Here’s hoping that new Indiana Jones game remembers to make Indy a big ol’ doofus
Games Features What Are You Playing This Weekend?
Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?
Back in the day, was there a man on the planet who could make getting his ass kicked look better than Harrison Ford? Much ink has been spilled about the man’s undeniable Star Wars era-swagger, but the key to his most iconic performances came from a different direction: That hint, always hiding around the eyes, that Han Solo or Indiana Jones know exactly how full of shit their shows of heroic bravado really were.
I’ve been thinking about Indy a lot lately, ever since news broke earlier this week that Machine Games was making a new game about everyone’s favorite fedora-toting Mutt Dad. It’s a bit of an odd fit: Machine is largely known, at this point, for 2014’s Wolfenstein: The New Order and 2017’s Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, games I love dearly, but which share little with Dr. Jones’ whole ethos or aesthetic beyond a shared devotion to kicking Nazi ass.
More to the point, both of Machines’ previous games have a certain determined self-seriousness to them, even when they’re trafficking in objectively and intentionally silly plot points—like, say, B.J. Blazkowicz’s hyper-over-the-top survival of his own decapitation in The New Colossus. I have faith in the developer—seriously, if you skipped either of their earlier games, you really should go back and check them out—but that dedicated unwillingness to wink feels somewhat out of touch with Indy at his best. That’s to say nothing of the games’ eventual embrace of full-on power fantasy: B.J. beats the Nazis by gunning them down with unstoppable force, in contrast to Indy, who wins by taking the punch, rolling with it, and making do with wherever he lands.
In fact, there’s really only a handful of Indiana Jones games—out of the twenty-and-change that have been made over the years, from straight film adaptations to rampant Lego silliness—that have grasped the inherent comic doofiness of Henry Jones Jr. And none have done it better than 1992’s Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis. Created by Hal Barwood and Noah Falstein for LucasArts way, way back in the day, the game has been praised for decades now for its writing, its inventive branching storyline (based on whether Indy makes progress by punching people, solving puzzles, or teaming up with a partner), and especially for its humor. And nowhere is that latter element clearer than in the game’s opening sequence (viewable above), a segment that reminds players that, for all Ford’s success as an action hero, it was Indy’s slapstick skills that helped make him into a star.
It’s in the nature of video games to prize success and “coolness” over comedic incompetence. (And god knows it can be difficult to make hardcore archaeology exciting.) But Fate sets its scene by telling you, in no uncertain terms, that this is a man who makes progress less through unbridled victory than by repeatedly falling on his ass. (It’s not for nothing that the central moment of Raiders Of The Lost Ark’s first big setpiece is Indy failing to properly swipe that statue, right?) Failing forward is a powerful topic in game design of late, especially in tabletop realms. But it’s one that that digital games sometimes have trouble embracing. That’s what Indiana Jones does best, though, the patron saint of “Fuck it, let’s just shoot the guy.” Here’s hoping that some of that energy finds its way into this new Indy game. Few heroes in all of fiction are better at taking the punch.
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Immortals: Fenyx Rising is a game that I heard about in these comments. It’s sort of the first full-blown “Breath of the Wild clone”, the twist being it’s all based around Greek mythology, and one of the old titans has come back and imprisoned/depowered all the gods and turned almost all the humans to stone, so it’s up to you to save them with the help of various divine gifts. So, big open world, you can glide around, climb to the top of mountains and statues, etc. It’s quite pretty and the writing, while a bit overdone at times (one of those games where everyone talks a little more than they need to), is often amusing. The mechanics are fun but the world design feels less organic than BotW and there’s a bit more of an obvious “you should go here next” feel- Ubisoft gotta Ubisoft, I suppose. Still worth the time I’d say, I’ve played a ton of it so it’s got the hooks in.Of course after playing so much of a BotW-type game I really started thinking “I should get back to Breath of the Wild”, so I did that- I still never really finished it and it’s so easy to get sidetracked from the big stuff, just because the world is so expansive. And drawing on what I talked about before, a huge part of it is just the sheer minimalism- you really don’t know for sure what you’re gonna see so you end up making all these little discoveries. Also picked up Murder By Numbers which is a combination of Picross and an Ace Attorney-style mystery VN, you find clues via the number puzzles and that advances conversations. Got through the first “case” and while the rhythm of the game is tricky- lots of cutscenes, and there’s no voice acting so the game adds weird sound effects and the occasional screen flash for emphasis- the writing’s not bad.
