Hogwarts Legacy RPG Elements Undermine Its Magic

I’m strolling through Hogwarts, listening to a classical pianist play while being occasionally startled by the presence of a boisterous moving artwork or Peeves the Poltergeist. When a student’s Disillusionment Charm wears off, they appear before my eyes like a shimmering mirage, and the mirrors in the restroom make sarcastic remarks about my appearance when I sneak in there to look for hidden riches.

I’m not really paying attention to the intricate designs carved into stone or floating above my head; instead, I’m frantically mashing the triangle button to have my character use Revelio, a Witcher sense that sounds an annoying bell whenever something significant is in close proximity. For no other reason than to fulfill a collection challenge, I’ve been looking high and low for another Field Guide page to add to my collection.

In Hogwarts Legacy, the open-world RPG concepts that so many J.K. Rowling defenders fight so hard to protect are crammed into your childhood fantasies of attending the wizard school. In a cruel twist of destiny, the game at the center of a cultural conflict ends up undermining the wizarding world by virtue of being, well, a game.

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Mechanism of Revelio

Hogwarts Legacy TikTok is littered with parody videos of Revelio spam. In the books, Revlio is only mentioned sporadically, but in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2017), Newt Scamander uses it to expose Gellert Grindelwald’s true identity. In Hogwarts Legacy, you have constant access to this spell, and you’ll use it so often that the sound of the bell that accompanies it will drive you crazy.

In the Hogwarts Legacy universe, Revelio doesn’t reveal shadowy bad guys or students hiding in the off-limits section of the library; instead, it draws attention to hidden chests of goodies and other explorable areas. You’ll use this charm to peep around corners and spot opponents while collecting Field Guide pages, finding new cosmetic items, or simply exploring the world. Whether you’re merely trying to get 100% or you’re trying to fight spiders in the Forbidden Forest, it’ll come in handy at some point.

The RPG elements in Hogwarts Legacy undermine its magic: https://t.co/ZZLTzRwfz8 pic.twitter.com/IFiRDI0a5F

— Kotaku (@Kotaku) February 22, 2023

But it’s also not the easiest thing to figure out; the range of the chime that lets you know something is nearby is something you can increase along the skill tree. After around six hours, the finicky chime had me searching in vain for the origin of the sound in ever-narrower rooms and corridors. In this present time, I feel anything but amazing. This obsession with perfection has got to stop.

Revelio, if only for the sake of drawing attention to things of interest, would seem to be an essential charm for any Hogwarts student. Considering how easy it is to use a wizard AirTag to find whatever it is that Neville Longbottom has misplaced, he really has no need for a Remembrall to remind him. If Harry could merely Revelio-locate where Ron was in the Great Lake, he wouldn’t have to risk drowning during the Triwizard Tournament. Or maybe you could use it to locate any of Voldemort’s Horcruxes instead of having to track each one down individually?

Spells That Don’t Work Too Well

Hogwarts Legacy pushes Rowling’s canon to its breaking point the more you delve into the game. Dumbledore’s decision to remain closeted until Rowling outed him IRL is even more baffling given that there are more individuals of color at Hogwarts in the late 1800s, as pointed out by Gita Jackson.

There is also a seemingly out lesbian. As Jackson notes, it’s as if the creators want to challenge the established canon but are hampered by the fact that the wizarding world’s guiding principles permeate every aspect of the plot and the characters they’ve created. While well-intentioned, these initiatives have the sense of afterthoughts to the sour shot that is Rowling’s legacy.

Hogwarts Legacy has many elements that feel at odds with the universe it is built on since they go against the tale, which chooses to maintain the status quo when it comes to goblin injustice and house elf captivity. A good example is the instant-cast spell Basic Cast, which allows the user to hurl red sparks at foes, objects, and even farmable resources.

Because it never depletes its power or needs to be recharged, this spell is ideal for use in high-stakes battles, but it isn’t available in the Harry Potter universe. Unfortunately, this is a shame, because having access to this spell would have given Harry a significant leg up in the many battles he faces as a preteen.

Yet Basic Cast does exist to transform your wand into a gun, as Jackson puts it, in an effort to make the game’s combat quicker and more akin to third-person shooters. It’s no surprise that players have swapped out their red oak and dragon heartstring wand for a Glock in the game’s patched versions.

As for Alohomora, the lockpicking spell, it can only be obtained in Hogwarts Legacy by locating statues hidden across the school, Hogsmeade, and the Scottish Highlands and turning them into caretaker Gladwin Moon. When exploring Hogwarts Legacy, you’ll come across three tiers of locks, each of which can only be unlocked by returning one of the 13 statues hidden around the game. Even if this is a simple fetch mission with a decent reward, the act of picking these locks feels very non-magical, like some kind of fucking lockpicking mechanic.

Lockpicking mechanics in Hogwarts Legacy feel about as magical as ceremoniously bashing the door down like that Big Bird meme, despite being notorious in the RPG world (how many lockpicks did you break in Skyrim, be honest). In order to open a locked door, you must first click a button to cast Alohomora, then use the two joysticks to rotate separate pieces of the lock until a red and green spark lines up with their respective channels, and finally, *poof*! The Hogsmeade resident has left his door unlocked, so feel free to rob him and help yourself to the chest inside. Surely a hairpin would have sufficed for that purpose.

Pardonable Curses

In my twenty or so hours with Hogwarts Legacy, I have yet to learn any of the Unforgivable curses. There were a lot of uproars when it was made clear that your character might study and employ the three curses collectively known as The Worst Crap You Can Possibly Do in the history of the cosmos.

After all, in the novels and movies, if you pronounce one of the spells (Crucio, Imperio, or Avada Kedavra), you’ll end up in jail where they torture inmates’ minds. One of the spells causes excruciating pain, another converts individuals into puppets, and the third kill on contact.

Nevertheless, in Hogwarts Legacy, not only can you master these three curses, but you can hurl the most wicked spells in the franchise at goblins, spiders, and trolls with equal abandon. Nobody from the Aurors will ever show up at your home without a warrant, so you can keep on your shopping spree without fear of repercussions.

I’ve already killed a good number of NPCs in a variety of shockingly graphic ways, such as shrinking and squishing a huge spider under my boot, repeatedly smashing a poacher into the ground with a flick of the wrist, or exploding a goblinoid, all thanks to Ancient Magic, a lore-breaking mechanic that allows you to access a magical power the protagonist has that has never been mentioned in any Harry Potter works before and which you can access.

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Since I am already a lethal machine, it seems pointless to work up to receiving a curse that can eventually one-hit-kill adversaries, especially since such curses have a well-established reputation for being bad in canon. Don’t forget the time Harry tried to curse Bellatrix Lestrange with the Cruciatus.

Remember how she laughed hysterically at the brief suffering he caused her, and how lore fans rationalized this away by saying that he couldn’t have cast an Unforgivable curse since he was too good at heart? But now, a hero endowed with old magic, apparently selected for their bravery, may easily cast such curses? Make some sense!

It’s true that dissecting the inner workings of a role-playing game can feel like excessive nitpicking. Criticizing how Hogwarts Legacy’s RPG-isms break that world’s lore seems like an apt counter when people who still vocally support the Harry Potter franchise use the magic of its world as an excuse to support J.K. Rowling either socially or financially, when they resurrect the feeling of fluttery magical excitement you’d get as a child cracking the spine on one of the books, and when they romanticize characters who themselves are harmful stereotypes.

Hogwarts Legacy’s universe isn’t perfect, and it’s not immune to criticism. Although its fair share of fun moments, Hogwarts Legacy isn’t quite as enchanted as it portrays itself to be.

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