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A major gameplay trailer for Hogwarts Legacy has been revealed showing off the game ahead of its release later this year. The game is seemingly taking inspiration more from the Harry Potter books than the films in redesigning its own version of the Hogwarts castle. Likely this is to make it more explorable for players, but also because the films never did have a consistent layout for the castle. Some elements are clearly taken from the films however, such as the designs of the Great Hall and the castle’s largest tower, along with the films’ iconic soundtrack.
The in-universe laws for witches and wizards to follow were something that stayed consistent across both the books and films. But it appears that Hogwarts Legacy as an open-world RPG is going to give players the option to break these laws.
As with any fiction that introduces magic as a key element, the rules of the Harry Potter universe can be a bit confusing at times. But the world mostly holds together in a consistently inconsistent “it's magic” sort of way. In fact, the only hard and fast rule for witches and wizards that is stated repeatedly in the books is that three unforgivable spells are strictly forbidden. The foremost of these spells, the killing curse, is a major plot point in the story of Harry Potter and is quite brazenly shown off as usable in the Hogwarts Legacy gameplay trailer.
The spell is shown in use while the trailer hints at a mechanic that tracks the player character’s moral alignment based on which quests or locations they explore. This could be a mechanic similar to the lightside/darkside choices found in Knights of the Old Republic. It would appear that consistently making evil choices will eventually bring the player to learning the killing curse.
Iconic though this spell is to the series, it is unlikely the game will allow the player's own custom Hogwarts student to wield it freely in the game's world like the other less deadly spells. The way that this curse is built up in the Harry Potter books means that no spin-off story would use it lightly. What was seen in the gameplay reveal could be the end of a major battle or quest line, perhaps even the main story line, and the player character may have no choice but to use it.
Trailers and gameplay reveals for games do have a history of giving away more than they are supposed to. This is often the case with Nintendo games whose trailers contained spoilers that have huge fan bases that will pick apart every frame looking for details. Perhaps the killing curse shown in the Hogwarts Legacy trailer is partly a spoiler, rather than a gameplay feature players can expect to use regularly.
Hogwarts Legacy is coming Holiday 2022 to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
