Harrison Ford was de-aged last year for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” on the big screen, and video game makers are pulling the same trick for the whip-cracking hero’s latest outing on the small screen.
“Let me tell you what you are missing, Dr Jones,” sneers a bespectacled Nazi to 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 gets a crisp headbutt, and strains of the famous theme tune hustle in.
The creators of the game, released on Monday, are thrusting players back to the time period of the first Indiana Jones film, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.
The baddies are familiar, as are the settings and trappings — ancient structures peeking out of the jungle, flame-lit caverns filled with booty, rickety rope bridges over snow-covered ravines.
And players get to inhabit the hero in the first person, in all his youthful splendour.
The creators knew the main challenge would be to produce a convincing young hero.
And unlike the rest of the cast in the game, Indy could not be created by 3D scanning an actor.
“We didn’t have an opportunity to travel back in time and scan a young Harrison Ford,” said Axel Torvenius, creative director at MachineGames.
Torvenius said Ford’s characterisation was pieced together with the help of unreleased archive material from the original film.
“We’ve been looking at photos of Harrison Ford to try to make sure that we hit the correct facial feature that he had at that time,” he said.
“Having the opportunity to get access to their archive has been invaluable to be able to create the 3D mesh of Indiana Jones’ character.”
– ‘Immense’ pressure –
The game, which took four years to develop, sees the archaeologist solving puzzles while getting tangled up in chases and fights.
Set in 1937, it follows Indy from the Vatican to China via Egypt in pursuit of a mysterious power coveted by Nazi spies.
“The Great Circle” is far from the first game to tackle Indy’s story.
More than a dozen adaptations have been made over the last four decades.
Knowing full well how protective gamers can be over titles they grew up with, the Swedish studio felt a huge responsibility to get the game right.
“The pressure has been immense,” said Torvenius, adding that his team had done their best to recreate the style and ambience set by Steven Spielberg, director of the original movie.
Game designer Jens Andersson agreed, adding that he was a huge fan of the point-and-click Indiana Jones adventure games from the 1990s.
“All these things are inspirations for what we’re doing here,” he said.
“Those were a product of their times and we need to do something new with it.”
