Harrison Ford is being aged again for the Indiana Jones video game

Harrison Ford was aged out on the big screen last year for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and video game makers are using the same trick for the whip-cracking hero’s latest appearance on the small screen.

“Let me tell you what you’re missing, Dr. Jones,” a bespectacled Nazi mocks the archaeologist-adventurer buried up to his neck in sand in the trailer for “Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.”

A few seconds later, the Nazi receives a sharp headbutt and strains of the famous melody are heard.

The creators of the game, released on Monday, transport players to the time of the first Indiana Jones film, “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

The villains are familiar, as are the settings and surroundings – ancient structures jutting out of the jungle, flame-lit caves full of loot, rickety suspension bridges over snow-covered ravines.

And players can inhabit the hero in all his youthful glory in a first-person perspective.

The creators knew that the biggest challenge would be to create a compelling young hero.

And unlike the rest of the cast in the game, Indy couldn’t be created by 3D scanning an actor.

“We didn’t have the opportunity to go back in time and scan a young Harrison Ford,” said Axel Torvenius, creative director at MachineGames.

Torvenius said Ford’s characterization was put together using unreleased archival footage from the original film.

“We looked at photos of Harrison Ford to make sure we were hitting the right facial feature that he had at the time,” he said.

“The ability to access their archive was invaluable in being able to create the 3D fabric of the Indiana Jones character.”

– “Immense” pressure –

In the game, which took four years to develop, the archaeologist has to solve puzzles and get involved in chases and fights.

Set in 1937, the film follows Indy from the Vatican to Egypt to China in search of a mysterious power coveted by Nazi spies.

The Great Circle is far from the first game to explore Indy’s story.

More than a dozen adjustments have been made over the past four decades.

Knowing how protective gamers can be towards titles they grew up with, the Swedish studio felt a huge responsibility to get the game right.

“The pressure was immense,” said Torvenius, adding that his team did its best to recreate the style and atmosphere set by Steven Spielberg, the director of the original film.

Game designer Jens Andersson agreed, adding that he was a big fan of Indiana Jones’ 1990s point-and-click adventure games.

“All of these things are inspiration for what we do here,” he said.

“It was a product of its time and we need to do something new with it.”

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