Indirect humor should definitely be included in any Indiana Jones game. We’ve seen this copied by Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series, a character that could be be summed up as being part Harrison Ford, part Firefly’s Nathan Fillion, which propelled the games way beyond its standard gaming tropes and its peers at the time.The studio fortunately has a lot of precedence and evolution with the state of gaming and technology by this point. Here’s hoping they surpass expectations, properly revive the Indiana Jones franchise, and assume its rightful throne above all of the Uncharteds and Tomb Raiders of the world.
Very little gaming time this week, and it was all taken up by Dragon Age Origins. After having successfully recruited Mages, Dwarfs and Dalish Elves (in that order) , I finally headed to Redcliffe to try and get humanity on my side.First up, to the surprisingly complicated to navigate village of Redcliffe itself, where I was hit by a wave of Infinity Engine nostalgia, since BioWare’s AI pathfinding remains terrible.
Biggest surprise was Alistair revealing that he was a right royal bastard in the “son of the king” sense right before we got there.
I was kind enough to help defend the village against the shambling hordes of Undead they were being besieged by. I started that by persuading the drunken Blacksmith to forge molten metal into armor and weapons for the militia, and get the knights on side. I finished up a couple of sidequests in the Chantry, mostly dropping off a will and finding a hiding kid.
After a successful Zombicide, it was off to the castle. I ended up freeing Jowan, the blood mage who admitted poisoning Eamon and telling him to run away, since I couldn’t just leave him in the castle to die.
Having seen Connor become an abomination, mostly in the form of making Teagan (but not Sara) dance around like an idiot, oh and also in creating/sending the zombies after everyone like they were in a Cranberries song.
Anyway, rather than just kill the kid, I ended up going back to the Circle of Mages tower and recruiting Irving as part of a ritual. This meant that I was able to send Morrigan into the Fade, where she fought the horny programmer’s idea of a demon, a nearly nude woman with antlers and barely covered nipples (I assume that she was supposed to be a desire demon/succubus?) four separate times.
That seemed to cure the boy of possession, but left Eamonn in a coma still. Which means that I’m now about to start looking for an Urn of Sacred Ashes.
inventive branching storyline (based on whether Indy makes progress by punching people, solving puzzles, or teaming up with a partner),Yeah, I remember that from Last Crusade.What I remember from Atlantis is the very opposite. Having to decide, before the game. whether you want action, brainy or cooperative puzzles.I don’t like Atlantis. I don’t like its predefined branching, I don’t like its themes (indy ufos), I don’t like its mcguffins (energy beads that power up trucks and ancient machines and anything they touch), and I don’t like its puzzles (they felt more like a generic Flight of the Amazon Queen than Indiana Jones to me). I also didn’t like the fact that it was essentially the same ideas and concepts as The Dig. And I don’t like the tedious genre of “reactivate strange alien devices” in videogames, which is the most obvious puzzly puzzles for puzzle excuses that a game can present. Either “look an alien left a puzzle to solve which is actually how their machines work oh so alien” or (similarly empty plot device) “look the mysterious baddie or lost genius has left us a riddle to solve what a cool way to frame series of riddles”.Never got the hype for Atlantis. I adored the Last Crusade adventure game though. Its different approaches were decided on the whim, not predefined before starting the game, and its puzzles were indianajonesesques, probably because loosely lifted from a movie plot, which kept them in the right mood.But whatever. That being said, the goofiness of Indiana Jones is indeed important (Ford is great at Wile E. Coyote expressions), and I seem to remember that a bit of that light-heartedness was present in the great Emperor’s Tomb as well. Or maybe it was just the way you could lose and retrieve your hat that amused me…
I also preferred the Last Crusade point and click adventure over Fate of Atlantis.
While I loved FoA, I greatly admire the specificity of your dislikes.
