Is Hogwarts Legacy worth the excitement?

 Maybe?

It has to be the dream of absolutely any video game out there to blow up to the point where it's the night-time wet dream of so many fans out there. People forever creating hopeful, grass roots, content theorising on it's possibilities and trading excitement until it becomes something of a boiling pot of feverish theories and unquenchable fan passion. And at the same time it has to be the most frightening position in the world to actually be there, locked in the view-finders of so many expectant and hungry fandoms, all with their different idea about what the game you're making is going to be, rubbing their hands with a greed that will so quickly turn into revulsion and hatred when the thing finally drops on some of their heads. It's that space between a rock and a hardplace where only the truly damned dwell. I ponder, because whilst I myself am enraptured by the prospects of Hogwarts Legacy, like so many others I'm really coming to grips with the fact this game has it's obvious shortcomings in the face of that dream they've been, perhaps unwittingly, stoking. Right now I'm just hoping that Warner Bros. Interactive's vision is better than the dream.

But first I have to say that I think Hogwarts Legacy looks to be an absolute godsend for fans of the Harry Potter movies and books, at least in the raw presentation of the eponymous Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. Though we've had many Harry Potter games in the past that have allowed us to explore some version of Hogwarts, none have really made the effort to intelligently design and shape the Scottish castle into a comprehensive and gorgeous sprawl of academic function and medieval whimsy. My heart quite literally soars everytime we see Hogwarts teased off in gameplay snippets, like we're catching ankle glimpse of some impeccably elegant yet demure Victorian mistress.  I just want to get my hands on it so I can explore it's every intricacy! Every nook, every cranny, every living portrait, every moving staircase, every grand reference that never even made it into the movies; I want to play the gawping tourist through it all!

Yet by that very same merit it seems as though creating Hogwarts has been the best realised fantasy of the Harry Potter fan; those who've always dreamed about attending Hogwarts, are apparently going to be only lightly catered too with some main mission-based lessons and school events, not in the style of the dynamic and player dependant curriculum of other-classic school game; Bully. People who want to be their very own Harry Potter within the same universe will find an expansive and seemingly robust character creator, but are limited to being a late fifth year; no 'growing up with Hogwarts' simulator like one might hope for. (There are ways to do that in a way that would been creatively fun, but they would have taken explicit planning and clever design to execute) And those who want to immerse themselves totally within a perfect facsimile of the fantastical reality that J.K. Rowling invented will be regulated to merely glancing longingly at all the references to the more involved wizarding world; as it would appear that Hogwarts Legacy has next to no non-essential side activities. No Quidditch, no Wizard Chess, none of those ancillary wizarding games that never quite get an explanation by are inexplicably community favourites none the less... the scope of this game is rigidly focused, in a world that seems so ripe for a less focused style experience.  

Which isn't to say there's nothing to do besides the main narrative. Rather cleverly the team have thrown in a few collectibles system to guide player exploration, but Ubisoft have shown us very much how skin-deep of an open world solution that really is. There seems to be some pages you can collect which touch on the historical significance of places around you, which I find to be worthwhile collectibles at the very least. And there's the gardening metagame within the Room of Requirement, which seems to be tied into the crafting system. There'll probably be something tied into recreational duelling, because the main game already demands a duelling system to be present so they might as well take advantage of that. And there are side quests, with impressively limp lip tracking considering the visual fidelity of everything else the game has going for it. (I think, if your lip tracking is behind the level of the next upcoming Bethesda game, you've got problems.) All and all, I'm glad that this is an open world title, but I'm wondering if the team have really earnt that genre or are just exploiting it. (Like your typical Ubisoft game does.)

But at least the game has it's own combat and that looks... fine. It's your typical Arkham derivative in it's base, but spruced up with a bunch of special spells you can roll out in order to create dynamic situations and- whoops, did I spot the player just using 'Accio' and soaring another student into the air with it? Pretty sure that spell doesn't work on living beings according to the lore... (Oh well, I'll pretend that the 'Accio' spell is pulling their clothes into the air.) What's next, are we going to start summoning perishable goods into thin air? Which, shouldn't really be a problem thanks to the rules of transmogrification which could turn goblets into mice, but according to 'The Deathly Hallows' food creation is against one of the core tenets of magic! (When you think about it, the Harry Potter world is just full of plot holes.) Unfortunately the combat is in one of those positions where we can't really judge how fun it is to play around with until we have it in our hands. It looks flashy and twenty utility spells does sound promising, but how can we be sure all that twenty are fun and dynamic, what if half of them are absurdly situational? Combat looks fun, but will it still look fun when you're fifty hours in? Will there be enough enemy diversity? Pillar questions, all unanswerable until launch. 

When I come away from Hogwarts legacy, I come away with a lot of 'maybe's and 'if only's; but I think the crux of my feelings are thus: I really love the idea of what Warner Bros Interactive are doing here, I just want them to go all out. And considering Hogwarts Legacy is easily one of the most hyped games right now, if the game can manages to live up to some of what it's promising, then maybe there's hope for a sequel where the team can delve more into the simulation of school life and maybe work on the facial animations a little bit more because they're currently making my eyes water... Heck, the protagonist is a fifth year, aren't they? That means two more years of potential school work until they're shoved out in the terminally boring wizarding world that Fantastic Beasts has been subjecting us to for the past few years.

My ideal vision of the Hogwarts Legacy experience is very simple; I want Bully with spells. I love that 'simulator light' aesthetic that Bully presented where you could go to school, or you could not, and the real life repercussions were minimal at best. I like the ability and freedom to do your own thing, make money doing odd jobs, grind for the high score on the arcade machines, skateboard around the town. I feel like in so many ways Hogwarts Legacy approaches that fantasy without embracing it fully, and it just makes me yearn for it all that much more. I mean come on; would Wizard Chess have been too much to implement? Really? But I recognise this is intensely personal complaints, and if this game needs to be focused to nail everything it wants to do then that's what it should be. (But in that case they better nail it like they said they would!)

Hogwarts Legacy is a game that I am going to play, and I'm pretty sure just about anyone in my age range is saying the exact same thing when they look at this game. That's because I actually don't have a choice in this matter, there's no free will involved in this, they made a game hardcoded to my central lobe that clicks the "buy" button without my say-so. Even if the game turns out to be mediocre, I'll still buy it eventually. I just want to walk around Hogwarts, screw the rest of it. But I just know that when I do the whole time I'm going to be on the verge of bliss but not quite there, like a cliffhanger that never gets resolved. This game won't satisfy me, and yet I'm going to indulge it anyway. Is this what insanity feels like?