there are some that are so ingrained and this is what you're talking about so ingrained into the the studio like player agency is always a good thing like one of those yeah that we we're just not going to get
a machine games game that doesn't have that yeah exactly so we don't even need to write it on the wall right because every time we deviate from it there's there's a horde of people around the studio that says no we can't do that yes slack is popping off yeah right right um Um, okay.
So, um, I really want to talk about navigating the IP, but I do want to, before we go to that, cause it's a big thing.
I want to close out, um, the mechanics conversation.
So I've just, I have some notes first person perspective.
So these are, these are things that you have delivered in the game and they're also completely endemic to Indiana Jones, Jones right first person where I talked about first person people will still be arguing about this choice sure forever actually hold on a second back to first person for a second so I was discussing with some a few people here at Dice in advance of this because I like to get people's opinions talk about it before I talk to folks and So I'm going to, I want to talk about Uncharted just for a second and not in the way that you probably think I'm going to bring it up, but Uncharted
is such a popular game franchise and it's beloved because, you know, it kind of took the place of what we weren't getting and we got it.
and it's a very extremely it's ingrained in everyone's heads because they've played these games and i feel like when i was playing this game i was i thought a lot about like the because i read a lot about the perception of first and third person it's a huge huge thing this game and there's almost this like subconscious unconscious um i don't even know if bias is the right word but it's it's like you can't help but like compare the two when you're playing the game not because you need to it's just you know they live in the same mental space was that something that you guys like felt or struggled
with or completely ignored did you ever did you ever think about that at all making this game thinking yes but carrying no yeah no that's a simple you know and and and partly it's thanks to to that we chose such a different path yeah so there was there was no chance we gonna really do the same thing right um so so it didn't really impact good i mean the great games we love them as well fantastic so but it's uh very very obvious when we started very early on in the project started to like dissect analyze the ip the brand the character just getting the bullet point lists or what's what's the identity
here what's the key things that we want to hit and as soon as you've identified those you also get a huge amount amount of things that the game and the ip and the brand is not yeah and then there are a lot of games and other reference points it's like not interested right but um good good answer that's the answer i was i was hoping for okay the mechanic package uh first person obviously indie games have to have incredible and diverse environments but puzzle solving the way the puzzles were integrated created into the world and the narrative chef's kiss um I thought the camera was really well done
the melee the whip the guns the stealth and then those are all things that you expect from Indiana Jones and they were absolutely well done a lot of them right yeah it's a lot and then you and then you go a little bit deeper into the stamina system and the adventure books and the points i mean there's a big list there's a big list of things that i wrote down um do you feel do you guys you specifically ends but i mean it's a question for both of you do you feel like you guys achieved the fan expectation of what indie is supposed to be doing in a game interactively i think so looking at what people
are saying about it it feels like we we we did that we did exactly that you know uh breaking down what what you would expect if you were indie and and finding alignment with what do what do you want to do as a player in these kind of situations and doing all those things that's that's how this feature list was created more or less yeah and then you know getting each and every one of those features to a level where we feel felt that it feels like an indiana jones mechanic um and feels fun and polished enough for to fit together with the whole with the whole package yeah super happy with with the end
result of that of course yeah it feels very um satisfying and systemic and fun and um exciting like even navigating the menus was was fun and exciting so um i really think you guys nailed that and um but i i think it's a a very interesting point that you raised because this is something that we were you know working a lot with specifically on design side of things in relation to also you know making sure that you constantly feel like in jenna jones because we don't have the luxury of having a reference point of a for example in jenna jones and the last crusade or raiders of the lost ark tv series
series that shows like you know 500 episodes of what he's doing when he's not hunting for the specific specific thing that he's obsessed with yeah in the movies he's basically just following his golden path making a game that is not supposed to be just six hours of you know hunting down a golden path and finding the thing but allow the player to explore a very vast and open world is that in the would in the you know sidetrack from his golden path and doing things on the the side and yes from a gameplay point of view and to build a cool and fun interesting adventure game we absolutely need to allow
the player to do that we absolutely need the character to go off the main trail and do things on the other side and then but it never it never felt like that it always felt like appropriate and and that's and necessary and that's in a fun way that's very nice yeah and and cool that you that you feel that way and that you say that because because that was the kind of the mission that we had.
