The video game world has accustomed us to sensational returns of famous brands like Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings, and the other day it was Indiana Jones.
Just a few hours after the news of the birth of Lucasfilm Games (we talked about it here) the studio and the developer Machine Games have announced the production of a new video game inspired by the famous archaeologist-adventurer after several years in which the character seemed to have been forgotten by the industry.
We still know little about the new game, but to worthily celebrate the news we have decided to step into the folds of time and tell the story of the relationship of the good Indy with the world of digital gaming.
A story that in part also speaks of the evolution of some videogame genres.
And now, initials.
Indiana Jones between cinema and video game
Created during the 70s by George Lucas, Indiana Jones is one of the heroes of pop cinema who most marked the collective imagination since the debut of the first film dedicated to him, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), to continue to have luck for the next thirty years thank you to three sequels (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), a television series (The adventures of the young Indiana Jones), some RPGs, game books and a series of dedicated novels.
The basic idea of Lucas (and of Steven Spielberg, who agreed to direct the films written by his friend / collaborator while he was dedicated to finishing the work on Star Wars) was to build a franchise that paid homage to American literature and adventure film serials of the 30s and 40s. Stories with a taste of the exotic, set in the four corners of the world and centered on daring adventures based on fantasy, exoticism, action and mystery.
A little thanks to the inherent strength in this model, a little because of Harrison Ford's good characterization of the good Indy and obviously for the talent of an entertainment film professional like Spielberg, the series was a success and confirmed Lucas' talent as a producer of billionaire brands.
A small triumph that, thanks to the explosion of the gaming phenomenon, led toarrival of Indiana Jones in the world of video games.
The debut dates back to 1982 on the Atari 2600 with Raiders of the Lost Ark, an action taken obviously from Raiders of the Lost Ark, followed by titles based on original stories such as Indiana Jones in the Lost Kingdom (1985) and from the transpositions of the other two films of the brand.
The relationship between Indy and digital gaming seemed completely similar to that of dozens of other famous brands transferred to the gaming market, but since 1989 the story has a small but interesting twist.
The 90s and the wonder of graphic adventures
In 1990 Lucasfilm Games becomes LucasArts Entertainment Company, a completely renewed division of the gaming sector of the companies of the good George. Perhaps out of pure love for narrative experimentalism, perhaps for commercial strategy, LucasArts threw itself into the field of graphic adventures, a newborn genre that Lucasfilm Games had already made its own since 1986 with M by Ron Gilbert.
As Indiana Jones and Star Wars began to dominate the action / adventure charts, it also saw the light Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure (here a nice retrospective on the game), point-and-click version of the third episode of the film series, followed by Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, which is one of the main productions of the company together with the Monkey Island games.
Built on a completely original plot which saw the adventurer / explorer on the trail of the lost accounts of Atlantis (obviously), Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is still today a little classic for multiple reasons.
First of all, it went down in history as a title capable of successfully blending the classic style of LucasArts adventures of the golden age (in fact, the game came out immediately after The Secret of Monkey Island) with that of the archaeologist's adventures, a fact that he managed to give to the game a strong and decisive identity. If we add to this the ability of the designer and screenwriter Hal Baarwood (author of Sugarland Express and co-author of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, both by Steven Spielberg), we are faced with a game capable of giving fans a story that is absolutely able to stand up to those of the films in the series. In fact, there are not a few fans of the brand that because of its artistic component consider The Fate of Atlantis to be a sort of “unofficial” fourth episode in the Spielberg series.
Finally, The Fate of Atlantis has gone down in history for a fundamental characteristic that few other games of the same genre have had the courage to follow: arrived at about three quarters of the game, we could choose how to continue the adventure through three different "paths" that made it develop differently, as in a bizarre mix of graphic adventure and narrative game.
Unfortunately, The Fate of Atlantis was the brand's only graphic adventure to be developed despite planning a sequel, Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix, later canceled and turned into the subject of a two-part comic miniseries released in 1993 by Dark Horse Comics.
In any case, The Fate of Atlantis remains in the annals as one of the best and most archetypal graphic adventures ever created.
90s / 2000s: the age of action blockbusters
For Indy, the rest of the 90s is therefore a succession of action / adventure games , with at least six titles released for Nintendo and PC.
In the meantime though Indiana Jones' impact on the gaming world was materializing in other ways as well, perhaps even more significant.
It is 1996 when Eidos Interactive publishes tomb raider, an action-adventure that encoded some aspects of the genre: great levels to explore, a game mechanics based on the combination of puzzles, rough paths to overcome and shooting. Already to the commentators of the time it was clear that the new IP, based on the adventures of the archaeologist and adventurer Lara Croft (committed to recovering important artifacts all over the world), it was none other than a sort of "version 2.0" of Indiana Jones, updated to (almost) 2000 and built on more action ingredients.
Indiana Jones's Tomb Raider takes the rest many narrative elements: a very different but equally charismatic, sarcastic and fascinating heroine, a continuous wandering from continent to continent, of ruthless rivals as enemies. For last, the almost natural propensity for pushed serialization which as we know in the space of about twenty-five years has led to a long main saga, a reboot and the birth of a franchise almost as strong as that of Indy itself.
An extraordinary success that evidently led LucasArts to a more than understandable choice, that is develop a third-person action / adventure with mechanics quite inspired by those of Tomb Raider. The result was Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, once again developed under the artistic direction of Hal Barwood, the mastermind behind The Fate of Atlantis.
Set after World War II, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, set during the Cold War, immersed us in the search for the Tower of Babel and saw the Soviets engaged in the place of the usual SS.
Although undoubtedly derivative with respect to Tomb Raider, The Infernal Machine represented an excellent "level-up" of the series, which decreed a moderate success and once again the acclaim of the critics, such as to lead to two sequels, Indiana Jones and The Tomb of the Emperor, in 2003, and Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings (2009), structured on the same type of gameplay and atmosphere.
Today: a great return
The 2000s Indiana Jones trilogy opened and closed a golden age for the franchise, but once that phase is over there is little left. The impression is that the attempt of the Lucas series to enter the history of contemporary action / adventure has materialized in a sort of comet-operation, not too convinced and without the strength shown by other brands.
Between LEGO Indiana Jones games (two, one from 2008 and one from 2009) and an online game on the Facebook platform (2011), Indy seemed to have tiptoed out of the scene and the apparition a few days ago surprised not a few people.
A return that comes after the mass video game was dominated by another great brand inspired in some way by the Lucas saga, that is Uncharted, all built on the fundamental elements of "mood jonesiano“: Fascination for adventure, charisma and humanity of the main character, a combination of action, mystery and exploration.
In fact, while Tomb Raider was going through a period of suffering that was later recovered, Uncharted held the "Indiana Jones paradigm" high in the gaming sector and created perhaps the most interesting heir to the character of Lucas and Spielberg.
We don't know what MachineGames has in store for us, and no doubt we should expect it not a very short period of development, but the reasons to be confident are all there: at least twice the Indiana Jones saga has managed to emerge making a fundamental contribution to the history of the videogame industry and our hunger for fun thanks to both its strong lore and an inspired play direction.
One thing is certain: if there is one thing that is not lacking, it is curiosity.
