Launching on December 9, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is the latest Indiana Jones video game—but unlike past games, it’s utilizing the latest id Tech 7 engine (also used byDoom Eternal) and being developed by Machine Games of modernWolfensteinfame. Due to shipping with ray tracing as a minimum requirement, publisher Bethesda has revealed that the system requirements across the board are fairly demanding.
With ray tracing as a minimum requirement, GPUs without the feature have been left out entirely, and for “full ray tracing” or path tracing configurations, Machine Games doesn’t even bother to mention AMD GPUs. Even minimum CPU requirements are pretty high— an AMDRyzen 5 3600or IntelCore i7-10700Kwasenough for 144 Hz gaming. Still, it is only recommended for minimum settings configurations targeting 60 FPS. Though considering that the CPU requirements don’t seem to change between the “Full Ray Tracing” enabled and Disabled requirements, they may be slightly inflated without “Full Ray Tracing.”
The GPU requirements are somewhat more reasonable because this game is designed around hardware ray tracing as a requirement. While some describe this as “the first AAA game to require ray tracing,” I think they’re forgetting or being a little dismissive ofMetro Exodus Enhanced Edition, which similarly doesn’t support GPUs without ray tracing support. That game requires an Nvidia RTX 2060 baseline, whereasGreat Circlerequires an NvidiaRTX 2060 Super, AMDRX 6600, or IntelArc A580. By modern standards, these GPU requirements are to be expected for a game that requires some level of ray tracing enabled at all times.
Things start getting a little more serious when we begin looking at Recommended requirements and up, including the separate “Full Ray Tracing” requirements. On the processing end, 32GB of RAM and high-end, modern Ryzen 7 or Intel Core i7 chips are required. Recommended settings without path tracing demand an NvidiaRTX 3080 Ti-tier GPU, while Thosewithpath tracing demand an RTX 4080.
Once we move onto Ultra settings with path tracing, most of even thebest gaming GPUs, need not apply— only anRTX 4090is considered suitable for the task. Ultrawithoutpath tracing is at least more reasonable, ideal for anRTX 4080or anRX 7900 XT, but these are still astronomically higher requirements than we’re used to.
That said, early impressions of the game are positive, which may justify these requirements for those who play it. With a focus on cinematic visuals and deeply immersive gameplay with elements of stealth FPS an ala Machine Game’s prior work onWolfensteinand deeply immersive, wide-open levels like those seen in the modernHitmangames,Indiana Jones and the Great Circleseems equipped to leverage its monstrous system requirements to turn around what easily looks to be the bestIndiana Jonesgame ever made. Maybe it’ll even be better thanUncharted 2.
Get Tom’s Hardware’s best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.
