It’s the spring of 1977, and George Lucas is petrified. Having just wrapped work on his third feature film, Star Wars, he retreats to Hawaii, unable to face the early reviews. Yet as he frets in a five-star resort, Lucas bumps into another Hollywood hideaway – Steven Spielberg. Making sandcastles together under the Maui sun, Lucas pitches Spielberg a story that riffs on the simpler era of 1950s’ serials, an action-packed spectacular about a James Bond-esque archaeologist. This crypt-robbing Casanova’s name? Indiana … Smith.

The hero’s moniker certainly benefited from some finessing, and the action-packed Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) raked in $354m at the box office. Yet as great as Indy’s influence was on cinema, it might have had an even bigger one on video games. It inspired Lara Croft’s tomb-raiding antics and Uncharted’s wise-cracking Nathan Drake. There have also been games starring Indy himself, most notably LucasArts’ brilliant graphic adventures from the early-90s, but it’s been decades since the last interactive Indiana Jones adventure that wasn’t made of Lego. This December, he’ll finally get another crack of the gaming whip with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, from the studio behind Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus – in a game that actually looks like the films.

Set a year after the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark, we find our hat-loving hero licking his wounds after a breakup with fiancee, Marion Ravenwood. When an artefact is stolen from the college Jones teaches at, Indy soon discovers that a great circle connects this missing artefact and the world’s most spiritually significant sites. Jones sets off to discover what links the locations before rival archaeologist Emmerich Voss can plunder them for the Third Reich. A standard break-up story, really.

“Working on this game … It’s been a childhood dream,” beams the Great Circle’s design director, Jens Andersson. “It’s just one of those [properties] that you think you will never get the opportunity to work on.”

It’s a typically globe-trotting story, with Indy starting out in 1937 Connecticut before sneaking through the Vatican, exploring Shanghai, climbing the Himalayas and skulking across Thailand’s Sukhothai temples.

“Making sure that this feels like Indiana Jones has really been the biggest thing with this project,” says creative director Axel Torvenius. “Raiders to us is the most iconic representation of Indiana Jones, the first that the world came to love. So, it felt very natural to keep that as our main reference.”

Working closely with Lucasfilm Games, Axel and the team at MachineGames had access to a trove of previously unseen material. “We’ve been in weekly meetings with Lucasfilm,” says Torvenius. “From audio [to] design, narrative, art … they’ve been an invaluable resource. They are the experts on Indiana Jones and everything that goes with it. We even gained access to their archive … really old and rare material, early concept art from Raiders, rare photos from sets.”

I could see the results of that painstaking research watching a short section of the game, in which Indy leaped across chasms, navigating ancient crypts by torchlight and dodging deadly traps. The Great Circle feels as comfortingly Indy as the quips that accompany each blow to a Nazi’s head – with the difference that you see the action through the hero’s eyes. “We want to create the feeling of not just playing Indiana Jones, but being Indiana Jones,” Andersson explains.

The Great Circle’s main quest will, of course, be a linear, cinematic tale, but there are also open areas that players can explore at their own leisure. As Indy wandered around a bustling Middle Eastern bazaar, a whole host of people and distractions were beckoning. Looking for side-quests and taking the time to explore will earn adventure points that allow players to unlock new abilities of their choice. Some of these optional moments hark back to the old LucasArts adventure games, in that they’re designed to test your puzzle-solving skills. “Maybe you encounter a mystery around the corner: you are encouraged to solve that, and you get rewards for it,” says Andersson, “and these optional puzzles and missions may be even harder.”

Unlike in MachineGames’ over-the-top Wolfenstein games, in which you gleefully riddle Nazis with lead, here Indy must blend in to get by, dressing up in Nazi uniforms or playing a thief. “We have this escalation-based idea on how you tackle scenarios,” says Andersson. “If stealth fails, that’s where hand-to-hand combat comes in – or you can use the whip to disarm people. If all goes to hell and guns start firing, you can pull out your revolver – but that’s really, really high risk.”

If 2023’s disappointing Dial of Destiny taught us anything, it’s that an uncanny-valley digital version of Harrison Ford can completely pull you out of the experience. Though there were some ropey-looking Indy faces shown in game footage back in June, the newer footage I’m shown already suggests a much-improved virtual Harrison Ford.

“As you see in the presentations, we are hitting a really great visual bar now,” agrees Andersson. Unlike Dial of Destiny’s creaky-looking Ford, MachineGames’ Indiana Jones is brought to life by the voice of The Last of Us’s Joel, Troy Baker.

“We were blown away from the very get-go by Troy’s performance,” says Torvenius. “When I heard the first test lines coming in from Troy, I thought they were the original references – but it turns out it they were Troy! ”

There’s one other gaming veteran cracking the whip to get the Great Circle into shape: Fallout and Skyrim head honcho, Todd Howard. Lucas originally penned the idea for Indiana Smith in 1973, and it took seven years to bring his matinee homage to life. For Indy mega-fan Howard (who named his first dog after the films), it’s taken even longer: he pitched his dream Indy game to Lucasfilm all the way back in 2009, finally entrusting it to MachineGames after the green light was given.

Where Lucas and Spielberg once built sandcastles, Howard and MachineGames are building virtual sandboxes. The Great Circle has undoubtedly been a labour of love.

“I think what will surprise people is how authentic it feels,” says Torvenius. “We are extremely happy with where we are at the moment. if you’re an Indiana Jones fan, this will be your fix.”

• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is out December 6 on PC and Xbox; 2025 on PlayStation 5

This interview took place at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. The writer’s travel and accommodation expenses were met by Gamescom.

• This article was amended on 17 and 19 September 2024. An earlier version misnamed Jens Andersson as “Jerk Gustafsson”. Also, a quote that said MachineGames had been in regular contact with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg has been removed as it was based on a misunderstanding, and a reference to this in the subheading has been removed accordingly.