Bethesda has announced that MachineGames’ Indiana Jones and The Great Circle launches on PlayStation 5 on April 15 for early access ahead of a global release on April 17. Those who pre-order get access to the early access.
The PS5 release date, which comes four months after Indiana Jones and the Great Circle launched on Xbox and PC, was announced alongside a playful promo trailer that sees perhaps the two most famous video game actors in the world on-screen together.
In the trailer, Indiana Jones actor Troy Baker sits down for a chat with Uncharted star Nolan North, who famously plays intrepid explorer Nathan Drake in the PlayStation-exclusive series. Drake and the Uncharted series are of course heavily inspired by Indiana Jones, so this meeting of the actors who play the characters is a full circle moment for The Great Circle itself.
There’s an added layer here, which is the Microsoft-owned Bethesda has drafted in Nolan North, the actor behind the Sony-owned franchise Uncharted, for a chinwag in one of its adverts. Now, at no point does North say ‘Nathan Drake’ or ‘Uncharted’ or anything that might legally belong to Sony Computer Entertainment, but his delivery in the video is knowing indeed.
Drake — I mean North — playfully suggests he broke into the lavishly decorated room in which he’s sat and so doesn’t have much time to talk. The suggestion here is goons might burst through the door at any moment, as they tend to do when Nate is rummaging through drawers on the hunt for clues.
North asks Baker how he’s going to deal with Private Military Forces with just a whip. Baker points to his head, saying, “use the old—” “headbutt,” North interjects. “I like it. Aggressive.” North says he’s “more of a sidearms kinda guy… jeans… henley,” and, as Baker quips, “somehow always half-tucked.”
Both North and Baker then bond over a shared enthusiasm for ancient artefacts, although North wants to sell them to the highest bidder, while Baker wants to donate them to a museum. This is Nathan Drake accepting the new Indiana Jones into a “very exclusive club” of adventurers. “Welcome to the club,” North declares. Xbox’s Indiana Jones now sits proudly alongside PlayStation’s Uncharted on Sony’s console, treasure-hunters in crime. All that’s left is for Lara Croft to break through the window and say something about not wanting the boys to have all the fun.
This is all part of Microsoft’s now-established multiplatform push, which has already seen a number of Xbox games launch on rival consoles. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is just the latest to make the jump, with Playground’s Forza Horizon 5, Id Software’s Doom: The Dark Ages and, reportedly, many more Microsoft-made games not far behind.
Boosted by launching day one on Game Pass, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has so far reached 4 million players — a figure that will no doubt see a significant boost once the PS5 version goes live.
Indiana Jones actor Harrison Ford has said Troy Baker playing the beloved character in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is proof “you don’t need artificial intelligence to steal my soul.”
Ford discussed alleviating control of Indy with The Wall Street Journal, saying he was very happy with the performance of The Last of Us actor Baker.
“You don’t need artificial intelligence to steal my soul,” Ford said. “You can already do it for nickels and dimes with good ideas and talent. He did a brilliant job, and it didn’t take AI to do it.”
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
