Today the new Hogwarts Legacy New Gameplay was revealed during the official AvalancheSoftware Studio stream, and I have a lot of interesting pieces of information to share with you!
Hogwarts Legacy is an immersive, open-world action RPG set in the world introduced in the Harry Potter books. It’s quite easily one of the 2023 most highly-anticipated games. The game takes place at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the 1800s. Players can create their own Wizard or Witch and explore the magical open world, attend classes, fly on magical creatures, fight casting spells, make potions and much more.
The show was in the AvalancheSoftware studio hosted by Community Manager Chandler Wood, James Whitehead, and developers Game detector Alan Tewshowed and Senior Artist Boston Madsen. The new Hogwarts Legacy Gameplay features we can break into 5 categories: Character creation, Interface, Exploration, Quests and most exciting for me Combat, which appears to be way more complicated and deep than I was expecting before. The game has a lot of potential, read on to know more.
Character creation
The guest host from ExpectoGo, James Whitehead jumped straight to Character customisation, and it amazed me with the detail and customisation options.
Firstly, you can choose from pre-sets and quickly move to the gameplay or play with all available settings to create your perfect protagonist. Alan Tewshowed commented that they put a lot of work into this feature to give players the opportunity to create any character or even represent themselves, however, they want to experience the game.
Look at the impressive detail on facial structures, and light reflections on the hair. Characters simply look gorgeous. Players can even choose the character’s voice, from two available options, one femine-sounding, one masculine-sounding and adjust the pitch. Among the customisation options are facial structures, skin color, complexion, freckles moles, and even scars.
Next, there is a wide selection of hair, hair and eye colors, and even special collectables you can equip for the character. Those collectibles you can find some around the game world or you can earn by linking the accounts. Link to instructions HERE.
Looks like there are no ways to make your character more powerful through character creation, which is mostly designed for roleplaying, until the last tab where players can choose one of 4 difficulties: story, easy, normal or hard. For me, it is another plus for replayability potential. I think many character creation enthusiasts will be satisfied with the possibilities.
After you create a character there will be certain things you can change later like hairstyle, its color or what your character wears, there is even a special barber shop, but not core face features.
Interface
The game interface is simple, but not intrusive. In the lower-right corner are slottable spells which is called the spell diamond, to access them quickly. Alan Tewshowed said there will be over 20 slottable spells to choose from. Additionally, there are essential spells, represented by the eyeball in a triangle, grid and cross icons. Those spells are used in a very specific context and help you with your exploration or quest completion. You can learn spells during the classes and from Hogward’s professors.
And the whole process has its structure spread over the chapters, some are optional like assignments you can complete to advance as a wizard or witch. Sometimes you’ll need a specific spell to start some of the quests.
They didn’t show us the spells menu or progression skills menu to not spoil too much for us. However, each spell has a core identity like puzzling word exploration and combat. It’s through the talent system each of the spells has a chance to advance and grow or even change, as you spend talent points on them.
Next to the skills, on the interface are the potions, the green bar, which is our health pool and above it, some kind of toolbar, that sadly wasn’t much explained. However, I have some ideas and hypotheses I’ll mention, later during the introduction to combat. lastly, in the lower-left corner, is a minimap to make navigation and exploration easier.
Combat
The combat in the game looks far more complicated than you can expect. There are two attacks in the game, base attack and slotted spells like damage spells, force spells or control spells. As a result, both attacks integrated together will create powerful combinations that allow defeating enemies quickly. The slottable spells have cooldowns, so you can’t just spam them, so there is another reason to use base attacks. There are also a few special “finishes moves”, depending on your style and spells as seen on previews gameplays.
Fighting Club
Firstly, we could see the training dummy and basic combat mechanics in the fighting club, where players can train their spellcasting skills and combos. Also, In the fighting club, you can face other students. During the gameplay reveal we could see the Adept round and the battle against 3 NPC students. Therefore, we can expect different types of enemies there, as well as stages on higher levels. Probably even some kind of progression related to the Fighting Cub itself.
