If you’ve been wandering through the Vatican or getting lost in the jungles of Sukhothai lately, you probably noticed a hefty download bar greeting you. MachineGames just dropped another update, and honestly, it’s the kind of maintenance pass that makes the game feel way less "janky" than it did at launch. We’re not talking about a massive expansion here—that was The Order of Giants back in September—but rather a collection of fixes that finally kill some of those game-breaking bugs that have been haunting the Great Circle for over a year.
The big headliner in the latest Indiana Jones and the Great Circle patch is the "Pankot Palace" outfit. It’s free for everyone. If you remember Temple of Doom, it’s that sharp, white tuxedo look Indy wore to dinner before things got, well, sacrificial. It’s a nice touch, especially since most of the cool skins were originally locked behind pre-orders or the Premium Edition. But let's be real: you probably care more about whether the game still crashes when you’re trying to whip-swing over a pit of spikes.
What actually changed in the latest update?
Most of the "under the hood" stuff is focused on polish. One of the most annoying issues was the voiceover balance. Have you ever been in a high-stakes cinematic where Indy is whispering about an ancient artifact while the background music is absolutely blasting your eardrums? They finally tweaked that. The dialogue is now actually audible over the score.
They also tackled a weird Xbox-specific glitch. Apparently, the console’s power-saving mode was occasionally kicking in right in the middle of cutscenes. Imagine being five minutes into a dramatic story beat and your screen just goes dark because the Xbox thinks you’ve walked away. That’s supposedly gone now.
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On the technical side, if you're lucky enough to own an NVIDIA 50-series card, the game now supports "RTX Hair." It sounds like a gimmick, but it basically uses a new tech called "linear swept spheres" to make Indy’s hair look less like a stiff plastic block and more like actual, individual strands that react to light. It’s super resource-heavy, though—you’ll want at least 16GB of VRAM to even think about turning that on without your frame rate tanking.
Sorting out the mission bugs
A lot of the fixes in the Indiana Jones and the Great Circle patch focus on "soft-locks." These are those lovely moments where you can’t progress because a door won’t open or a character won’t move.
- The Vatican Necropolis: There was a nasty bug where if you threw the Antique Bust into a weird spot, you couldn’t get it back, effectively bricking your save. They’ve added some safeguards there.
- The "Lucky Hat" Glitch: If you were using the Lucky Hat ability and got downed while trying to squeeze through a wall, Indy would sometimes just stand up and get stuck inside the geometry. Fixed.
- Sukhothai Boat Issues: Gina’s voice lines on the boat radio now have the proper "radio filter" effect, and more importantly, the boat engine sounds shouldn't loop forever after you reach the village.
- Gizeh Progression: Indy now gives a verbal hint about needing a lighter if you try to enter the first Stelae tomb without one, which should stop people from wandering around confused for twenty minutes.
It's also worth noting that if you're a completionist, the "A Mystery Begins" journal entry for the DLC should now show up correctly even if you’d already finished the Vatican section before buying the expansion.
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Performance on PC vs. Console
MachineGames is still leaning hard into Path Tracing. It looks incredible—easily some of the best lighting in any game right now—but it's still a beast to run. The patch includes updates to DLSS 4 for those on the newest hardware, utilizing a new "transformer-based model" for Ray Reconstruction. Basically, it makes the image look cleaner and stops the "ghosting" effect you sometimes see on moving objects when ray tracing is active.
For the rest of us on more "mortal" hardware, the game remains demanding. You still need a solid SSD and a card that supports hardware ray tracing just to hit the minimum specs. If you're on the Steam Deck or a handheld like the ROG Ally, the game now recognizes those devices and automatically sets "suitable" video settings so you don't have to spend an hour in the menus just to get a stable 30 FPS.
The Anniversary factor
Since we’re now well past the one-year mark for the game, this update feels like a "thank you" to the community. Along with the fixes, the developers shared some wild stats: over 400 million photos taken with Indy’s camera and a billion enemies defeated. It shows the game has a lot of legs.
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The addition of New Game+ in the previous major update really changed the replay value. Being able to carry over all your Adventure Books and unspent points makes the higher difficulty levels much more manageable. Plus, if you finish the story on New Game+, there’s a secret ending sequence after the credits that wasn't there at launch.
How to get the most out of the update
If you're jumping back in, don't just look for the new tuxedo. There are a few quality-of-life changes you should check out in the menus:
- Check the Quick Inventory: It now tells you if your current outfit is "safe" or "restricted" in the area you're standing in. No more guessing if the Nazis are going to shoot you on sight.
- Tune the Radios: In the Vatican levels, you can now actually tune the radio sets to hear news broadcasts that flesh out what's happening in the world during the game's timeline.
- Reset to Default: If you messed with your graphics settings and everything looks like a blurry mess, there's finally a "Reset to Default" button that actually works.
Honestly, the game is in the best state it’s ever been. It’s still a heavy game, and it still has that signature MachineGames "weight" to the movement that some people find polarizing, but the polish in this Indiana Jones and the Great Circle patch goes a long way.
To make sure your game is fully up to date, check your build version in the "About" screen. On Steam, it should update automatically, but if you're on the Xbox app on PC, sometimes you have to manually trigger the update through the library "Manage" tab. Once you're in, head to the "Outfit" tab in the options menu to claim that Pankot Palace gear and get back to the archaeology.
Actionable Next Steps
- Check VRAM usage: Before enabling "RTX Hair" or "Path Tracing" in the new update, ensure you have at least 12GB to 16GB of VRAM to avoid massive stuttering.
- Enable Radio News: Explore the Vatican levels and interact with the radio sets to hear the newly added news broadcasts for extra lore.
- Swap Outfits: Visit the 'Options' menu and navigate to the 'Outfit' tab to equip the free Pankot Palace tuxedo or the Cairo jacketless look.
- Update GPU Drivers: Ensure you are running the latest NVIDIA or AMD drivers (January 2026 releases) to take advantage of the new DLSS and FSR stability fixes included in this patch.