Even when you are in the outskirts of the Giza map and doing some weird mystery or little side mission, you should still feel like Indiana Jones and should still feel like it feeds back into the main storyline.
Yes, and that's a good point.
I want to interrupt you there because when you watch Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time or the thousandth time, what's brilliant about that character and the story is that there's all these things that are kind of referenced that you don't have any context for but you believe them because they fit into the ethos of of who indiana jones is and those those kind of adventures and And it's kind of, I really felt like whether it was on purpose or not, that you guys tapped into those little offhand comments that he's always making referencing, you know, things in the past. And I felt that when I
was exploring, I was kind of filling those things out a little bit.
And, you know, look, Indiana Jones is super important to me.
Raiders of the Lost Ark was like a very like watershed moment.
it in my life it was like a bonding thing with my dad and it's like it's not it's it's an important movie you know this we've talked about this yeah many times and like the way that the game and mechanics tap into those like moments again i could just be making this up in my head i don't know if you guys are doing this or not but i guess it doesn't matter because that's what i felt when when I played the game and that's the important part right I had an experience that was genuine to Indiana Jones and what I felt and was that something that you guys like actually said no we got to like feed these
little seeds and plant them all around and and work on that or am I just making it up well both kind of like anytime you're making aim you're you're kind of searching for for you know what is what is this experience we knew that for example exploration needed to be a big part we wanted like from the start we set out to do these kind of big sandbox style areas but honestly we didn't have the experience for what that meant we had never we have never done areas was these big before at machine games or Starbreeze so how do we build those how do we populate those how do we pace those that was stuff
we needed to figure out throughout the development but of course like we knew it needed to feel like Indiana Jones but exactly what that means that's something you kind of need to discover by testing stuff yeah you know being underground for for an hour and a half in a single dungeon is that indiana jones or is that too much does that become you know a dungeon crawler game uh and throughout the development we found a lot of stuff that were like these these small mysteries are one of my favorite yeah design elements in this game uh you know how do we do those self -contained but still feed into
the fantasy of being Indiana Jones?
How do we produce those?
How do we introduce those to the player in a way where it's not icons on a map, for example, but something that the player can discover on their own?
That feels more like Indiana Jones.
Yeah. So finding such elements throughout the development, that's probably more correct than saying that we knew exactly what we wanted to do from the start.
So every game that I've ever worked on as a designer or creative or whatever there's always that moment where you like put something down on paper and you're like this is it did did the this is it moment survive or or did you were you clear on that thing or did you we're trying to stop put things down on paper yeah it never works yeah no of course like uh you have ideas uh you are right about half the time Yeah.
And for the half the time you you mess up, you implement stuff that that doesn't work.
You have to rework it.
There are features that require countless of iterations before they got close to to feeling feeling right.
And some of them just dropped in our lap.
So it's it's it's that journey to discover what you want to do.
Yeah, I mean, it must have been scary for you guys to jump into that open exploration pond or lake or ocean.
Scary and interesting, right?
Yeah. That's why we are in this business because we want to go on that journey.
There's this great David Bowie quote.
I'm going to butcher it.
But he's like, in your career, in your creativity, whatever you're doing, you want to feel like you're in the water but just not able to touch the bottom.
Just kind of floating.
Like, I butchered this quote so poorly.
But you get what I'm saying.
Yeah, yeah. yeah and and like it seems like you know from what you're describing like maybe that's how you guys were approaching this because that's how you approach every game right yeah yeah you you you want to push it as far as as you can without losing you don't want to feel but you also don't want to feel like it's it's good to feel unsafe and not confident right that's that's where the the magic kind of through your peer around that corner and finally like figure it out but i think one just to like back up to what you said in the beginning of the question in terms of you know those small
little nuggets of information or bits and pieces of indie throwing out comments on things because what's interesting with that to me is it gives layers and depth to the world it it suggests suggest that this is a rich world and i think that's what we've been trying to pick up on and specifically going going into the aspect of exploration and doing a game that's much more than just a linear game and and has a more of an open -ended solution type of setup really expanding the fantasy of being indiana jones having a rich world where you can do a lot of different things i think that's been uh really
really uh scary and interesting it's it's hard right because uh you have a level of fidelity that you you need to achieve as a as a triple a game uh like the the arc needs to be top -notch at the same time you want to you know interactivity was a big pillar if you will uh for this game like how do we make as much stuff in the world as we can interactive so we can hide interactions like you know creating a mystery around every corner was something i tried to you know say every chance i got and and to do that through interactivity that's that's what makes it interesting because it becomes a player
it's the player that that discovers the mystery and finding the balance how far can we push that without completely tearing up our production processes so we can make it to this fidelity that we all expect it to be yeah i mean as an indiana jones experience it's the best one thank you you guys you guys did it podcast over OK, so now I want to talk about a couple of things like the challenges of the IP.
