How Evil Can You Be in Hogwarts Legacy? Are you hoping to be able to play an evil Dark Wizard in the upcoming Hogwarts Legacy game? Do you dream about learning how to cast the Unforgivable Curses and become a villain with the ultimate plan to rule the magical world?
Will Hogwarts Legacy, developed by Avalanche Software and launching on Xbox Series, Playstation 5 and PCs on February 10th, be the perfect game to explore the dark side of your character or to even threaten the wizarding world as a villain following similar beliefs of charismatic characters such as Lord Voldemort or Bellatrix Lestrange?
Game Basics
Hogwarts Legacy is an immersive, open-world action RPG set in the world first introduced in the Harry Potter book series and it’s quite easily one of 2023’s most highly-anticipated games. The story takes place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the late 1800s and players can create their own Wizard or Witch avatar. The game will have lots to do, as your character explores the magical open world, attends classes, flies on magical creatures, defends themselves in magical combat, creates potions and much more.
Dark magic and evil forces are part of the Hogwarts Legacy gameplay and as in most RPG games released today, some of the story and dialogue choices you’ll have to make in game may be tough and morally ambiguous. Let’s take a closer look at the possibilities.
Can You Be a Dark Wizard?
Can you be a Dark Wizard? The answer to that question is not entirely straightforward. The developers of Hogwarts Legacy have stated that the game does not have a morality system in place. This means that unlike in games such as those in the Fable or the Mass Effect series, Hogwarts Legacy will not be keeping track of which type of choices you make and adjusting a visible slider scale or assigning a predetermined amount of points to a Good or Evil morality alignment.
However, if you would like to be evil in Hogwarts Legacy, there are ways to build your character as a cruel or wicked protagonist. There are many ways to customize your character, the most basic being right at the beginning in the character creator. You can pick your student’s appearance, house and wand, and with the number of options available, players will be able to make spooky-looking, evil-looking or even cute-looking characters, to fit the story they want to tell.
Additionally, once you’re in the game and beginning to play through the actual story, you can decide what spells and skills your protagonist will learn and use. This will likely include the opportunity to learn and cast dark magic spells like the Unforgivable Curses.
One of the potential companions in Hogwarts Legacy is a boy named Sebastian Sallow, a Slytherin student who is desperately seeking a cure for the mysterious debilitating illness affecting his twin sister. He is convinced that his best chances lie within the power of the Dark Arts, and his entire individual quest line is set around discovering forgotten dark magic and learning forbidden spells. Players can choose to help him with his search and likely will have the opportunity to learn dark magic with him.
To top all of this off, in a shocking reveal in one of the earlier Hogwarts Legacy trailers, there is even a scene where the protagonist clearly casts the Avada Kedavra curse and kills their enemy, hinting that your protagonist can indeed choose to go down a very dark path.
Dark Arts Arena
Hogwarts Legacy features a special arena called the Dark Arts Battle Arena from one of their pre-order bonuses. This DLC is separate from the base game, and included as part of Hogwarts Legacy’s Deluxe and Collector’s editions. The footage shows the character freely casting Avada Kedavra, Imperio, and Crucio throughout many battle scenes. With that being said, we know the spells exist in the game, and it’s reasonable to assume you can unlock these by following a dark path and making some choices that will effect your characters outcome as multiple endings have been confirmed.
Affecting the Outcome
So while there may not be an obvious morality system in the game, Hogwarts Legacy is clearly going to offer players the opportunity to make more dark and dangerous choices if they wish. And based on other statements from Game Director Alan Tew, he strongly suggests that your choices throughout the story and gameplay can result in different outcomes and ultimately in different endings.
“Those different interactions with different characters can also offer different choice points for the player. Some of those things can affect things game-wide. Some of these affect characters’ lives, the ending of the game…”
— Game Director Alan Tew
Throughout the main story and even in side quests, Hogwarts Legacy will offer multiple dialogue options and responses, thus allowing players to be able to make morally questionable choices. Some quests may not contain a very clear “right” or “wrong” decision and players will need to wrestle with more difficult morally gray choices in order to complete these quests. As a result, this will allow players to create unique protagonists of their own, rather than boxing them into narrowly defined black or white/right or wrong alignments.
But are there limits? Just how evil can a player character become? At this time, we really don’t know. In Hogwarts Legacy the game’s main story is designed to put the player on a path to saving the world – due to a special magical power your character wields, it is suggested that they are the only one who is able to accomplish that.
Is it possible that an evil character could up-end this seemingly predetermined outcome and finish the game as a villain? There are many excited fans who are tantalized by this possibility, and who wish to see if the game allows them to progress their character into the next Dark Lord.
Additional Information
Hogwarts Legacy has fans of the magical world of Harry Potter looking forward to February with high hopes. As we get closer to the release date, the developers continue to reveal more about what we can expect to see in the game. On Nov 11 2022, the new Hogwarts Legacy Gameplay was revealed during the official AvalancheSoftware Studio stream, and developers had a lot of interesting pieces of information to share with us, click HERE for more about Hogwarts Legacy Gameplay!
Don’t forget you can determine now on your character wand and Hogwart house! Also, you can unlock some free accessories in Hogwarts Legacy right now, including a stylish new robe, mask and more!
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