It's safe to say that Hogwarts Legacy is one of the most hotly-anticipated games of the year. There's been significant buzz surrounding the open world Harry Potter game since it was first announced, and assuming it's not hit with any further delays, the wait to play it is nearly at an end. Hype for the game reached new highs after Sony hosted a special Hogwarts Legacy State of Play presentation a few months back, and now a fresh detail from that presentation has been discovered by eagle-eyed fans in the community.
Posted to Reddit by user Ovaniks, who credits Bubbleslou, Agito, and Darkstar, a fresh detail has been spotted in the Hogwarts Legacy State of Play presentation. It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it detail, but at the 6:14 mark in the presentation, fans can actually see a new element of the game's HUD. It's very brief and almost too dark to see, so it's unlikely that the developers meant for fans to see it this early, but photoshop work by the aforementioned Darkstar gives players a clearer picture (click through the Reddit embed to see the image).
It seems that Hogwarts Legacy's spell buttons were hiding in the State of Play presentation this entire time. In the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, fans can see four icons that presumably represent different Hogwarts Legacy spells that they will have at their disposal, and one even appears to be on a cooldown. This HUD element can be spotted right before the Hogwarts Legacy player character duels with an enemy, with the beams from their wands colliding.
Some fans have expressed disappointment that this seemingly indicates that they will only be able to have four spells equipped at a time, though it should be stressed that this is likely just a placeholder and not necessarily indicative of what the final product will look like. After all, the developers made sure this HUD element didn't appear in the rest of the Hogwarts Legacy State of Play presentation, so it's definitely possible that it could be changed prior to launch.
As for when Hogwarts Legacy will launch, that remains to be seen. As it stands, the Hogwarts Legacy release date has not been announced, but the game is expected to drop at some point in the 2022 holiday season. The safest bets are that the Hogwarts Legacy release date will end being sometime in October or November, but it wouldn't be out of the question for the game to drop in September, though that seems unlikely at this point. Fans will just have to wait for more information to be sure. And maybe next time they see the game, they'll get clarification on its HUD as well as the release date.
Hogwarts Legacy is in development for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.