I'm honestly shocked at how unstable this game seems to be. It's so polished in some zones (if underdeveloped) yet breaking in really obvious ways in others. Textures are constantly getting corrupted too; I had one where the rock textures broke so anything made of rocks had pink specs everywhere. It looked like Hogwarts was covered in really hideous glitter. Another one where my cloak texture reverted to the flattened texture in the game files. A third had the save icon corrupted into a bunch of /// and other symbols.
I feel somewhat... weirded out how often adults are perfectly ok asking a 15-year-old student to go into the woods and fight poachers or a giant spider. I figured there might be SOME dancing around the issue; Harry and Co obviously got up to things they shouldn't have, but that was in-spite of the adults around them, not facilitated by them.
Slightly bothered that there's also not a more explicit segregation between when we're a student in the castle and when we're expected to go out and do Open World things. The game seems EXTREMELY aware and not feel the need to explain things fans should know (i.e. Bow to a Hippogriff), but then doesn't explain when it deviates from expectations?
Also, nice Hogwarts, giving a student a personal slave to help them catch-up on homework and maintain their room of requirement. Nice...
I'm also shocked at the lack of any self-awareness in the beast mechanics? "Oh my god! It's terrible that Rookwood's Poachers are stealing animals in the local area! Anyway, here's a bag. Now go rescue some Mooncalves from their natural habitat." lolwut???
And it's not like these are in different in-congruous sections of the game. They're brought up in dialogue within sentences of each other with no self-awareness at all.
I could see this working better if it had a different set-up? Like, idk, you clear a poacher camp (let's just not discuss murdering adults, k?) and then have some animals that are far from home and in bad shape. Then there's far more an argument for "Hey, they need protection". And you're not actively being a poacher yourself?
Or, better yet, let that be an option; make being a poacher and a greedy shit part of the "Dark Wizard" morality beat???
Though I also kinda find "Evil = Greedy" mechanics get undermined a bit when there's seldom much to spend your money on. You Tube keeps recommending me guides on how to make money in this game and I've yet to really see much reason to earn a ton of Galleons.
Edited by InkDagger on Mar 23rd 2023 at 10:18:42 AM
To be fair, most quest givers advise the player not to do something so dangerous, and the character decides to go anyway.
Speaking of money, by the time you have all the seeds, summoning items you need, and the best broom, money doesn't matter so much anymore.
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Something that I would have liked is that the end of the game was related to the unforgivable curses.
This means that the missions in which you learn these spells were main, instead of secondary.
So if you decided to learn at least 2 curses, they give you the bad ending, but if you only learned 1 or none, they give you the good ending.
Edited by LucienRen on Mar 24th 2023 at 8:38:52 AM
The adults very barely ask the student to not do anything. It's very half-hearted if at all. And never acknowledges "BTW, you should be getting so much detention for going into the Forbidden Forrest".
But it's not that frequently considering the base nature of the quest involves doing this highly dangerous stuff. "Please go find my cabbages, young 15-year-old-who's-blood-will-be-on-my-hands-if-you-die". Why are they even asking a teenager anyway, who is so much less capable than any of the adult wizards they're surrounded by?
The quests work and make the most sense when they're other students requesting things. Maybe not always; "Natsai, I really don't get why we are going after a local gangster", but usually. And it makes sense for kids to kinda ignore the implicit danger in the way RPG Quests naturally request. And account for the inherent rule breaking involved too.
BTW about the Forbidden Forest, I honestly half-expected someone to genuinely ask who the forest is forbidden from because of how much we get involved in there extremely quickly.
Sometimes we have to remember the MST3K Mantra.
It is just an RPG.
Every Hero has his own way of eating yogurtTo be fair, Star Wars didn't start out with tons of space to work with, and a lot of its worldbuilding and versatility was established by video games - especially RPGs. Just look at KOTOR basically creating an entire setting within the existing setting to facilitate its story.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Mar 24th 2023 at 4:18:24 AM
Yeah but could HP support something like KOTOR?
At least with Star Wars there's a lot more space for world building with multiple planets.
All HP has is some vaguely racist other magical communities because JK refuses to let anyone else write lore.
Fantastic Beasts just showed how limited the world is.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"I disagree. Fantastic Beasts, if anything, introduced a lot of interesting ideas and concepts it could have pursued and expanded, but which the writers of that series actively chose not to follow up on because they eventually wanted the series to catch the same lightning in the bottle as the initial film series.
But that wasn't a result of the series not having space for expansion, that was the writers choosing to turn their back on it.
Well they could keep the focus on the mystical beasts. It would be quite easy to have the big bads plan be about hunting some super rare mystical beast to become super powerful and it is up to Newt to stop them. During the movie they could show us all sorts of mystical beasts along the way to confronting the big bad. Newt during the quest to stop the big bad could tell people about all the potions and effects that using a scale or some venom, or a strand of hair from some creatures could do. Heck you could copy monster hunter for a video game.
Fantastic Beasts 1 had potential. The best part about is the stuff that's not from the original films. Newt was great, the creatures were fun, and I liked the low-stakes fun concept of "Hey, get all the magic creatures back before they cause too much havoc". It's cute. It didn't need to be bigger than it was.
The problem is the Grindewald stuff they shoe-horned into the first one and then based everything else in that godforsaken series on.
The series got bad when it tried to be this grand period piece epic like the original HP films. Everything keeps trying to live in the shadow of the original. Fantastic Beasts shoe-horned in a new Dark Lord Big Bad. Cursed Child does the dumb fan fic plot.
