During Sony's latest PlayStation 5 event, Hogwarts Legacy, an open-world RPG adventure game set within the Harry Potter universe, was revealed for the current and upcoming generation of consoles. The title will be set in the 1800s, featuring all-new characters in a time period mostly new to fans of the franchise.
It's one of the most exciting things to come out of the Harry Potter franchise since the original series of films ended nearly a decade ago, and it gives fans hope for an exciting future for the series. With so many possibilities and a massive scope, it's understandable why many fans are going wild over it.
The First of Its Kind
Unlike other popular fandoms such as Lord of the Rings and Star Wars which have both received plenty of fantastic video games, the Harry Potter universe has largely stayed within the confines of the books and films. Star Wars has the Battlefront series, the Rogue Squadron series, the Knights of the Old Republic series, and more. The Lord of the Rings franchise has the recent Middle Earth games, the upcoming Gollum game, and some great game adaptations of the original films. Harry Potter, on the other hand, has two good LEGO games and a whole bunch of game adaptations of its respective films.
While not all of the Harry Potter games were bad, most of them were nothing to write home about. Hogwarts Legacy will truly be a chance for the wizarding world to shine in a way that it never has before, by offering something truly unique to fans of the franchise.
Endless Possibilities
By being set in the 1800s, Hogwarts Legacy allows itself to truly play with an endless amount of possibilities. One of the great strengths of The Knights of the Old Republic, for example, is the fact that it is set thousands of years before the events of the Skywalker Saga. By separating itself from the original series that fans are more familiar with, it allows for the developer to be as creative as possible and play with new possibilities for storytelling. Something that both the Star Wars and Harry Potter film franchises have struggled with in recent years (the sequel trilogy and the Fantastic Beasts series) has been their inabilities to separate themselves from the originals, being too heavily reliant on old pre-established characters and themes.
Like The Knights of the Old Republic, Hogwarts Legacy seems that its biggest strength will be its independence from the rest of the Harry Potter franchise: there is no Voldemort, no Severus Snape, and no Harry Potter to be seen here. But by still setting it within the familiar castle of Hogwarts, the world is familiar, without feeling like a carbon-copy of the movies and books. The developer will be able to come up with its own unique and interesting characters, which will make for a fresh new experience. But best of all, players will likely be able to become whatever type of witch or wizard they wish to be and truly feel like they are a part of the magical wizarding world, something that has never quite been achieved before.
A Unique Role-Playing Experience
The biggest draw of Hogwarts Legacy for most Potter fans has to be its unique role-playing aspect. For years, fans of the series have wondered what it would be like to attend Hogwarts, and to be a wizard or witch themselves. With Hogwarts Legacy, longtime fans will finally be able to do so. Though not a ton of information is yet known, it could probably be assumed that players will be able to customize their own character, choose which House they want to belong in, learn spells of their choosing, and generally decide themselves which path to go down throughout the course of the game.
It wasn't clarified within the trailer, but it will be interesting to see if whether the game will contain aspects of player morality, allowing for the player to choose between good and evil (become a Death Eater?). That's probably too far, but it will be interesting to see how this is handled.
A Massive Scope
One of the biggest appeals of this new title is the massive scope it seems to offer as an open-world RPG. The trailer showcased the player fighting off a wide assortment of magical Harry Potter creatures and enemies, including trolls, dementors, death eaters, dragons, and other fantastic beasts.
With such an expansive universe, this title could take huge advantage of all of the previous world-building that the Harry Potter books and movies have helped to establish over the past two decades. This game could really take advantage of J.K. Rowling's world and even expand upon it in several different ways.
The Start of Something New
As already stated, there has never been a Harry Potter game quite as ambitious or elaborate as this one. Whether it lives up to it remains to be seen, but this could be a new beginning for the universe, setting a new precedent for future wizarding world RPGs to come. Just as Batman Arkham Asylum upped the ante for Batman games, Hogwarts Legacy could easily do the same for the Harry Potter universe.
For all fans know, this title could end up kickstarting a series of fantastic games for the next decade onward. Warner Bros. has done it before with both the Arkham and Middle-Earth games after all. Given the company's great track record with licensed games, it doesn't seem too unrealistic that Harry Potter could receive the same treatment as the other franchises mentioned, which is a interesting prospect.
Hogwarts Legacy was just revealed earlier this week with a 2021 release date, so fans are sure to learn plenty of more information on it before its launch with many of these questions likely getting answered in the coming months.
Hogwarts Legacy is in development for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.