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When Hogwarts Legacy was first announced, I stayed away from the news. I didn’t want to see the gameplay, much less be impressed by the trailers. I avoided them like the plague because I feared I would be torn, that I would see a game capable of capturing the magic of books and that my heart would leap out of my chest. I dreaded seeing the lavish movie graphics recreated on modern gaming hardware, in 4K and full HDR. I dreaded having to tell 12-year-old me that she couldn’t play it and explain why. So when I got a code for Hogwarts LegacyI prepared myself psychologically.
When home is no longer home
I thought I would spend a lot of time splitting hairs in this section going through all my grievances about how the game deviates from the source material, how dated it feels, and how each character resembles an animatronic robot just waiting that you insert a dime to be able to pronounce his only line of dialogue and perform a lugubrious and bizarre imitation of a living being. But there’s no hair to split, because there is nothing in the game that can be saved.
The more time I spent in this version of Hogwarts, the more I felt a tangible, stark absence feeling that something was missing. I thought it was due to lackluster art direction, one-dimensional characters that look like off-brand versions of the ones we know and love, or the conspicuous lack of John Williams’ iconic soundtrack. But there is an even more serious absence.
This game has a hole where the heart should be. It’s not noticeable at first. We must first gain confidence, stop looking for the things that are there and start paying attention to what isn’t there. A sense of familiarity is missing. The world is inanimate. The character models and facial animations are there but at the same time somehow absent. The characters are animated, but they sure don’t look alive.
The story, aside from being rooted in anti-Semitism (a global “cabal” seeks to end slavery, but that’s bad because slaves like to be slaves), isn’t even compelling. It is a confusing work, a minefield of unanswered questions and unexplained motivations. And in that regard, the characters often openly state the motivations behind their actions, but they don’t seem believable or even particularly coherent. It says it’s Hogwarts, but it doesn’t look like Hogwarts. Even beyond the controversies surrounding Rowling, the game feels like it was cobbled together to exploit the fans’ nostalgic craving, with no attention paid to actually making it worth playing.
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