Indiana Jones Game Reportedly Mixes First-Person and Third-Person

This week, we finally got confirmation that the Indiana Jones game in development at MachineGames would indeed be exclusive to PC and Xbox consoles. The news came from an unusual venue, the FTC vs. Microsoft federal court case, where Bethesda Head of Publishing Pete Hines confirmed the game was originally multiplatform but Microsoft renegotiated the deal with Lucasfilm after the acquisition of Bethesda.

While most insiders were adamant the game would be multiplatform, XboxEra’s Shpeshal Nick said a while ago that the Indiana Jones game would be exclusive. Interestingly, in yesterday’s episode 166 of the XboxEra podcast, Shpeshal Nick claimed to have information regarding the camera perspective that will be featured in the game. MachineGames have only developed first-person games, but Indiana Jones would perhaps be a better fit for a third-person view, like Naughty Dog’s Uncharted.

Well, according to Shpeshal Nick’s source, it will be a combination of both, albeit fixed rather than switchable like in a Bethesda game.

There’s been a lot of talk about whether Indiana Jones would be first person or third person. I may have gotten info about the camera angle.

Now I don’t know if it is finalized or not, because the game I think is still quite a bit away, but from what I’ve been told, from what I’ve heard, it’s going to be both. Not like Starfield where you get to pick, but there’ll be specific – as far as I’m aware, there’ll be specific sections. Some will be in third person, some will be in first person. I have no more detail than that.

It’s an interesting choice, for sure. It remains to be seen whether third-person segments are limited to vehicles or not.

The mixed camera perspective might make sense given what Executive Producer Todd Howard (the Game Director of Bethesda Game Studios titles like Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Starfield) said last year on the Lex Fridman podcast.

I will just say it’s a mash-up. It’s unique. It isn’t one thing, intentionally, so it does a lot of different things that myself and the folks at Machine Games have wanted to do in a game. So it’s a unique thing

The Indiana Jones pitch actually started with Howard a long while ago. As a big franchise fan, he first pitched a concept for an Indiana Jones title back in 2009, and while the game was nearly greenlit, Bethesda didn’t have enough bandwidth to actually make the project at the time.

A few years later, he tried again, and this time MachineGames was available to do it. According to recent rumors, the Swedish team is also busy working on another project, although that might not be Wolfenstein 3.

There’s no release date for Indiana Jones. However, considering that the studio hasn’t released anything since 2019, we might not be far from a reveal.