Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants is a paid expansion for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (2024), developed by MachineGames and published by Bethesda Softworks. Released on September 4, 2025, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, it runs approximately four hours and is set entirely beneath the Vatican and Rome. It costs $19.99 as a standalone purchase and is included in the Premium Edition of the base game.

The Reddit post in its Knowledge Panel — “The Order of Giants: a great addon just not for…” — captures the consensus accurately: the DLC is a good piece of Indiana Jones content whose limitations are specific and predictable. The puzzles are better than anything in the base game. The scope is considerably narrower. The value proposition is the main dispute.

Technical Specifications

Setting: Under Rome

The base game’s Vatican level is one of the two or three most celebrated locations in The Great Circle — a sprawling semi-open environment that sends Indy through the Sistine Chapel, ancient ruins beneath the holy city, and layers of history accumulated above a labyrinthine underground network. Reviewers spent three-plus hours there without completing everything.

The Order of Giants is set in the same area, with new locations carved out beneath what was already underground. It is almost entirely subterranean: catacombs, sewers, forgotten dungeons, chambers beneath Rome dating to Nero’s reign and the 11th-century Crusades. The above-ground Rome that many players hoped to explore — the Colosseum, the Forum, the city’s famous streetscape — does not appear. GameSpot noted that the expansion “doesn’t have the grandeur of other Indiana Jones adventures” and explicitly trades the base game’s semi-open playground for a predominantly linear corridor structure.

This is the most consistent criticism: the DLC spends approximately 75% of its runtime underground in a city that has more above-ground to offer than almost any other in the world. Players who wanted to see Rome got the sewers instead.

The Story: Father Ricci, a Lost Pope, and the Nephilim

The expansion’s story begins when Indy receives a tip about an artefact possibly hidden by a former pope — a thread that leads to the Nephilim Order, the tribe of giants introduced and left partly unexplored in the base game’s main narrative. The Order of Giants fills in parts of that mystery, tracing the Nephilim’s history back to Nero’s Rome and through the Crusades.

The primary NPC is Father Ricci, a priest who asks for Indy’s help and whose parrot becomes an unexpected co-protagonist. The parrot — functional, charming, and occasionally essential to the investigation — was cited by multiple reviews as a genuine highlight, representing the game’s most successful new character introduction. The Outerhaven noted that “it’s consistently engaging and earnest. I wouldn’t even have minded if this had been the last film.”

New enemies are cultists — a group pursuing Ricci’s potential discoveries — who fight hand-to-hand and are more amenable to Indy’s fist-based approach than the gun-carrying fascists of the main game. Familiar fascists appear in the early sections.

The Puzzles: Better Than the Base Game

The expansion’s unambiguous strength is its puzzle design. Four major puzzles drive the DLC, each praised as inventive and tactile in ways the base game’s puzzles approached but did not consistently achieve:

A puzzle involving guiding a flaming ball through a maze — compared by Seasoned Gaming to a Crystal Maze challenge — requires repositioning mechanical pieces to redirect a rolling sphere’s path. A puzzle involving snake and gladiator statues requires reading the environment and applying the physical logic it establishes. The Outerhaven called both “some of the best puzzles in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, period.”

GameSpot’s review specifically praised “room-scale puzzles” that “challenge your thought process while being wonderfully tactile at the same time.” Several critics who were more mixed on the DLC overall made an exception for the puzzles as the element that most justified its existence.

When to Play It

The DLC is accessible from the Vatican once Indy reaches that area in the main game — it can be started relatively early rather than requiring completion of the base game. Multiple reviewers recommend playing it as a natural detour during the main campaign rather than returning after finishing it:

GameSpot observed that players returning after the credits will find it “distinctly like a side quest with little to no impact on the main story.” The r/indianajones discussion “just finished DLC order of giants, my first [experience]” reflects the alternative: players encountering the DLC as their first Indiana Jones game experience, who found it a positive introduction without the comparison weight of having finished the base game.

The practical recommendation from the review consensus: start the DLC when it becomes available in the Vatican rather than after completing the full campaign.

The Value Debate

The primary community controversy is $19.99 for four hours of content. User reviews are substantially more negative than critic reviews, with the disparity driven almost entirely by price-to-length assessment. “As a DLC for $5–10 would be ok” and “not for $20 as they try to sell it” represent the negative user position. “The spirit of Indy is alive and well, rejoice true old-school fans” represents the enthusiastic positive position.

The comparison to the base game’s scope — where a single level could occupy three-plus hours of exploration — makes the DLC’s compression more noticeable. The comparison to the genre’s standard for narrative DLC — expansions like Far Harbor or The Ringed City that add multiple hours of new locations, enemies, and systems — makes the price point harder to justify.

The counterargument: MachineGames delivered quality over quantity. The puzzles are demonstrably the game’s best. The writing quality is unchanged. Troy Baker’s performance maintains the base game’s standard. The decision of what that is worth depends on how much more Indiana Jones the player wanted and how strongly the puzzle design resonates.

Reception

Critic reception was broadly positive for what the DLC offers, tempered by scope and length concerns. GameSpot: “small-scale Indiana Jones adventure, taking you on an enjoyable side quest that nevertheless feels like it’s missing The Great Circle’s freedom.” Eurogamer: “feels like brief cut-down version of the main game but an enjoyable story carries you through.” Seasoned Gaming: “great 3-4 hours… if you are hungry for more Indiana Jones, you won’t be disappointed.” GamingBolt’s review title captured the tension: “More Indy, Less Innovation.”

The Sixth Axis called it a “mini matinee adventure” — perhaps the most precise description of what the DLC is and isn’t trying to be. It is an afternoon movie rather than a feature film. Whether that is worth $19.99 in 2025 is not a question the DLC itself can answer.