Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is an impressive ray tracing showcase on Xbox Series X and even Xbox Series S, according to a new in-depth analysis shared online today.
In their tech review of the action-adventure title developed by MachineGames, which is now available in early access for those who purchase one of the game’s special editions, Digital Foundry highlighted how the game is an impressive ray tracing showcase on both Microsoft’s current-generation consoles, thanks to its main visual feature, ray-traced diffuse global illumination. This is used to calculate indirect lighting from light sources like the sun, making the lighting in pretty much every scene feel incredibly natural. In a couple of scenes shown in the video below, RTGI makes scenes with light pouring from outside look incredible, with no light bleed or gaps in the lighting. Even more impressive is how clean it looks, although there are some light image quality stability issues when moving the camera around quickly, and the fact that, on Xbox Series X, the game averages 1800p resolution and successfully targets 60 FPS gameplay. Building the lighting system of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle using ray tracing was also an excellent choice for the game’s setting, as Indy explores a lot of locations that have natural lighting, enhancing the experience considerably while making the whole game a feast for the eyes.
MachineGames also managed to get the game running decently on Xbox Series S with RTGI. Unsurprisingly, some compromises had to be made, such as lowering the resolution to 1080p and below, but generally, experiencing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on the system is perfectly viable, even with some image quality issues caused by a disappointing implementation of Variable Rate Shading, lower texture quality and more.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is an impressive game not only for its gorgeous visuals but also for its gameplay and story, which is one of the best Indiana Jones stories ever made. You can learn more about the game by checking out Alessio’s review.