Atlantis has a lot of problems, mostly the last part which seems like a later adventure: empty and full of lifeless mechanical puzzles.But the three paths are three puzzle paths. The action path has fists, ok, but is also full of different puzzles for that part.
Part of the fun of Fists was that you always had the option to box, but a couple of the fights were nearly impossible, so you had to decide if you wanted to figure out the puzzle for bypassing the fight or get insanely good at punching. Or if you wanted that perfect 1000 Indy Quotient, you’d have to do both.
Wow, so controversial, you hate one of the most critically acclaimed adventure games of all time. I’m impressed.
Wow, I’m so impressed that someone’s differing opinion about a video game annoyed you
It’s of course very possible that you played FoA after The Dig, but that’s not the fault of the designers. FoA came first, so if there was any repetition/copying/pilfering going on, it was done by The Dig. For what it’s worth, I do think FoA is slightly overrated (it doesn’t make the highest tier of LucasArts games IMO), but it’s not nearly as overrated as The Dig is.
I also didn’t like the fact that it was essentially the same ideas and concepts as The DigAre you suggesting it stole ideas from a game… from the future?
Not exactly (although I found that the concept was more fitting and slightly better employed in The Dig). I just feel that mysterious do-all power-all crystals of alienum are an impressively poor and unimaginative one-size-fits-all plot device straight out lucasart’s cheapest toolbox.
You can say as well that The Dig is barely a good game. Great 320×200 graphics, good space ambient soundtrack, bad writing and dialogues and that trope that aliens communicate between themselves in Castle Of Dr Brain puzzles
I seem to remember the Last Crusade adventure as being more or less pointless because it followed the plot of the movie exactly. What fun is that? You already know the story!
Fate of Atlantis is one of the best games ever made, and my pick for best point-and-click and best Indiana Jones game. It doesn’t seem like we have a clear sense of what kind of gameplay this new Indy game is going to revolve around just yet, but it’s almost certainly too much to hope for to see a successor to the classic. I’m just going to brace for something action-heavy, where any real sense of discovery is done via cut scene rather than solving the sort of puzzles that you might get legitimately stuck on, have to put down for the day, and come back to later once you’ve had an epiphany.But if they want to surprise me, I’d always be down for something resembling a Fate of Atlantis 2.I worked my way through all of the main campaign in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, did all the optional goals, beat all the times in the first episode… it’s all a lot of fun, and significantly longer than I thought it was going to be. But I don’t know if doing all that in the bonus episode episode is going to be fun. I looked up the reward for doing it all. There’s one more big challenge, and then the back several pages are just the minigames you unlock periodically to earn extra coins/1ups, which I largely skipped throughout the game because most of the game doesn’t really lend itself to needing to grind out extra lives. So, uh… maybe I’ll come back to this eventually, but I think I’ve about experienced everything that’s worth experiencing.I looked over my Steam list and sorted by games I played/purchased the longest ago, and I think I’m ready for something farm-y again. So I started up Slime Rancher again, after kinda barely getting a sense for the mechanics and probably abandoning it for board games, based on when I last played it a couple years ago. It’s been fun to rediscover, and I think I’ve picked up on more of the mechanics, earned more money, and unlocked more than I did last time.I’ve got like 2/3 of the map filled in, with fewer than half of the slimes discovered. Either that last stretch of the map is a wonderland of diverse fauna, or I need to do a better job exploring the more remote corners of the areas I’ve already opened up. I just hope I keep getting more jetpack upgrades so I can more efficiently climb things that feel like they weren’t meant to be climbed. Will my brand new lab help me invent the upgrades I need to break the game’s physics? We can only hope! My last action in the game was building a pump to get (?) out of the ground, and I guess I’ll have a better idea of what that (?) is shortly after I start my next session.And then the most dangerous thing… I found out Hollow Knight has a randomizer! I just put the game down two weeks ago, and I think I need to come back to it already. I watched someone muddle through their second attempt at the rando, and the idea of not having as much control over my build, just having to choose the best combination of charms from what shuffled into my path, sounds far more interesting than settling deeper into my full melee/speed build and never having to learn how to use magic or nail arts efficiently. Who knows… maybe I’ll come around and prefer full spellcaster or something even more weirdly specialized like the minion build.
