‘Hogwarts Legacy’ is Everything Potter Fans Ever Wanted

             Ever since the release of the ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’ (Philosopher’s Stone if you’re not from North America) video game for Gameboy and PlayStation in 2001, fans of JK Rowling’s ubiquitous Harry Potter series have been clamoring for the chance to truly feel like they’re in the wizarding world. What we’ve gotten instead has been a string of mediocre to awful film adaptation games with janky combat mechanisms and little to no options for exploration. One notable exception was the 2003 game ‘Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup’, which was essentially magical FIFA. While it was undoubtedly a fun game, it captured but a fraction of the complex imaginativeness that is the hallmark of Rowling’s universe, and struggled with the same lack of exploration as other games.

When one immerses themselves into the wizarding world, or any fantasy world for that matter, they want to feel like they’re really there—that they really are a witch or wizard in a magic school. People don’t play Harry Potter games because they want to be Harry, they play them because they want to be like Harry. Without being able to explore the Hogwarts grounds, or attend classes in potions and charms, it just feels like you’re rewatching the Harry Potter movies in worse quality rather than crafting your own story.

That’s why Potter fans (including myself) are so excited for the upcoming open-world RPG ‘Hogwarts Legacy’. Set one hundred years after the events of the Potter series, this game may offer the first chance to really feel like a part of the wizarding world. In a world with as much history and lore as Rowling’s, the possibilities for this game are seemingly endless. While this is great for fans and gamers, it may be a bit intimidating for developers who surely won’t be able to include every single aspect of this fantastic world. With that in mind, I’d like to quickly speculate on what I think game will include, and what the fans want to see.

One thing I definitely believe will be featured in this game is the ability to choose your own Hogwarts house. Hogwarts houses and the sorting ceremony are a staple of the Potter mythology, and every fan of the series has, at some point, imagined what house they would be in. Maybe you relate to Ravenclaw because you fancy yourself a bookworm. Perhaps you’ll choose Slytherin because a Facebook quiz said you’d make a good fit. Or maybe you’ll choose Hufflepuff because Cedric Diggory is hot. Whatever the case, this game would feel incomplete without a sorting ceremony.

The trailer for ‘Hogwarts Legacy’ closes with the statement, “The choices you make now will define the legacy of Hogwarts.” This leads me to believe that the choices you make in this game will have an impact on how the story plays out. I think this is a great idea, as it contributes to a sense of free will within the confines of the game. If certain choices the player makes result in alternate endings or cut scenes, that can go a long way towards making each player’s journey feel unique. With all the different classes available at Hogwarts, the game could have a complex skill tree that evolves as the player attends classes or completes various tasks. A morality system, like in Red Dead Redemption 2, probably wouldn’t be a good fit here, but I could see the developers potentially including dark magic abilities if the player decides to take a certain path.

Will there be a Quidditch mini-game? Please give us a Quidditch mini-game.

‘Hogwarts Legacy’ will be released on next-gen consoles (PS5 & Xbox Series X/S) in 2021, with no specific release date yet. Hopefully this game can live up to its enormous potential, and Harry Potter finally gets the game it deserves.

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