Avalanche Software and Warner Bros. Entertainment are slated to release the new Hogwarts Legacy game set in the world of the long-running Harry Potter series. There was footage of the common rooms and brand-new gameplay that was released earlier this month- which gave an insight into the game mechanics, setting, and characters to an extent. Along with the pre-order already live for the release in February 2023, the game is garnering a lot of traction in the media. The ambitious title can get a lot of things right for long-running fans as the fascination is most definitely in the details. This makes it imperative to iterate the importance of gaming analytics services as with a bigger player churn, there is more data that can be collected to improve a game’s UI-UX.
The attention to the finer detail and the right touches are what is required to truly make the game magical amongst a plethora of games that are set to release in the coming year. Let’s look at some of the details that we know about the upcoming release of Hogwarts Legacy:
The Common Rooms
The Gryffindor common room looked the most reminiscent of older games and brought a warm feeling for the player with portraits of older students and board games along with carpeted floors. The Slytherin common room definitely takes the cake for the best-looking entrance. It houses an elaborate snake that animates itself across the entrance, to begin with. It comes with the highest ceilings and a number of fossils and relics that set the mood for the dark dungeon-like rooms. The common room is essentially underwater with tinted glasses that can be peered through to have a look at creatures in the lake. The engravings on the wall give it a very dark and dingy feel but also provide the space with a lot of history and personality. Ravenclaw being the house of the smart and inquisitive, rightfully has expanses of sprawling bookcases and a central chamber that doubles down as a glass dome to look into the open sky. The final Hufflepuff common room looks the coziest and magical with wood-paneled interiors and enchanted shrubbery littering the premises.
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New items, Side missions & Usable Dark Arts
Each of the common room trailers features the player wearing a house-specific variant of their robes. There is a way to gain access to these ‘house fanatic robes’. Simply link your Harry Potter fan account to your Warner Bros. Games account to receive a few other special rewards along with the robes. The recent footage shown at the Gamescom event follows a side mission that seems very elaborately written. Community manager, Chandler Wood confirms on Twitter that this is indeed just a optional side mission- opening up expectations to players that the main quest lines would be a lot more detailed. The quest follows a Slytherin character called Sebastian Cello who is trying to reverse a curse that is ailing his family. He believes researching Salazar Slytherin and their dark secrets in Hogwarts’ premises would somehow help his case. The PlayStation State of Play event introduced the mechanic where the player is able to learn different spells from companions across the story line. No spells are out of reach as the option to learn dark magic which are prohibited by the Wizarding law is also in reach of the player to use in the game.
Morality System, Quidditch & Exclusive Content
The game’s FAQ clearly states that there will not be a morality system built in-game as it could hinder the openness of the players’ free will. But instead, it is put across that players will indeed encounter a number of quests and storylines throughout the duration of the game that will directly influence the witch or wizard they choose to become. It sounds like the same mechanic from Witcher 3, where one is able to make important decisions in dialogue and actions that does not inevitable provide a light and dark side meter to tell a player if they are doing the right thing. This directly ties in with the house that the player is put into by the sorting hat in the beginning of the game.
A recently updated FAQ on the game states that unfortunately, the wizard sport of Quidditch will not be playable in this game. Although that is the case, the player can indeed use brooms to traverse the huge expanse of the game and for broom races. Subsequently, the player is also able to take flying lessons to master the movement and experience the joy of flying around the game.
The game’s pre-orders are already live, where the game has exclusive content on PlayStation which includes an additional mission that is not available on other platforms. This mission is not tied to pre-orders, and is set to be about a haunted store in the town of Hogsmead. Pre-orders on the PlayStation to the Felix Felicis Potion recipe (the luck potion) which is set to be a boost to item drop modifiers and critical chances in combat for a limited period of time. Every pre-order of the game whether it is PC or console, will get access to the Onyx Hippogriff mount which seems like an exciting change to only traversing on broomsticks. The community has had mixed views on the contents of the collector’s edition. More specifically, the physical content that came with the collector’s edition. The digital content of the same includes everything from the digital deluxe edition that has the Dark Arts cosmetic pack, an exclusive dark arts battle arena and a Thestral mount- which is the only way one can get access to this particular beast. Alongside this, the collector’s edition has a steel case and a life-size magnetic wand with a spell book that doubles down as a floating base for the wand.
Delve into a Magical World of Wizardry
Hogwarts Legacy’s minimum requirements are put down with a a processor of Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600, 8GB RAM with a GPU of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 or AMD RX Vega 56 to run the game on 1080p in the lowest settings. This high precedence in system requirements warrants the game’s release performance to being slightly buggy as other games like Cyberpunk 2077 which had similar requirements crashed on PC upon release.
Either this game is going to look absolutely incredible upon launch or it is going to be un-optimized. This is unlikely as the game has already been delayed over six months since it’s initial release date. This could also imply that they are focusing less development time on the PC version so as to ensure that the console releases go smoothly in the first cycle of release. With Sony investing in a lot of exclusive content and marketing schemes for Hogwarts Legacy’s release, the game will be most suited to play on the PlayStation 5.
What do you think about the early looks of one of the most anticipated releases of 2022? What was your favorite part of the gameplay in Hogwarts Legacy? Let us know down in the comments!