Yes, here’s hoping that the new Indiana Jones game makes Indy a big ol’ doofus, and that our democracy doesn’t collapse. I was just saying this the other day.
So I managed to score a PS5… I had to resort to one of those stupid Gamestop bundles that came with an extra controller and two games. Either way I’m excited for the end of the month when it ships. For now I’ve been playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 on switch and having some fun with it. I’m only playing by myself and I can definitely tell it would be better with co-op. I like how the story is basically a crash course in the modern marvel cannon even if it does feel like they’re just redoing the MCU stuff. Overall not as good as X-Men Legends 2 or MUA 2 but it’s still enjoyable.
Backlogged: New Year, Old Games EditionThat’s right, after a couple of months spent with some relatively
recent titles (Fire Emblem: Fates, Abzu, Limbo,
Gone Home, Minit and Wide Ocean Big Jacket,
to be precise) it’s time once again to dig into my retro gaming list. Before
launching into the bold, new frontier that is *checks notes* 1992, I
decided to go back and try out a mid-eighties cRPG. My original choice was The
Bard’s Tale, but after my blundering attempts at emulation fell flat, I
set out on another quest, specifically Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar.Having previously bounced off the first three entries in the franchise (admittedly,
emulation issues played a role back then as well), I was worried I would fare
little better with number four. Yes, I’d read that Quest of the Avatar
was a big step forward for the franchise, but 1985 was still very much the early
days, as these things go. So, would I find it to be a game-changer, or a relic
of a bygone era? As you can imagine, the answer is both.At its core, it feels like the game is chock full of big,
ahead-of-their-time ideas that are limited by tech that was, well, of its time.
The virtue system is the big-ticket item here, and the way it shapes the player’s
goals and actions feels revolutionary… but it’s also simplistic, and
easy to exploit in order to juice your stats. There’s an argument in there
somewhere that a truly virtuous player would avoid taking shortcuts, but at the
end of the day, patience is not one of the game’s eight virtues, and virtue
gained through unscrupulous methods is no less enlightening. The conversation system
is another interesting development, bringing a touch of text adventure into the
mix, but as satisfying as it is to follow a chain of key words through when
chatting up an important NPC, the limited selection of prompts and responses
elsewhere leads to a lot of repetition and tedium (and boy are the guards in
this game a bunch of bores).The game also outsources a lot of its vital information, such as spell
lists, to external documents. While this is presumably a vital memory-saving
measure, it still left me flipping through browser tabs at times to keep on top
of everything. Having said that, the game’s manual, styled as the History of
Britannia, is a delightful supporting text to the main game, fleshing out
the world of Lord British’s domain in a way that I haven’t really seen before in
an RPG (though Wishbringer’s manual does come to mind).At this point in my playthrough I’ve explored a few towns, recruited a few
companions and mastered a couple of virtues, and the old-school tedium is beginning
to outweigh the novelty of the big ‘new’ ideas the game introduces. (Combat in particular
is beginning to drag, and I understand that it’s a problem that continues to
grow as more companions join the party.) As such, I plan to check out a nearby
dungeon, before checking out completely, but even once my time with Ultima
IV is over, I’m curious to see how its influence has spread throughout
the RPGs that followed. Western RPGs make up a bit of a gap in my gaming experience,
so there are still plenty left on my list, and Quest of the Avatar
seems like a fundamental first step towards filling that gap in.Anyway, that’s it for me this week. Once I’m finished with Ultima IV, I’ll be launching into 1992 with an obscure little title called Wolfenstein 3D. See you folks next time!
Nice try, Lao Che.
Um… https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2021/01/12/please-let-indy-in-the-new-indiana-jones-game-be-a-clumsy-doofus/
wuh oh
oh shit
Ooof. No top men working on this one…
“Graham Smith, again we see there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away. And you thought I’d given up.”
-William Hughes
So that’s what a functioning comment feature looks like!
I never appreciated how much Ford’s Indiana Jones owes to Buster Keaton until I got older. They both put on incredible stunts, but with a good sprinkling of slapstick thrown in. River Phoenix nailed that part of the character so well.
