Indiana Jones’ Himalayas Make a Case for a Han Solo Star Wars Game

So long as players are steeped in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s hearty helping of exploration and collectible-hunting, the Vatican and Gizeh can slow to a crawl. Because these two regions have huge maps and are received back-to-back, it can be quite some time before Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has another profoundly cinematic action sequence while players are busy with their noses in their maps as they attempt to hunt down relics, notes, medicine bottles, and Adventure Books. It isn’t until players are prepared to depart from Gizeh that the game truly takes a hard pivot and becomes a high-octane adrenaline rush.

Here, players can simply bask in how superb Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s graphical fidelity and performance are, especially with excellent snow tracking tech. Seeing Harrison Ford’s likeness as Indiana Jones wearing a parka and a fur-lined hat while trekking through mountainous snow in a brutal blizzard recalls the same imagery of Han Solo on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back and, in tandem with the game’s Raiders of the Lost Ark prologue, no other stretch of gameplay makes a more compelling argument for a standalone Han Solo Star Wars game.

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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Has a Love/Hate Relationship with Guns

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle initially stresses melee combat over gunplay, but at a certain point in the story that line blurs.

A Han Solo Game Should Take Notes from Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s Prologue and Himalayas

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was technically not the only game released in 2024 to wield Harrison Ford’s likeness as a carbonite-frozen Han Solo appears in Star Wars Outlaws. Still, while a standalone Han Solo game has always been somewhat of a no-brainer given how it could rely on a safety net of nostalgia and iconography, MachineGames’ reverence for Indiana Jones’ source material and its depiction of Dr. Henry Jones Jr. demonstrates that the studio fully understands the character and has written him phenomenally for a game that can easily span upwards of 40–50 hours.

Much later in the game, Indy visits the Himalayas with Gina Lombardi and players who adore Star Wars will likely be reminded of when Han Solo searches Hoth’s gelid landscape for Luke Skywalker. It would be incredible to see a Han Solo game rendered with the same striking fidelity as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle if one was ever in the works, and being able to experience The Empire Strikes Back’s Hoth sequence in a playable prologue would be exceedingly nostalgic with players igniting Luke’s lightsaber in first-person and being prompted to slice open the belly of a tauntaun.

How a Han Solo Star Wars Game Could Adapt Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s Disguises

On paper, Indiana Jones is not an exhilarating character. He’s not an athlete or a gymnast, and yet he manages to scrape by in some bewilderingly daring circumstances via his fists and luck. If this was what MachineGames relied on wholly, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle would’ve been a slog with slow climbing animations being the icing on a bland cake.

That’s why Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s disguise feature is remarkable—new disguises in each setting allow for greater immersion as Indy adapts to severe weather conditions while also allowing him to blend in with the environment and its fascist or Nazi occupations. A Han Solo game could have the tremendous advantage of piloting the Millennium Falcon in space-faring dogfights and pursuits, but otherwise it would rely on the same principles of gunplay (swapping Indy’s revolver for Han’s DL-44), melee combat, and simple traversal as Han Solo isn’t known for superhuman exploits either.

A disguise system could work similarly brilliantly for Han Solo, where he could immersively don disguises such as a stormtrooper suit with an equipped E-11 blaster rifle. Likewise, it would be neat to see Han wear appropriate outfits for certain locales like the forest moon of Endor. The sky would be the limit with which planets and disguises Han might wear, not unlike Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

Systems

Released

December 9, 2024

Engine

id Tech 7

ESRB

N/A

How Long To Beat

14 Hours

Steam Deck Compatibility

Unknown

X|S Optimized

Yes

File Size Xbox Series

134 GB (December 2024)

Number of Players

1

OpenCritic Rating

Mighty

PC Release Date

December 9, 2024

PS5 Release Date

Spring 2025

Xbox Series X|S Release Date

December 9, 2024

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