There are a couple of mechanics to go through here. First are enemies’ shields. Each of the students had a different color shield which is a color identificator on what spells enemies you should use. You can shatter shields only with the same color spell.
Targeting an enemy you can see their health bar, level and name.
Whenever the is a halo around your character’s head means there is an incoming attack. Additionally, sometimes there was a notification on the screen to break free or a hint to block an incoming attack. We haven’t seen critical damage numbers, so whether crit-multiplayer exists or the game has only raw numbers we don’t know.
You can even use an environment and objects to defeat enemies. During the gameplay we saw how a player using the “Vingardium Leviosa” spell throw a crate into one of the enemies, shattering it into pieces.
The combat is fast, with impressive graphical effects and sound.
Exploration and Quests
Firstly, we landed in the game straight to one of Hufflepuff’s dormitories. And once again we could admire the amazing graphics and how real and interactive the environment is.
One of the things I noticed first was the symbol with the green flame in one of the rooms. Turned out that with special spells you can reveal secrets, lore, and even mentioned collectibles. So, each time you find or are close to something new or interesting the icon will pop and looks like there is a ton of interactions with the environment. There were more potential interactive objects like the bowl of apples, but they didn’t show us much of it.
We could witness the use of the “Reveal” spell on the symbol next to the stack of barrels, which happen to be a secret that gave the player a special Wizards field guide. This guide has magical properties. It will track your progress, and also help you to work on catching on with other students. You can use it to learn about the school and gear, collections, talents and challenges all will progress your character and give you experience and what looks like a levelling system. the ways to level are through different types of challenges, quests, combat, exploration and the Field guide pages.
The next interesting thing is Hogwart’s house points. The feature is present in the game but not one of the core mechanics, more like narrative addition to the game.
Quests
The game offers fully-voiced quests, that can be found everywhere in the castle. Marked on a map and with a golden circle around the quest giver, and easy to find. Quests offer multiple choice options during the conversation and decisions that will affect the game ending, providing replayability possibilities. Looks like the dialogue options with the question mark provide information about the topic, and the options with the square icon will progress a conversation.
Now we need to talk about Game structure and questing. The Hogwarts Legacy Gameplay is split into chapters, each with a set of main quests and side quests. Some spells will be relevant to quests and progression to quests, so you need to expect them to have certain requirements, like spell knowledge or level.
Then there are classes, that help us progress through the story and as a wizard or witch. During the classes where you can learn spells, and major wizarding world tools which will lead to experience and progress all registered in mentioned before the Wizards Field Guide. All major spells and abilities you’ll learn from professors, on how important those NPC will be and what other role they will fill in the Hogwarts Legacy, we don’t know.
Exploration
While we walked through the Hogwarts halls and corridors, each with its unique design, we could hear the game taking us to the wizarding world atmosphere with amazing sound effects and music. The sound of the waterfall in the courtyard, the noises of the learning students in the common room, and footsteps echoing in the long stone halls of the wizarding school were impressive. Suddenly there were Magic pages randomly flying next to the character and candles with colorful flames flickering in the dim library filled with books and tables. The magic feel and graphic is stunning and truly will offer a fantastic experience.
Senior Artist Boston Madsen mentioned that there is a day and night cycle. Additionally, the environment, windows and interiors will change with the seasons like in a proper magic school.
As a result, it’s an enchanting experience to explore not only Hogwarts school but also the open world beyond castle walls.
Don’t forget that you can unlock some free accessories in Hogwarts Legacy right now, including a stylish new robe, mask and more!
Thanks for reading!
Important information
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!
Hogwarts Legacy release dates:
- February 10, 2023 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC
- April 4, 2023 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
- July 25, 2023 for Nintendo Switch
All information is based on pre-release sources. We’ll update it as soon as the game launches on February 10th 2023
Come watch me play the game on twitch at tv/deltiasgaming and ask questions or visit my YouTube channel!