It’s outrageous how well Phoenix does Indy. All the little mannerisms are nascent.I watched it fairly recently and it broke my heart a little bit.
Every time I see River Phoenix in anything it breaks my heart a little bit. He was so good.
Yeah, I go back to Stand By Me every few years and just think, “Damn, this kid would’ve grown up to be one of the greatest actors of all time.” All four kids were great, and would go on to do other things, but River was obviously the pro in the room.
As an obnoxious teen who was super skeptical about the very notion of seeing Young Indy in a movie, let alone one played by River Phoenix (who, through zero fault of his own, had become a teen idol), he took about 2 seconds to win me over. He friggin’ nailed Indy.
If only he were around for Solo.
So he could play a forty-seven year-old young Han Solo?
I watched Last Crusade—or at least the first 45 minutes or so— a few weeks ago— and yeah, other than the 90s haircut, Phoenix is terrific and while it’s of course built backwards, you could extremely clearly see how young Indy became older Indy.
The only Indy game I ever played…
I’m convinced this was an unrelated game in development before they tweaked it enough to very, very vaguely tie it into Raiders of the Lost Ark.Fun fact, in the 80s, video game companies would actually pay kids to test market their games. I remember playing the same basic game at least three times, themed as Looney Tunes, the A team and a generic space adventure.
If you have ever seen The Angry Video Game Nerd on YouTube, he plays shitty games and reviews them. It’s pretty great fun. I don’t think he ever reviered Indy on the Atari because he claims it’s a good game. I think he adresses it in the E.T. review, commonly considered the worst game ever. Many compare the indiana jones game as equally bad and confusing. His argument is that it’s a really good game especially for the Atari. The catch is, YOU HAVE TO READ THE MANUAL for it to make any sense. If you do you can understand and have a good time.
Same.
Indiana Jones owes more to Looney Tunes than it gets credit for, and that’s a compliment. I say this as a guy that calls Raiders his favorite movie ever, hands down. Watch the fight on and around the flying wing, and pay attention to the score. The way Johnny Williams punctuates each punch with a beat from the orchestra is straight out of the Warner Bros. cartoon playbook.
So Pillars of Eternity has completely sunk its hooks into me. After backing it on Kickstarter however many years ago, I was never able to actually beat the game. I’ve tried quite a few times, though, and once made it to act 3. But, as I wrote last week, I think I got pretty bored playing on easy and just stopped playing. This playthrough, on normal, I’ve made it further than I ever have and I’m still completely hooked. I think about it when I’m not playing, the quests and characters I need to help and how the story’s going to wrap up. Oddly, when I’m thinking about it I hum the theme song to Morrowind. I guess my brain makes an unconscious connection between the two games. Which…fair point, brain. The story is particularly strong, mostly avoiding the “chosen one” narrative. It leans on cults, which are becoming just as trite, but I can’t help but love a good cult story. It can be difficult to follow if you like to skim through dialogue, which may be another reason I lost interest in previous playthroughs. I always enjoy these games when I not only read through the dialogue carefully, but also the many books on offer that flesh out the world. It’s always cool when an NPC informs me of some historical event that I already knew about because I took the time to read Dyrwoodan History, Part One or something.I’m also very much enjoying Final Fantasy Adventure, part of the the Switch’s Collection of Mana. At first, I was quite impressed with this 30-year-old game’s ability to give you all the information you need to move forward. My recollections of RPGs from that age remind me that you often have to trial-and-error your way to the next objective, which can at times be long and frustrating. And the game mostly avoids this for a while. Maps are smartly designed to lead you in the correct direction…until they aren’t Unfortunately, it eventually drops the friendliness and throws you into dungeons that require Lost-Woods-esque time progression, without any in game explanation of how to progress. Either try different combinations until you get it right or look up a guide. I did the latter. Still, though, it’s a fun game that’s got a nice reward progression, even if game design is dated.
