Todd Howard says he's been sitting on everything about the Indiana Jones game "forever," from "what Indy was going after" to the "arc he was going to have"

Barely containing his inner nerd as he lifted the curtain on the gameplay reveal for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Todd Howard explains that he's had almost everything about the game, down to granular plot points, planned out for years. 

"I've wanted to make an Indiana Jones game forever," says Howard, now executive producer of the MachineGames game. "I'd had this idea for what it would be like, and the story, what Indy was going after, what period of his life it was in, what kind of arc he was going to have. And as the years went on, I thought, 'Who would be the best studio in the world to make this?' And it was my friends at MachineGames."

Howard previously said that he's been trying to get Indiana Jones and the Great Circle off the ground for over a decade. In June 2023, former Bethesda marketing VP Pete Hines said that "anyone who has seen the pitch [for the game] has immediately said, 'Oh my god, I have to play that game right now.'" Hines may not have been exaggerating, to hear Howard tell it. 

"I can remember pitching LucasFilm on the game and being a little bit nervous because, look, it's Indiana Jones and their response was just overwhelmingly positive, and that excitement has bled through the whole project," he says during the Xbox Developer Direct live reveal. "They have just been so trusting and supportive of everything that we want to do with the game. It's been a long time. I've been a fan of this my whole life and I couldn't be more excited to show you what the team here has been up to." 

Here's everything announced at the Xbox Developer Direct 2024.