'Hogwarts Legacy' and the Missing Magic

This past weekend, I finally got 100% on Hogwarts Legacy because I am a weirdo who will play video games to the bone (this is also one of the reasons I tend to stay away from online games or games-as-a-service where game never ends). I played it to 100% even though, if you’ve been following along with my Substacks, you can tell I’ve been somewhat disasstisfied at the experience even though it technically let me do what I wanted: run around the Wizarding World doing magic stuff.

On a macro level, Hogwarts Legacy is a success, and I don’t want to shortchange the developers at Avalanche who spent years trying to find a way to make an open-world game set in the world of Harry Potter come to life without ruffling anyone’s feathers and the shadow of its transphobic creator hovering over the whole thing. It’s important to preface any comparisons to other games by noting that the Wizarding World IP is extremely valuable and this was never going to be a case where the designers could let their imaginations run wild. While I love games like Mass Effect and Red Dead Redemption, I also need to acknowledge that those games belong to BioWare and Rockstar, respectively, whereas I’m sure every major decision (and probably some minor ones) at Avalanche was fraught, and you can see that in the finished product.

In terms of delivering a game that lets you be a student at Hogwarts and then do magic stuff, Hogwarts Legacy delivers. It’s only once you start digging in that you realize you need a little bit more than that. I thought I would be satisfied with that broad goal, and it wasn’t until I spent dozens of hours with my custom character within that world that I realized I need a lot more than being able to cast Expelliarmus or fly around on a broomstick.

A Story without a Spark

In Hogwarts Legacy, you play a new student at Hogwarts who has been accepted despite it being your fifth year. Presumably, this was done because the option of playing as a first-year (an 11-year-old) skewed the game too young and also didn’t provide as much magic at your disposal. However, why you’re accepted in your fifth year is never explained; it’s just “an unusual thing” and you’ll need to catch up, which means taking a bunch of magic courses. Fine. The story is set also set in the 1800s so as not to interfere with canon Wizarding World stories, Fantastic Beasts and Harry Potter—again, fine.

The main story is that you, New Student (you’re allowed to name your character, but that means everyone just calls you “New Student” or “Young Friend” or any other sort of general term), have been accepted to Hogwarts, but on your way, you and your escort/mentor Professor Fig (this relationship is supposed to be important to your character, but it never comes alive or gains any texture) discover that the a goblin rebellion led by Ranrok (not the best name ever) and assisted by dark wizards Victor Rookwood and Theophilus Harlow (three villains who barely show up after the beginning of the game until reappearing near the end, so you never really care about them or their goals) are in pursuit of the “ancient magic” that you, New Student, can commune with. In the main story, you learn about the Keepers who tried to hide away the knowledge of ancient magic because in the past, a witch who had learned about this power used it destructively. New Student must prove himself/herself worthy while also racing against the bad guys who want this power for themselves.

Because New Student is a cipher, the game is in tricky position. The developers wanted to allow you to have the freedom to design and play as you want even to where you could cast unforgivable curses like Aveda Kedavra (the killing curse). The problem is that while this leaves plenty of room for design (how you dress, look, sound), it leaves little room to build a character. While good/bad morality systems largely seem to be a thing of the past (and perhaps that’s for the best), the game’s dialogue options leave you as either the goodiest of two-shoes or kind of jerk, but there’s no incentive to think about crafting your character’s personality or how they interact with other characters. The story won’t fundamentally change based on your choices, and the choices you make always feel rather milquetoast since there’s no conflict to care about. You, New Student, have no opinions or beliefs to make you bristle against certain choices, and the larger narrative, is clear-cut: the Bad Guys want Power, and so you must Stop Them.

This bland main narrative may have succeeded if Hogwarts Legacy had been populated with a rich supporting cast, but sadly, almost everyone you meet is a dud. The game reached the point where I stopped selecting additional dialogue options because there was no reason to expand on these people. Almost everyone is rendered as two dimensionally as possible. From New Students’ closest relations on down to the random shopkeep out there in the highlands, almost no one in this world is interesting. No character upends your expectations, and no one invites you learn more. Compare this to a Rockstar game like Red Dead Redemption 2 where it feels like every single person you meet isn't there to fill space but has their own rich narrative and had to make the cut against other characters.

The only exception is a young Slytherin student named Sebastian Sallow. Sebastian is trying to find a cure for his twin sister Anne who was cursed by goblins. Despite the protestations of his blind friend Ominis (pronounced “ominous”, because sure) Gaunt, Sebastian keeps going further down the road of dark magic. This is a compelling storyline because Sebastian doesn't start out as evil, but he’s so desperate that he’ll go to the darkest magic if he thinks it will offer an answer. It’s the only storyline (even though it’s optional) where I had to pause and think about my actions—will I try to help my friend or will I try to stop him because he’s being self-destructive?

These little flashes of an interesting story keep popping up to hint at a better game that had a narrative worthy of its impressive landscape and devoted fandom. One mission has you drinking polyjuice potion so you can disguise yourself as the headmaster and get into his office. Another moment clearly came about because someone said, “We should have our version of the Three Brothers scene from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 and let you play it,” and the version in the game is pretty neat. I wish that kind of creative freedom had been more present throughout.

The shortcomings in the story also mirror how the various gameplay loops become fairly repetitive and rely too much on simply gathering items, and how other aspects of the game are fleshed out but whether they’re actually fun or not is debatable (I guess some people will like capturing magical beasts and putting them in a vivarium, but it feels like a holdover from a time in development where people though the Fantastic Beasts movies would be popular). It’s also surprising how much of this game is just you going into various caves and mines when you’re not at Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, or the surrounding highlands.

Proof of Concept

I don’t want to be unnecessarily hard on this game because just getting something like this to exist is tough (if you don’t believe me, look at how long EA had the license to make Star Wars games and how many of them turned out to be bad or forgettable). The amount of cooks in this kitchen must have been ridiculous, and Avalanche deserves credit for simply getting this out the door in a respectable state (my game did crash on a semi-regular basis the further I got into it, but that can be ironed out with patches, and the crashes never lost me much progress thanks to a generous auto-save feature). To the studio’s credit, Hogwarts Legacy will not join the tragic ranks of games like Cyberpunk 2077 where a litany of malfunctions marred any improvement as the company essentially asked customers to pay to be beta-testers.

If anything, Hogwarts Legacy reminds me of the first Mass Effect in that you can see the building blocks for a far superior sequel. The benefit of getting the first one done is that it leaves room to improve and iterate rather than create. Avalanche had to figure out so many gameplay systems for Hogwarts Legacy (how does wand combat work; how does flying work; how do characters interactions work; how do classes work; and so on) that it feels like they just needed the story to be serviceable enough to hang these systems on. Now that it’s all been put through its paces, there’s room to see what worked, what didn’t, what players responded to, and what needs to be phased out or rethought.

The game is a hit, and so I’d be shocked if a sequel wasn’t already in early development. I want there to be a good, open-world game set in the Wizarding World, and I hope that Avalanche and WB Games see that the only way this Wizarding World comes alive is if you care about the characters who inhabit it. Casting spells is neat and flying on a broom is nice, but real investment from fans is only going to come if they feel like they’re part of a magical story.