Decent Game with Terrible AAA Practices (Overpriced, Forced Ray Tracing, Poor Optimisation)

[Mark]

Dont get me wrong. I actually enjoyed the game. But forcing ray tracing and the steep asking price of $80USD ($120AUD in my country) is just a big turn off for those who want to experience a solid movie based game that came out this year. It is one of the few enjoyable games of this year along with Balatro but I feel like it could have been gotten more attention and sales if they just had a reasonable price and actually optimise the game to run without ray tracing. Smfh...

People are definitely side-eyeing that $80 price tag. I mean, $80 is premium territory, right? Gamers are comparing it to big hitters like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom or Starfield, and they’re asking, “Is this really worth it?” The game’s good—don’t get me wrong—but slapping that price on it makes expectations sky-high.

Now, let’s get into the ray tracing drama. The devs decided to go all-in on ray tracing, and here’s the kicker: it’s mandatory. If you don’t have a fancy GPU that can handle ray tracing, well, tough luck—you’re not playing this game. That’s a massive roadblock for anyone running older or mid-tier hardware. Normally, games let you toggle features like this off, but here? Nope. It’s baked into the experience.

So, not only do you need $80 for the game, but if your rig isn’t up to snuff, you’re potentially looking at a hardware upgrade just to play. That makes the real “price” way higher than the sticker. And for some players, that’s a deal-breaker. The game’s cool, but it feels like they’re alienating a chunk of their audience. At the very least, they should’ve given players options. Not everyone’s ready to drop cash on new tech just for one game, no matter how iconic Indy is.

[Nocturian]

Maybe think about "Geforce Now" if you cant afford the hardware. Or go "Gamepass" if you cant afford the full-price. There are many options to enjoy this outstanding game. I did the second.

[HeideKnight]

The normal version of the game is $70 usd both on Steam and on Xbox, as far as I can see. It is a steep price, but has become the standard for AAA games now, unfortunately. As a customer one can react to this by just not buying a game until it is on sale (or play it on GamePass instead). Nobody forces you to buy a game at this price if you do not want to spend this much money.

And the game is definitely not poorly optimised. It runs perfectly fine on the Series S/X and on PC (mine has a RTX 3070 card). There are several videos by Digital Foundry that investigate in detail how the game performs on different hardware.

[fourfourtwo79]

https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/indiana-jones-and-the-great-circle?aff_track=CJ&CJEVENT=f71d1e4cc1c111ef835303030a18b8f7&utm_source=CJ&cj_pid=6305441&cj_aid=13212017

https://www.greenmangaming.com/de/games/indiana-jones-and-the-great-circle-pc/?utm_source=IsThereAnyDeal%20s.r.o.&utm_medium=impact&utm_campaign=affiliate&utm_content=1281797&irclickid=VVCUQ21ZIxyKRDd3H3VzCR5fUkCSxoUlC1KD000&irgwc=1

[StingingVelvet]

Price is a subjective concern. I was paying $70 for some SNES and PC CD-Rom games 30 years of inflation ago so I don't personally get too bothered by that, but I know some are in different situations where money is tight. I am fortunate enough to make a decent living.

What I don't get at all though is performance complaints. Compared to almost anything else "AAA" released the last couple years this game runs like freaking butter.

[Swamp Fox]

I just can't understand for the life of me who they thought would buy this at $70 (or more). People excuse a lot of things by saying games are on Gamepass. When the developer and publisher are owned by Microsoft, that means being on Gamepass is losing money twice.

We are watching an industry that has been coasting on low effort for too long become instantly stuck in cement. I still don't think they understand what percentage of people are fine just turning on Genshin Impact or whatever. We have the Indy movies.

[Mr.Fish]

Prices are the same as they were 30 years ago, don't understand this idea that games are somehow expensive now.

Maybe your mother just never told you how much she was spending at xmas or you only bought budget series/on sale etc.

As far as fancy GPU goes, my 2+ year old £180 budget af rx6600 seems to be doing a fantastic job at stable 60 fps 2560x1080p low/high mix, so i imagine a 6+ year old rtx 20 series is doing just fine too... some insane next level fancy GPUs there....

We already moved on multiple times from older tech, you shouldn't even be gaming on a GPU if you don't accept tech moving on, you should of stayed in the 80s without 3d acceleration.

You can't have your cake and eat it, either you are a pc gamer or you are not, RTX is 6+ year old tech, we will see more and more games utilising the performance of ray tracing specific hardware for many tasks not just ray traced lighting. Best get used to it and get your wallet out.

[StingingVelvet]

Originally posted by Swamp Fox:

I just can't understand for the life of me who they thought would buy this at $70 (or more).

Because it's a great game of a nice length with AAA production values?

[Swamp Fox]

Originally posted by StingingVelvet:

Originally posted by Swamp Fox:

I just can't understand for the life of me who they thought would buy this at $70 (or more).

Because it's a great game of a nice length with AAA production values?

