What’s better than watching Indiana Jones go on archaeology adventures? Playing Indiana Jones on those adventures! MachineGames action-adventure Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (published by Bethesda Softworks) lets players explore foreign lands and spider-filled caves, crack that whip, land punches and dodge bullets, solve puzzles, collect relics, and untangle historical mysteries.

Audio Director Pete Ward at MachineGames and his sound team put the player in Indy’s shoes by defining the essence of his movements, weight, and character and delivering that through foley performance of footsteps and old leather jacket creaks. Indy’s signature weapon and all-around helpful tool — his whip — was also a key sound to create. It had to feel reactive and satisfying every time the player used it for whatever purpose.

Here, Ward talks about designing the game’s opening level, which recreates that famous scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), collaborating with composer Gordy Haab (who echoed John Williams’s classic “Indiana Jones” film sound in his game score), using sound to lead the player through environments and encourage exploration, capturing custom IRs, mixing for intelligibility all while making the action scene exciting, offering accessibility features for the hearing impaired, and much more!

Official Launch Trailer: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Audio Director Pete Ward

The game begins with the opening scene from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. How did you make the game experience match the film in terms of sound?

Pete Ward (PW): We wanted the first level in the game to match the original film as closely as possible in style and tone, but take the opportunity to update and extend some of the sound and music cues to fit the game experience and upmix or improve the quality of the original sounds where we could.

We were lucky to receive some of the key original sound effects from Lucasfilm Games, although we used these for reference only, rather than actually using them in…