Hogwarts Legacy is the upcoming RPG from Avalanche Software which will put players in the shoes of a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the late 1800s. The Wizarding World has a huge amount of lore and among the largest and most dedicated fan-bases of any media franchise, so the developer will have some big decisions to make when deciding what is and is not included in the games.
Since players will be put in the role of a Hogwarts student it seems likely that Hogwarts Legacy will avoid giving them access to the three Unforgivable Curses. However, the nature of these curses in-game raises questions about player freedom and could pose a big challenge for Avalanche as it tries to strike the right balance in its upcoming RPG.
The Unforgivable Curses
The three Unforgivable Curses are the Cruciatus Curse, which causes immense agony and was used to torture the parents of Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter books and films; the Imperius Curse, which allows the caster to override the free will of the victim; and the most infamous Unforgivable Curse, Avada Kedavra: the Killing Curse. Students learn about each of these curses at Hogwarts in their defense against the dark arts lessons, but by the time of the first Harry Potter book any Wizard caught using one of these curses can be sentenced to life in Azkaban.
There are some exceptions. Aurors like Mad-Eye Moody were permitted to use these curses during the First Wizarding War, for example. In general, however, the Unforgivable Curses live up to their name, and unless a wizard or witch can prove that they only cast one of the curses while under the effects of the Imperius Curse a life sentence in Azkaban is automatic.
The challenge for Hogwarts Legacy is simple: will the game give players access to these curses? The initial answer might appear to be no. The studio could shy away from allowing players to instantly kill or torture their fellow students in-game. However, there are a few reasons the situation may be a little more complicated.
Player Freedom v Tone
For a start, fans of the franchise don’t yet know how spells will work in Hogwarts Legacy. It’s unclear if players will learn certain spells and then have access to them for the rest of the game, for example, or whether certain spells will be limited to certain segments to stop players slinging off a Cruciatus Curse during herbology class.
Not only that, but students at Hogwarts do appear to learn of the Unforgivable Curses in class, if not how to cast them. In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Barty Crouch Jr. is seemingly allowed to demonstrate the Cruciatus Curse on an spider in class in both the book and the movie adaptation. Though he’s a Death Eater in disguise, it appears that the curses are permitted for the sake of defense against the dark arts, and that students would know what the curses are.
To add to the complication, even the heroes of Harry Potter use the Unforgivable Curses on multiple occasions. Harry attempts to use the Cruciatus curse on Bellatrix Lestrange in The Order of the Phoenix after she kills Sirius Black. In the sixth book – though not the movie – Harry casts the Cruciatus Curse on Snape after Dumbledore’s death, though like Bellatrix Snape easily deflects its effects. Both Harry and Ron also use the Imperius Curse while infiltrating Gringotts Wizarding Bank.
In other words it seems that Hogwarts students not only know about the Unforgivable Curses, but that the stories if not the government of the Wizarding World permits them to use the curses under dire circumstances. Indeed, if a Hogwarts Legacy player was trapped with a troll like the one in the trailer, it’s hard to see how the Unforgivable Curses would be completely off the table in that character’s mind if their life was at stake.
This raises the biggest question about the Unforgivable Curses in the upcoming game. It’s a question of the player’s roleplaying freedom: if Avalanche limits access to the Unforgivable Curses, players might be forced to act unrealistically or out-of-character during life-or-death situations. Though the main story of Hogwarts Legacy has yet to be revealed, the Harry Potter stories and the trailer makes it seem likely that players will find themselves in significant danger at times.
The Future of Hogwarts Legacy
Hogwarts Legacy will be a single player game, so it’s not like players could grief each other by casting the Unforgivable Curses all the time. It’s possible that the best path forward for Avalanche is to give players access to all of the spells they might learn at Hogwarts but to trust that the player’s own roleplaying sensibilities and engagement with the story will prevent them from using the curses unless absolutely necessary.
It’s hard to see, however, how Avalanche could integrate the Unforgivable Curses into Hogwarts Legacy's gameplay in a way where the world reacts realistically. If the player is out on a quest with a friendly NPC and casts Imperius to get past a guard, for example, should their companion have a crisis of conscience? If so, that might disrupt the game’s narrative at certain points, but if not the game risks making the Unforgivable Curses seem far more normal than they are in-universe.
It’s also tricky when spells like Imperius could be so useful during missions. There may be a way for Avalanche to balance the ability to use the Unforgivable Curses with significant but non-Azkaban in-game consequences, but the Unforgivable Curses nonetheless pose some of the biggest challenges for Hogwarts Legacy’s tone versus its roleplaying freedom. For now fans of the Wizarding World will have to wait for Avalanche to release more details about the upcoming game. Whether or not the studio will be able to strike the right balance with darker aspects of the Wizarding World like the Unforgivable Curses remains to be seen.
Hogwarts Legacy is in development for the PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.