Highlights

  • Hogwarts Legacy offers a commendable open-world experience with immersive locations like Hogwarts and Hogsmeade, although some activities become repetitive.
  • The game restricts flight in certain areas, like Hogsmeade and Hogwarts, which limits exploration and immersion.
  • Removing the boundaries on flight and allowing players to freely explore these locations would greatly enhance the sequel and make it more seamless.

The scope and scale of Hogwarts Legacy are commendable in the first action-RPG of an IP’s budding franchise. Hogwarts Legacy had magically bottomless boots to fill and somehow managed to with its explorable Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, and enveloping Scottish Highlands, even if many of the activities players come across in the open world become repetitive and mundane. The story itself was perhaps always going to fall by the wayside when the game’s main allure was how it immersed players as students at Hogwarts, and the features it offered gave players tons of curricular and extra-curricular content.

It isn’t easy to traverse Hogwarts Legacy’s open world without a broomstick or mount. However, when the game finally makes the entire open world available to freely explore, it is exciting to see how much of the Highlands is actually full of content with areas that can be investigated and looted. Players can go almost anywhere that would be logical, which is a boon in and of itself, and yet there are two locations where flight is restricted: within Hogsmeade and Hogwarts. If a sequel removed these arbitrary boundaries, exploration could be made far more immersive and engaging.

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Hogwarts Legacy’s Sequel Should Allow Unrestrained Flight in Hogwarts and Hogsmeade

Hogwarts Legacy’s Open World Allows for Many QoL Features

Flying too far upward or outward in the open world will lead to an inevitable invisible wall, for instance, though Hogwarts Legacy’s depiction of invisible walls is more explicit, illusory sheens that appear to safeguard the wizarding world from unsuspecting muggles who may stumble near. This isn’t confirmed to be why the game world’s collision is designed that way, but it’s not a reach to make that assumption and have it seem immersively considered since the game needed to have such invisible walls regardless.

Of course, Hogwarts Legacy doesn’t give players a reason to test those boundaries outside of pure speculation and curiosity, at least when they’re out in the Highlands where there might not be anything to interact with in the immediate area. That said, players will be alarmed when they notice that these same collision walls prevent players from flying into the vicinity of Hogsmeade or even near the castle, where the game does not let them near unless they are on foot.

Flying Through Hogwarts and Hogsmeade Could Make for Greater Immersion

Being unable to fly through Hogsmeade’s streets or weave through Hogwarts’ towers isn’t necessarily a detriment to the game and Avalanche obviously had its reasons for thwarting that, but if a sequel was able to remove those barriers it could do wonders for making exploration feel freeing. One of the primary reasons why this seems neglectful and disappointing is because players can often see student NPCs flying by on broomsticks around the castle’s towers and over the walkways and bridges connecting them when they’re making their way through Hogwarts.

NPC interaction such as this in Hogwarts Legacy makes the wizarding school seem alive with activity, but not being able to contribute to those same experiences and sensations while being able to fly virtually anywhere else is sort of a letdown.

Hogsmeade isn’t as upsetting to not be able to fly through, but it could’ve made getting to and from shops much easier without needing to rely on fast travel Floo Flame points as if it was a distinct level or region cut off from the rest of the open world, which is maybe how it was designed. Either way, untethering these leashes and doing away with needless boundaries would make Hogwarts Legacy 2 that much more seamless, especially if it rehashes these same locations.