They say that the best things take time, and that’s certainly presumed to be proven as Starfield comes out in September – Bethesda Softworks’ first new IP in decades. But, as it turns out, the idea to go venturing off into a thousand or so worlds (with the FPS capped on consoles – sorry!) wasn’t the only one that Howard had sat on as Bethesda churned out one award-winning The Elder Scrolls and Fallout installment after another.
Apparently, the idea for the new Indiana Jones game came straight from Howard, who has tried to sell the game for years – to no avail.
As part of the ongoing FTC court probe into the Xbox-Activision deal, Bethesda’s head of publishing, Pete Hines, revealed a few key details of the project in an internal email where he notes that Howard “has been trying to get this game made for over a decade,” before describing Howard as the “biggest Indiana Jones fan on the planet.”
Of course, it’s one thing to have a fellow top executive go to bad for you – it’s another thing to deliver, and that’s exactly what happened.
Hines goes on to detail that Howard made the folks over at Xbox go “I have to play that game right now” after selling them the idea of the Indiana Jones game.
The words “amazing” and “terrific” were used to describe the announcement of the project, which wasn’t far off from what exactly happened.
Unfortunately, outside of leaks, we’ve got no information about MachineGames’ Indiana Jones game at the moment. Not to mention, with game development taking much longer and costing more these days, we shouldn’t expect this upcoming Xbox exclusive to be out within the next two years.
But, hey, at least we know Howard is as passionate about this video game adaptation of one of entertainment’s most iconic figures as can be.
Let’s just hope that working on both Starfield and Indiana Jones doesn’t burn him out enough that he has little energy left for The Elder Scrolls VI and Fallout V.
Speaking of Starfield, Xbox is apparently high enough on the game that it literally bought ZeniMax Media so that it wouldn’t be exclusive to the Xbox Series S/X. Then again, given how many companies it had considered buying, including SEGA, before the acquisition and the ongoing purchase of Activision Blizzard, it might have tendered an offer either way based purely on Bethesda’s reputation within the gaming community.