I mean that's a very existent evaluation of this game, but you've missed the greater message about the tides turning in this industry. AAA games that cost $70 just isn't ever going to be a thing to tons of people. And they've lost people like me who used to be core audience as well.

If people can increasingly get free games that give them what they want, they'll play free games, or play whatever indie/niche product speaks to them. There was no reason for me to take a swing on this product because I knew that the puzzles would be more or less nothing, and I was right. You can't actually craft an interesting AAA adventure game, it has to be too easy.

[bruh]

Originally posted by Swamp Fox:

I just can't understand for the life of me who they thought would buy this at $70 (or more). People excuse a lot of things by saying games are on Gamepass. When the developer and publisher are owned by Microsoft, that means being on Gamepass is losing money twice.

We are watching an industry that has been coasting on low effort for too long become instantly stuck in cement. I still don't think they understand what percentage of people are fine just turning on Genshin Impact or whatever. We have the Indy movies.

funny, if this game is such a low effort to make then how come i don't see more games like it?

it's almost like... it's not low effort at all to make a fun first person immersive sim

also you keep saying you have zero interest in the product yet you stay in this discussion forum about a game you say you have no interest in for many days.

https://steamcommunity.com/id/swayzesghost/posthistory

seriously it's 11 pages of you ONLY talking in a discussion board of this game.

you CLEARLY show a great interest in the game and really want to play it, meaning they did a good job putting it for 70 bucks so it can linger in your head so you can immediately buy the game when it goes in discount.

you can keep complaining about AAA but you cannot say that it doesn't work.

[fourfourtwo79]

Compared to the price of graphics cards required for triple A games, the price increase in games so far is miniscule. Mind you, I'm not overly affected, as I play few AAA games these days (Indy is actually a nice surprise overall, was anticipating an Uncharted clone.) I totally understand the sentiment, though.

Still, there's an irony in that people seem totally accepting of the silly prices for graphics hardware (which has doubled to tripled in just ten years), but games, no. There's always offers though, legit stores rather than key resellers, see the links above.

[Carighan]

Ah, "Forced Ray Tracing" is now "terrible AAA practices".

I mean, there's so much to complain about and change in the triple-A industry, and instead we get the non-gamer tourists spamming threads with absolutely deranged takes such as these...

[PanPan]

My biggest issues with the game are :
- Facial expressions and animations aren't great, lazy work with IA (hire actors and do motion capture then ask IA to compile...)
- Bad cascading shadows and poppin
- Bad CPU opti, need RT quality adjustment and assets density (am not asking for raster option)
- Shooting isn't interesting but ok it's Indiana not Rambo
- Gina...

[HeideKnight]

Originally posted by PanPan:

My biggest issues with the game are :
- Facial expressions and animations aren't great, lazy work with IA (hire actors and do motion capture then ask IA to compile...)

Facial expressions and animations in this game are not good? Please take a look in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGTJq32ooxM
which shows a comparison of the intro scene from the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark to the first segment in the game, which replicates this scene from the movie. I think the facial animations are not just great, they are almost identical to the movie.

[Dagtag]

Originally posted by Mark:

Now, let’s get into the ray tracing drama. The devs decided to go all-in on ray tracing, and here’s the kicker: it’s mandatory. If you don’t have a fancy GPU that can handle ray tracing, well, tough luck—you’re not playing this game. That’s a massive roadblock for anyone running older or mid-tier hardware. Normally, games let you toggle features like this off, but here? Nope. It’s baked into the experience.

Give it a rest, technology moves forward…. And its 6 year old hardware at this point.

You know what you also can’t turn off in games? Pbr materials, shadows, the api, physx. This has ALWAYS been a thing, games have always locked out older generations for newer technology.

To suggest you should be able to turn it off is to suggest they spend more time on the lighting overall, less focus on rt, and as a result end up with a game that isn’t optimised, which ironically, is something you also don’t like.

So, not only do you need $80 for the game, but if your rig isn’t up to snuff, you’re potentially looking at a hardware upgrade just to play. That makes the real “price” way higher than the sticker. And for some players, that’s a deal-breaker. The game’s cool, but it feels like they’re alienating a chunk of their audience. At the very least, they should’ve given players options. Not everyone’s ready to drop cash on new tech just for one game, no matter how iconic Indy is.

Its now “new”, its 6 years old. The average upgrade window for a pc is 4 years, if you can’t run the game, thats on you.

You chose an ever evolving hobby, if you don’t like it, stick to older games, but don’t dare to force developers for “options” because that just introduces far more complexity into the mix resulting in bad optimisation.

[PanPan]

Originally posted by HeideKnight:

Facial expressions and animations in this game are not good? Please take a look in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGTJq32ooxM
which shows a comparison of the intro scene from the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark to the first segment in the game, which replicates this scene from the movie. I think the facial animations are not just great, they are almost identical to the movie.

This is just the intro cutscenes.
Now go play the actual game...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpkOyNphI6E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FzWm9-UyYY