Al -Anon and Al -A -Team can help.
Call 1 -866 -200 -0223 or visit al -anon .org slash help.
I want to talk a little bit about Troy.
We have an episode coming up with him, so I won't go too far into it.
Cool. Nice. But, okay, so first of all, remaking the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark was insane.
insane and let me tell you something when i when i i stopped looking at anything or reading anything about this game after the reveal i knew you guys would be fine but you know you proved it to everyone and then i stopped i did not know about this cool the way it was intended now that is a an absolute absolute baller move to to remake the beginning of raiders the lost ark let's get into it because that i mean first of all it's very satisfying and also obviously perfectly set up the game and that's the tone yeah but like that's like hallowed ground right right and most most uh most ip based games
tend not to do that stuff it's it's all about you know we want to make our own our own mark which you you obviously did afterwards but like talk to me about doing that and the challenges in that i mean it's a super loaded thing to do it it's it's a risk yeah it is huge risk of course and huge investments like when i saw that mountain and i was like no way no way they're not doing this this is like a cut scene or something like there's no way sorry yeah glad to hear you like it uh you know i i think we're very happy in the end how it turned how it turned out as well but there was a lot of blood
sweat and tears involved in in getting it to the you know to the stage that it is when we ship the game um but i do think that we often you know tend to ourselves think from the perspective of wouldn't it be cool if you know and yeah it would be super cool wouldn't be super cool to play that you know swapping the sand for the idol you know solving the puzzles you know doing the whole thing the trap stuff wouldn't that be cool would it be insane and very difficult yeah Yeah, absolutely.
Is this a crazy challenge?
Yes, absolutely. Let's do it anyway.
Yeah. So I think that that's kind of the approach that we very often have in terms of we do not back down from the challenge that we put in front of us.
And sometimes we beat ourselves for it in retrospect.
Like, why would we?
Why did we? But this is one of those times when it actually turned out very satisfying in the end.
and of course also you know during the process of doing that we have the best reference in the world right yeah which also proves then a bit challenging later on because now we don't have the best reference in the world we do have the best reference in the world in in that sense and context of the movies yeah but not frame by frame and that of course also proves to be extremely difficult because how do you how do you match that and i mean i've seen plenty of people doing comparison videos and whatnot and obviously it is not you know pixel perfect frame by frame all the time yeah but that's that's
what makes it so cool like for example um i've never seen the um right turn from the pit into the temple room but i know that exists and seeing that that was like it just felt like i already knew that and it was so cool seeing that and also showing showing all that from different camera angles like the scenes that you you know that are ingrained in our in our minds was very smart just a very well done uh take on that and it and And it is a take, right?
You are doing it, but it's a take.
And I found that really refreshing rather than we're going to recreate it frame by frame by frame.
It's really nice. And, I mean, there are numerous, numerous reasons why sometimes it is not frame by frame.
Because we're making a game and it needs to sit together in the level, in the map.
There are things that we possibly can't make fun gameplay out of that potentially exists.
You have a lot of artists and level designers that are extremely fatigued by frame stepping that scene to try to figure out, like, how do these clips fit together?
together and you know yeah that left turn corridor before the the pressure plate puzzle for example like you have like a corner of the screen showing that that's probably how it looks i'm actually don't know for sure if it's if we can say that it's 100 correct but yeah they really worked to try to recreate it but something that i find interesting with that whole scene is that that it kind of started as a design exercise for, you know, what if we break down this scene into gameplay moments?
What kind of gameplay moments would that be?
So this was before we had, you know, some of the core systems, like the interaction system in place.