I never completed my playthrough for PoE and every time I go back I’m pretty lost. I remember the main gist of what’s happening, but a lot of the details are forgotten. I made it to the elf city and to the bottom of the whatchamacallit at your keep, but wasn’t able to beat the (adra?) dragon. I want to go back and finish it, but it’s been so long it’s hard to get back into it mid-playthrough and I don’t want to start over again…
Not sure if this will help, but you’re pretty close to the end. With sidequests, Act 2 is by far the longest. Act 3 is pretty short with a few opportunities for sidequests, and 4 is linear and short. Also, not sure how much you want to read, but the game creates a biography for your adventure in the journal. Try giving it a read to see if you can back into it…if you want to.
anyone else playing yakuza: like a dragon? i’m over 50 hours in and absolutely devouring it.
I hope they get Harrison to do the voice acting. My favorite Harrison Ford anecdote is when Michelle Phillips sat down to watch Star Wars for the first time and Han Solo first appeared she exclaimed “That’s my pot dealer!” Maybe the weed explains some of Harrison’s and Indy’s doofiness.
This is a great time to bring up the Harrison Ford voice-over story regarding the Disneyland “Indiana Jones” ride.Harrison Ford had agreed to do the voice for the animatronic in the ride with the stipulation that he not record any copy for any commercials, just the ride itself.So apparently he shows up to record and in front of him is the script for the commercial (which some assistant or intern had accidentally placed there by mistake.)So Ford just walked out the door,never to return.
Truly, Ford is the patron saint of Hollywood curmudgeons.
This game will need to heavily lean into the mythology of the movie lest it become just another Uncharted or Tomb Raider clone.
I’ve been playing through the Zero Escape series. Maybe not the best choice in the world right now considering where the plot goes (the plot of games 2 and 3 end up revolving around a deadly pandemic, something that I did not know going in), but I’m too sucked into the utterly bizarre, twisty story to back out now. I’m not liking the third game nearly as much as the first two so far (especially the second one, which has what may now be one of my favorite video game plots of all time), but maybe it’ll grow on me. So far the story is just a little too unstructured to make me care that much about what’s happening, and turning the protagonist of the first game into a total, nihilistic jerk isn’t helping.
How dare you, the best game was clearly Raiders of the lost Ark for Atari! :)Lol, I actually passed that as a Kid, my god it took me and my brother forever to pass that stupid game! But we had so much fun playing it even if it was so damn hard!
What has always killed me about that scene is that (Indy the prof would know that the specific gravity of gold (even a lost wax mostly hollow statue) is 19.3 vs 2.70 ish for that bag of rocks/soil/sand ?
What I am saying is that my physics prof would have guffawed at the bag sizes. Maybe he did?
Nathan Drake brought that style of charming clumsiness to videogames — so here’s hoping that the new Indy game is able to capture Uncharted’s magic while still being its own thing.
Fate of Atlantis isn’t only the best Indy game. It’s also one of the best point and click adventure games ever made. Shame no one has ever been able to remake it like Monkey Island and Sam and Max
I think the best way to do an Indiana Jones game while working in the confines of AAA development is to make it more or less like an Uncharted game, but with the tone of the 1930’s adventure serials that inspired it. Basically, steal from both the master and the disciple.As for what I’m playing this weekend, probably more Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. It’s a balls-ass hard game! I’m terrible at it! I can’t say I’m really having a blast, but I appreciate its art and its clever level design. The platforming really isn’t as tight as it needs to be for a game of this level of difficulty, though.Also gonna play some more Genshin Impact. I’ve got a lot of side quests to do before I can unlock the next story quest, and I’m hoping there are some funny tidbits in them.
Well said! Indy’s failures make him endearing in a way few action heroes manage to be.
I played “Fate of Atlantis” almost all the way through. If memory serves, you get to a point in Atlantis where you find an unlimited supply of orichalcum beads and can take as many as you want. I grabbed maybe 20 or so, thinking that was more than sufficient for what lay ahead.Spoiler alert: It wasn’t. You need so many beads to work your way through Atlantis and then you finally come to a statue that requires like a dozen or so beads just on its own.Well, by that point, I didn’t have enough and I was seriously annoyed. How the hell were we supposed to know you needed, like, 50 beads instead of 20?
But I didn’t want to go all the way back and start over, so I just quit.
I recall a desktop Indiana Jones game back in the early Windows days