When people wished for a proper big Harry Potter video game, the monkey paw curled, and not only because JK Rowling cannot stop being a bigot on Social Media (Trans Rights are Human Rights)
Visually Hogwarts Legacy is perfect, the castle is beautifully realised and full of life, students practice magic in the hallways, parchments fly above your head. It is an absolute joy to walk through the halls and comes close to the fantasy the books put in all of our heads.
But the wonder quickly stops when you stop wandering and start playing. Any opportunity to put some magic into the mechanics of the game has been forsaken for the safest, blandest AAA bullshit one can find, without a single creative or even logical thought. Why does my teacher tell me "I have a task for you before the next class" only for the task to be "Do 10 dodge rolls in combat". How is that related to my class? Why do I even dodge roll, did I miss that part in the books?
You dodge roll, because thats what you do in video games. For the same reason the first spell you get is literally called "Basic Spell" (how fucking unmagical is that) and functions as a gun. Because how could one make a video game without a gun? It has never been done. Impossible. The players wouldnt know what to do.
Why does casting Alohomora trigger an Unlocking Minigame??? Is that how magic is supposed to work? No, it s how boring video games without ideas are supposed to work.
Why do I have only 4 spells at a time equipped? Because it is a genre convention. Only in other games of this genre you equip guns, not spells, so going into a menu to equip a different gun is a metaphor for grabbing a different weapon out of your backpack. Doesnt make any sense for magic, does it? Doesnt matter, copied without thought anyway.
Imagine a Hogwarts Legacy that actual took a back step and thought about how to translate the magic, the spellcasting, into its mechanics and controls and structure. A game where for example you map out ward movements instead of pressing a button to make magic happen. A game that looks at games like Persona for structure, not fucking GTA. What could have been
Visually Hogwarts Legacy is perfect, the castle is beautifully realised and full of life, students practice magic in the hallways, parchments fly above your head. It is an absolute joy to walk through the halls and comes close to the fantasy the books put in all of our heads.
But the wonder quickly stops when you stop wandering and start playing. Any opportunity to put some magic into the mechanics of the game has been forsaken for the safest, blandest AAA bullshit one can find, without a single creative or even logical thought. Why does my teacher tell me "I have a task for you before the next class" only for the task to be "Do 10 dodge rolls in combat". How is that related to my class? Why do I even dodge roll, did I miss that part in the books?
You dodge roll, because thats what you do in video games. For the same reason the first spell you get is literally called "Basic Spell" (how fucking unmagical is that) and functions as a gun. Because how could one make a video game without a gun? It has never been done. Impossible. The players wouldnt know what to do.
Why does casting Alohomora trigger an Unlocking Minigame??? Is that how magic is supposed to work? No, it s how boring video games without ideas are supposed to work.
Why do I have only 4 spells at a time equipped? Because it is a genre convention. Only in other games of this genre you equip guns, not spells, so going into a menu to equip a different gun is a metaphor for grabbing a different weapon out of your backpack. Doesnt make any sense for magic, does it? Doesnt matter, copied without thought anyway.
Imagine a Hogwarts Legacy that actual took a back step and thought about how to translate the magic, the spellcasting, into its mechanics and controls and structure. A game where for example you map out ward movements instead of pressing a button to make magic happen. A game that looks at games like Persona for structure, not fucking GTA. What could have been