So by going through that whole scene and saying like, oh, and then you pick up the golden idol.
well how does that work uh like you switch it to the sandbag how how do we does that work how it works in our minds yeah how does it work in the controller so going through that exercise was really interesting because it it also helped us understand what kind of interactions would we want to be doing as a player in in the annuals game um the the the flop side of this was of course we did this super early and you know recorded animations and recorded like spent and a huge amount of work of getting a first first version of this in and then of course you need to change the mechanics down the line
so now this you know whole opening scene needs to be reworked with new mechanics and and that's where it becomes very a lot of you know we work and and changes and fixes going over throughout the whole whole development to get it to to fit the game that comes later yeah i mean when you as as game makers we all know how important those first 15 yeah minutes are and you know that could have that could have gone the wrong way you know because it's such a beloved piece of history yeah in terms of what it what how you know that scene scenes definitely transcends like pop culture and it transcends Indiana Jones
it's like part of history and then obviously there's all the Indiana Jones stuff so um let's yeah I mean it's also I mean it's uh it's ties back to your previous question as well in terms of expanding the world and the nuggets of like pieces of information you have you know we see forestall you know for example yeah dead in a trap so okay cool we can make an opportunity out of that and find his abandoned camp and tell a little bit more backstory you know expanding the expanding the experience and i think that has also been you know throughout entire work with this game a very interesting journey
to try to see around the corner what's happening over there and this beginning of the game really offered some really cool solutions or you know opportunities for that and also i just wanted to quickly throw out there that you know specifically working on this section of the game the beginning of it we got you know a very valuable help from lucasfilm games in terms of the collaboration with them getting access to their archives seeing photos from sets, concept art that I've never seen from the original movie.
Outlining some components or design feature that you could, okay now we understand how this actually connects in the movie because it's impossible to understand just looking at the screen.
That was also very, very helpful.
Those are special days when you get access to the archives.
Some of my favorite memories ever.
Very, very fun. fun um okay so the challenges of of this ip and any ip are great um it's difficult to it's difficult making any game of any kind is difficult we know this making a great game is difficult and then making a great game of a beloved ip is like i said earlier beginning it's There are very few of those things.
This one is one of them.
We already know that it was a very unique and ultimately wise choice to pick you guys to make this game.
It worked out for everyone.
But, you know, Jens and I have worked on Star Wars and maybe tried Indiana Jones here and there.
we know how how difficult that is and how protective um ip holders are of the ip especially lucasfilm talk about like the challenges of that they are very when they're when they're invested in in something it's the collaboration is awesome right seems like that was the case here I mean, we have from the very, very early days of the project been in continuous meetings with them and communication.
And I think that I don't want to say that we were lucky, but it just happened to be that our vision as fans of the IP, the character, we had our vision of what we wanted to lift forward and what we wanted to portray, how we wanted to portray Indiana Jones.
because he is a character that has, you know, a couple of different personas throughout his timeline, basically.
So what we chose was stay close to Raiders of the Lost Ark and what type of his character traits are the ones that we want to push forward and highlight and which versions of him do we want to not emphasize and move forward with.
And when we presented our vision of what we wanted to do, that aligned with Lucasfilm Games' vision of what they also felt yes this sits well with with us in terms of what what type of indiana jones we want to to make and portray and i think that's why i'm saying like you know lucky if if that's such a thing you know but we aligned very early on and thanks to us aligning very early on i think the collaboration with them has been very very cool i think shout out to craig derrick yes of course the wonderful executive producer lucas from games craig derek and i you know this is also this is not our
first licensed game we worked on so so we kind of we we know some of the pitfalls to avoid um but you know if there's anything that i think helped us here as well is is again going back to the process we have like you know starting having the the story nailed down from the start that allowed us to to be agree on all the big all the important stuff you know within months of starting development of this game and and you know once you have cracked that the the rest is easier like that's going to be the part that they are most protective about like what is how are we portraying the portraying the characters
you know what is the story we want to tell.
With that done early, you know, you can spend time talking about details almost. And they can fit in with their expertise about everything in the aneons and the access they have to everything.
