Avalanche Software's new game, Hogwarts Legacy, is due out on February 10, 2023, and anxious fans have combed through every tiny detail of what has been shown of the game so far, unearthing a series of portraits of the same woman recurring in multiple rooms. This discovery, born from the intense scrutiny of Hogwarts Legacy's ASMR video, has gamers piecing together what significance a recurring portrait might have.
Hogwarts Legacy is a hotly anticipated title, with gameplay leaking as far back as 2018. Its official announcement came in September 2020, with a planned release date of 2021. After several delays, the game is finally close at hand, set to arrive in the first quarter of 2023. Fans of both narrative-driven open-world RPGs and the Harry Potter IP are eager to immerse themselves in a fully-realized Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, set a century before the events of the beloved franchise books.
Following a PlayStation State of Play extended trailer in March and an almost hour-long video showcase at the beginning of November, fans have been piecing together any and all concrete information they can about Hogwarts Legacy's mysteries. A Reddit post by Caesar_VII has detailed a pattern within the shown gameplay footage. Several portraits scattered throughout the halls of Hogwarts appear to be of the same woman, sitting slightly hunched, with eyes that seem to follow the viewer. What level of relevance this bares to the gameplay experience is yet to be determined, but it does rise above the level of coincidence and has gamers speculating.
One leading theory for the suspicious repeating portrait in Hogwarts Legacy is that it is simply a placeholder image to be filled in by someone else's likeness before the game ships. Another more fulfilling possibility is that the portrait represents a quest giver in the game, able to be accessed from multiple areas of Hogwarts castle, where each stage of the quest centers around whichever room the portrait occupies. But perhaps the most intriguing theory comes from Reddit user Jarrenalun, who posits the portrait may well be the likeness of Morgan Le Fay, a benevolent and powerful enchantress from the mythological legend of King Arthur. This theory has some credence to it, as Hogwarts Legacy's plot is rumored to have Merlin and his bearing on the wizarding world as a central fixture.
The only certainty is that for those waiting to play Avalanche Software's Hogwarts Legacy, recently nominated for The Game Awards' most anticipated games, February 10 cannot come soon enough. Until then, fans will continue to dig up any and every detail regarding the game that they can.
Hogwarts Legacy releases February 10 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. A Switch version is also in development.
Source: Reddit