This is kinda what I meant by HP needing it's own "Mandolorian" or "Andor" esque continuation. The best parts of those ones are that they have nothing to do with some save the universe grand epic. They're smaller stakes and deal with characters and the world and have their own goals. They're refreshing specifically because they aren't grand epic hero's quests.
HP needs to stop living in HP's Shadow.
Then there's only one answer...a show where some wizards find the lost continent of Mu, and explore it. All manner of magical creatures must live there after all, and with it being on a forgotten continent, it can take all manner of wonder with the world and creatures there. Perhaps even finding a lost civilization of magic users (Atlantis perhaps?) atop it, meaning brand new lore without being in the shadow of HP.
Edited by ScubaWolf on Mar 24th 2023 at 1:40:59 PM
"In a move surprising absolutely no one"Would that feel like HP?
A lot of the franchise identity relies on Hogwarts. Even Fantastic Beasts gave up and set large amounts of scenes in the school.
Kotor's additions to the lore felt like Star Wars, we got wacky Star Wars planets, like Korriban that expanded on the lore of the Sith, as well as Dantooine that expanded on the Jedi.
Edited by RedHunter543 on Mar 25th 2023 at 1:43:16 AM
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"It's telling the more successful Wizarding World stuff have the school as a central focus.
But bringing this back to Legacy, it does feel this game is more constrained by the school setting than it is embracing it.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"Because rather than let people live the actual magical school fantasy with all the classes and mischief, they turned it into a power fantasy. What people want from HP is more akin to Mana Khemia, but what they gave us was something completely different.
Edited by ScubaWolf on Mar 24th 2023 at 1:53:23 PM
"In a move surprising absolutely no one"It is pretty funny the game goes all power fantasy when the protagonists we got from the series, Harry and Newt weren't particularly powerful wizards compared to the villains and mentor figures, mostly Dumbledore.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"The question is, how would one make that feel like it's set in the HP universe?
Like the most iconic parts of the series is the school, the houses, the wands, and the spells.
So how would you put that in a game starring HP Merlin? Maybe the days when he was in Hogwarts?
He was one of the few non-evil Slytherins supposedly.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"I mean, I inherently think the concept of "Harry Potter" and "Power Fantasy" are incompatible.
Think about it; it's a series that's main roots are in being a school student. A child. And learning about the basic magical gifts you have that are fantastic to you but mundane to the rest of the wizarding world.
It's not about "Harry Potter, the Magical Avatar who controls magic like no one else" or something. It's never Dumbeldore's story and the plot tends to have to keep Dumbledore and Voldemort on opposite sides of the room to keep moving. It's about children being raised in conflict of the adult war around them and I think that's a perspective that makes the franchise unique compared to, say, Indiana Jones or Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.
Even when Cursed Child rears it's ugly head and despite the title, it's not Harry's story there either; it's his son's. The school student. Yes, you could totally tell Cursed Child's extremely bad story from Harry's adult perspective, but they don't and I think that's a good move, at least in the story they're trying to tell anyway.
Harry is fantastic by the audience's standards, but rather normal if a bit under-average occasionally in-universe.
I think a game adaptation needs to instead lean into that. You aren't going to have the solution to everything. You won't always feel like you are in control. Going up against another adult wizard should feel challenging and like you're out-gunned. Something as small as a magical creature or a single wizard should feel like a big freaking deal.
You have to build conflict in ways that either aren't based on combat or, if they are, not with adult wizards.
What I think frustrates me about HL in this regard is that it really feels like they can be creative enough for that when they put their minds to it; there are tons of quests that feel creative and just like they fit the school-hood concept at Hogwarts' core. Summoner's Court was fun. Tracking down the stolen marbles felt appropriate. The Depulso Rooms were fun puzzles that I felt satisfied solving. But then it gets meshed with uninspired game design in other places.
Heck, Star Wars: Fallen Order got this right. The final "battle" against Vader can't even be considered a battle. All Cal can do is survive the encounter with the Dark Lord of the Sith.
A student wizard, even a talented one, should be no match for an adult wizard in a direct encounter. Note that in book 4, Wormtail — an adult wizard rightly treated with no respect — was able to easily kill Cedric — a talented student but still a student — with a Killing Curse.
It says something about what a loser Lockhart was that a couple of 2nd year students were able to render him helpless.
Edited by M84 on Mar 26th 2023 at 3:34:38 AM
Disgusted, but not surprised![]()
Yeah that is a good observation and why this game feels off when compared to other HP stories.
HP isn't a power fantasy but since the game leans towards those elements like getting to learn the unforgivable curses and being able to fight magical monsters and adult wizards on an equal level is what loses that unique HP kid fantasy bit.
Heck look at the reactions to this game in certain circles, there's shit like making mods to allow a magical school shooting or special emphasis on the sadistic ways you can get rid of your enemies, ETC
Heck look at how many people meme on the protagonist being an Auror undercover at Hogwarts because the plot is just so uninterested in being a student and more fighting evil and investigating sinister plots which feels less HP and more a wizard cop game that also has to be set in a school.
Edited by RedHunter543 on Mar 26th 2023 at 3:37:01 AM
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"I somewhat considered it might be interesting to have a story (not inherently a video game mind you) where a character becomes a teacher at Hogwarts and dual-narrative the story between their adventures as a student and them reflecting back on it as an adult on their own adventure as a teacher. You could recontextualize so many things of the typical boarding school narrative that way.

On the other hand, if you decide to hand Sebastian over, after having learned the Unforgivable Curses, it can be argued that you are applying "You have outlived your usefulness".