And we can work on just trying to get the game to live up to the story we have presented to the story we've written um for the rest of the development so i mean there's been invaluable uh sessions and you know insights things that we couldn't possibly know about how certain things uh are portrayed uh within the franchise uh so it's been a really cool learning experience and invaluable relationship with them throughout the entirety and i mean sure uh you're talking about them being protective of their brands or the ip you know with all rights but i we haven't experienced that as being like a you
know a negative aspect of development it's been a very cool and interesting collaboration with them and i think that you know like i said i think that we just aligned very early on and then we continued to have you know regular meetings throughout i've been in meetings basically on a weekly basis for you know four years or whatever with them and all different representatives within machine games have had meetings with representatives of their departments as well you know audio narrative lore all of these things So obviously great experience.
Yes. Yeah. Cool. Second Indiana Jones game confirmed.
So one of the amazing things about Indiana Jones as a character is that he's so successful because he's not and he's beloved because we can see all of ourselves in Indiana Jones owns because he's not perfect he fucks up he's one of us and that's a timeless quality no matter no matter where or when it's set set in the 30s still pertains to today i think the the last thing i want to talk about of my enormous list uh we're not gonna get to everything is um troy can't talk about this game without talking about that performance um uncanny eerie very amazing amazing um what was that like i mean it seems
like i've said in this in this podcast cast so much was hinging on this thing and like a lot of things were hinging on things to make this game and certainly this this was one of them yeah right like you can't phone in harrison ford or indiana jones you just cannot and if it's not believable the game will not work yeah it worked uh extremely stressful uh i would say from time to time it's been one of the singular things at least from my point of view being you know creative director and you know to the extent responsible for you know audio animation and art how things look sound and behave so getting
that right was extremely stressful and you know difficult it wouldn't it wouldn't be it would be a lie to say anything anything else but if we didn't have Troy I have a hard time seeing yeah there's really no no real alternative consider at this point you know so it's you can't really like underline that enough Troy's contribution and I I think I've said before but I I'll I'll say it again And when I heard the first test lines from his audition, I thought it was the reference lines.
And I was like, oh, yeah, cool.
Okay, that's the reference lines of Harrison Ford. It's like, oh, no, that was Troy.
I was like, are you kidding me?
You can swear on this podcast. Okay, cool.
But, yeah, that was surreal.
real and then when when we seen and follow him throughout the entire production scene seeing him in either it's just you know in vo sessions recordings or like full motion capture or whatnot and see the transformation that he's doing when he goes into character so yeah real craftsmanship uh rare i would say yeah i um i wasn't skeptical but i was like i couldn't really hear him doing the voice until i heard it and it was wild like holy cow and it's it's not only the the voice either yeah yeah it's it's the whole like yeah yeah and i think that's that's something that a lot of people you know might not fully
understand and i mean if you're game dev then potentially you can understand parts of it you know of course but to many fans of the franchise or you know people just playing the game it's sometimes hard to understand and know like everything that goes on behind this because he as as jan says is not only the voice but it's so much more complex than that yeah because we have the the full performance it's a full totally yeah nuanced and ranged yes acting performance yeah Yeah because his face is driving the rig you know so he's not only making the voice.
There you go Claudia.
He's not only making the voice he's also mimicking and doing all the things trying to have the the correct facial animations going on then obviously sometimes we need to go in and tweak that and make sure that it gets you know but he's doing that and then also doing the you know mimicking the body and body language.
language, and at the same time, doing acting, you know, against someone else, and sometimes doing, you know, very complicated scenes.
And then you get all of that combined together.
So that is really like full, full talent performance of impressive range.
Yeah, I think like, there's a bunch of different ways it could have gone.
like, you know how, um, like Troy is obviously like, you know, it's basically our version of whatever Harrison Ford or whatever great actor, like, you know, he's certainly been having a moment for quite some time.
And when you, I personally don't like when, um, games hire hire famous actors to do, you know, it pulls me out every time.
I understand why it's done.
And you know, I'm probably the minority.
