Indiana Jones and The Great Circle: Meet Gina Lombardi

There’s a legacy of women featuring alongside Indiana Jones in the various titles in the franchise, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, the upcoming game from MachineGames, is hardly an exception. Investigative journalist Ginetta "Gina" Lombardi is the latest to adventure alongside the famous archaeologist.

In a The Best War Games interview, lead narrative designer Tommy Tordsson Björk discussed who Lombardi is and what role she’s set to play in Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, both as an ally and foil to Indy.

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By Josh Cotts

Gina Lombardi and The Great Circle

In navigation, a Great Circle is a plot of the shortest distance between two points on a globe. Because the Earth is round (technically an oblate spheroid), the shortest distance isn’t a line, but rather an arc. Todd Howard, who developed the initial game pitch for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, was interested in the idea of creating a great circle between some of the greatest wonders of the world and trying to understand the significance of the fact that this Great Circle would bisect the Earth as a premise for an Indiana Jones story.

The idea doesn’t just fascinate Indy but also the Italian reporter Gina Lombardi. Lombardi, played by Italian actress Alessandra Mastronardi, is deeply invested in the mystery of the Great Circle as well, for deeply personal reasons relating to her sister's disappearance, explained Björk.

For Gina, this is a matter that is as close to the heart as it comes. She and her sister have always had a strong bond, growing up in sometimes harsh conditions, but determined to do something useful with their lives – one pursuing the mysteries of history and the other pursuing the truth about the world.

Lombardi is not meant to be a sidekick to Jones, but rather his intellectual equal. Beyond her personal investment in the mystery, Lombardi is whip-smart and perceptive, and she challenges Jones in a way that makes the game’s narrative a richer treasure than any that Jones has discovered.

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On top of that, Lombardi is extremely dedicated to and gifted at her work as an investigative reporter. Her coverage of fascist Italy got her labeled subversive and arrested. She spent time in prison for her coverage, where she met a resistance movement whose underground publication she started writing for. This makes it all the more important to Lombardi’s characterization that she avoids a common pitfall of Indiana Jones' leading ladies: becoming a damsel in distress. Given her critical role in the game that Björk detailed, both in terms of narrative and gameplay, it would do her a great disservice not to break that pattern.

Gina is someone who always tells it like she sees it, which may explain why she’s such a good journalist. This habit of not skirting around the truth is also what got her into major trouble … Gina’s sister is an expert in dead languages, and she’s been missing for some time now. Gina suspects that Emmerich Voss is behind her disappearance, who also happens to be searching for the secret of The Great Circle – something that Indy is keen to get to the truth about. Gina will follow the player along as a companion for a large part of the main adventure and some of the side adventures, providing help during puzzle interactions and lending a hand when the two get into trouble.

Jones and Lombardi meet undercover at the Vatican as part of their separate investigations dovetailing, and Lombardi remains at his side as the two work to uncover the mysteries of the Great Circle and discover what became of Lombardi’s sister. Knowing Lombardi will be helping Jones with beating down fascists as well as solving Indiana Jones and The Great Circle's puzzles also paints her as being capable as a fighter, something that could mean that Lombardi will be able to more than keep pace with the legendary archaeologist.

There are still a lot of mysteries about who Lombardi is as a character and what her role in the story will ultimately be, and players will be able to unravel those as Jones and Lombardi unravel the mystery of the Great Circle.

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