Hogwarts Legacy Gameplay: Expanded Exploration

Developed by Avalanche Studios, and published by Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment, Hogwarts Legacy is described as an “immersive, open-world action RPG set in the world first introduced in the Harry Potter books.” A major part of Hogwarts Legacy gameplay will be an entire world of Expanded Exploration, and more details about the expansive areas outside of the main castle were shown in a recent livestream by Avalanche. Let’s take a look at what we can expect when the game releases on February 10, 2023!

Hogwarts Legacy: Expanded Exploration

In their recent livestream developers from Avalanche studios gave viewers a wide-ranging tour of the grounds outside of Hogwarts Castle. While the castle will make up the game’s main setting, there is an entire wizarding world outside of its towering walls and it’s exciting to get a glimpse of just how much of it we will get to explore.

The inclusion of the wizarding town of Hosgmeade is almost a given, and it will certainly play a big part in the story and growth of the main character. But there is a vast swath of the Scottish Highlands surrounding the castle to explore, and it’s not just limited to the Forbidden Forest as some may have believed. In the livestream, the development team show just some of this space off, riding both broomstick and then a hippogriff over peaks and valleys, through forests and small hamlets.

It’s not just all vast empty space, either. As you can see from just a quick shot of the mini map in the image above, there are plenty of different points of interest to be found in the world. We don’t yet know what all of those icons mean, but it’s possible that some are this game’s version of dungeons or caves, some might be magical puzzles you can unlock or other secrets you could discover.

The single golden icon which hovers on the edge of the mini map is pretty clearly an outline of the Hogwarts Shield and likely indicates the direction you would need to travel to return to it.

On the righthand side of the image you can also see a UI marker for ‘Dueling Feats’ with a note that Levitating a Dugbog by its tongue will fulfill some kind of checklist or achievement. It was hard to see how this marker worked exactly, but it seems to have appeared on the screen as the player came into or through an area where presumably Dugbogs could be found. On the mini map, potential enemies are marked with the sharp red arrow.

It’s hard to catch a glimpse of this UI mechanic as the hippogriff soars at speed over the Highlands, but a precisely timed screenshot shows that when you pass over enemies their level, type/name, and health bar will appear at the top of the screen. The enemy below will also show with a silverish highlight, which will outline them from the background.

It’s still impossible to really guess just how big the world surrounding Hogwarts Castle really is, but it’s safe to say that it’s probably much, much larger than any of the fans have anticipated! It looks like there will be a ton of exploring to do, and that despite the ‘restrictions’ of being a student with classes and studies to attend to, at some point the play will have the freedom to do a lot of open-world exploration. How far can we travel before we hit the ‘edges’ of the playable world?

Additional Information:

I’ll be streaming Hogwarts Legacy when in drops February 10, 2023! Check out my Twitch channel for streams and my YouTube for informative videos as we get closer to the release date!

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