Um, like I would, I think that would have been upsetting to me in this game to have to listen to an actor from maybe film or tv to really kind of try to embody indiana jones in a way that i don't think like i mean this performance is totally nuts i mean also famously now endorsed by harrison ford so so yeah that was fun and uh i mean the one of the coolest things with with troy is that he's his passion for this project and his devotion to the project has just been you know through the roof he's done so much more than he's been asked to do just because he has also you know had to have a great passion for the for the character
and for the game so it has added so much you know he's been very very much into he's even been participating in like blockout sessions before the mocap sessions he hasn't just showed up and then delivering he's been really trying to be part of the process so true a true collaborator yes in every sense yes and then of course that wouldn't be possible if if he would have been an an ass but he's you know an absolutely fantastic person to be around and work with as well yeah so it has just been a genuine very very nice experience experience you know getting to know a very very humble a nice person and then
at the same time a very true professional in terms of executing on his on his craft you know through the roof in terms of expectations that we had so you guys have you've achieved the goal you did the impossible what are like what are both of your like personal takeaways from this whole experience experience, you know, like, like where, where does it four or five years, where does it sit with you guys right now?
Are you like, you know, well, I'll, I'll let you answer that, you know, cause like as a creative, it's very difficult to, um, consume the thing that you made without looking at it and saying, Oh, that's not as good as it could have been.
And I'm not asking for what what you could have done better I'm just really more curious like you know you're kind of you're at the end of the run of this thing basically you know and whatever's next is next we're not going to get into that but like you know you've had this amazing experience doing again the impossible where does this sit with you guys?
I think at least for me and I think that's true for a lot of people in the studio this has been a very very personal project a lot of us has you know we have invested so much into it so coming out on the other end seeing that we kind of our the mission that we had and what we believed in paid off in terms of fans loving it you know so that's one part of you know the closure of this basically as you know a sensation of nice there it is and it turned out really nice um then there are so many small stories throughout you know the um the production itself that are like you know uh fond memories but without
taking up too much time talking about all the good stuff that i remember but at least a few of them is for example when we when i felt and when we saw that okay okay, likeness is on.
Now we've nailed it.
We had a certain scene that we were polishing the hell out of to try to nail the look and the visual fidelity of the in -game render driven by Troy's performance.
And when we finally saw, okay, there it is, that was like, okay, then we can do it.
We can do it. That's out of the question.
and another one for me on a personal level as well was meeting and see uh tony todd working with him and seeing him acting and performing and then obviously extremely sad we all are at machine games with his with his passing and that he's no longer with us but having the chance and opportunity to actually work with him and seeing him deliver the locus character that was also extremely cool for me you know there's there's this immense feeling of of being grateful and and thankful for for everything that led up to to this game coming out in in the shape it did like as you know as a game developer
you get tunnel vision by the end you you really really don't know like you have a sense of of is it crap or not of course yeah but you're at you're at that like god just let's just put it out yeah and we you have your date you work towards your date you you know put in the extra hours the whole team really came together and you have no idea how much stuff went in for the last six months of the project and things we changed so it's this you know bubbling soup that's gets put into this package and put out there and you know if you fail there and there are so many points you could have failed there
like even like you talked about troy's performance if that wasn't up to par the response wouldn't have been as great and you would have well it simply couldn't have come out yeah right and and you would have kind of lost four or five years of investment yeah uh so pew is what you said like we kind of made it so so we don't take that lightly that's that's amazing we're so incredibly happy that we didn't fuck this up um you didn't i personally want to thank you guys for for not fucking it up i never thought you would um i was always a believer of it in the beginning and you know i got to play the game
excuse me the game i wanted i'm not getting emotional i'm actually maybe i'm getting emotional um it was just really wonderful um i hope you guys get to do another one never stop making wolfenstein games please they're my favorite cool i fucking love those games so much cool and i hope that tomorrow i get to see you guys on stage accepting a trophy for game of the year for indiana jones yeah great circle thank you for thank you very much kind of words we hope so so as well and i think you know it's also something you know talking about the great experience making this game and you know in the aftermath
looking at you know what's the highlights of all of this coming out and one thing that we also talked a lot about before and internally is you know it takes so many to do this you know the the the full team the full studio and what that is doing is you're i mean you're creating so so many new friendships you're crafting so many new strong bonds with your co -workers and just you know you come together so much more stronger after uh going through this type of hellfire experience yeah so you know in the end it's um it's always a shout out you know to the team back home and the amazing team we have that machine
games just uh sticking sticking in there and believing in believing in the product and delivering on it well it paid off you're up for game of the year so great job guys
