Something very odd about this trailer. The cinematics all look a lot worse than the in-engine gameplay footage we have seen over the last couple of months.

So either:

- In an extremely elaborate conspiracy involving at least a dozen content creators, the gameplay footage was all faked and the game actually looks really bad, or

- The pre-rendered cinematics are worse quality than the gameplay being rendered in real time.

Option 1 is just inherently very unlikely, which strongly suggests 2. But that is strange.

 

Haven't really watched a lot of the gameplay footage, have they shown switch gameplay? Just wondering if they want to use the same pre-rendered scenes for all platforms including the switch which is by far the weakest platform where the real-time gameplay can scale.

 

I think all the gameplay footage was from the PS5 version.

 

What? It's in the trailer. 1:23-1:30ish there's brief glimpses of goblins summoning some kind of monster (looks like a guardian of some kind of ancient magic, judging by the glimpse of that same monster fighting the goblins later) then a bunch of goblins in armor with glowing red eyes chasing the protag.

Far as I can tell from this trailer, the plot seems to be "Protag can sense ancient magic, so both the goblins and the ministry are trying to make use of their ability to get the ancient magic and use it as a weapon against the other".

 

I agree, the cinematics don’t look great… some shots looked like they could come straight from the PS4.

I’ll probably wait for the first (or second) sale anyways, but the more I’m learning about and seeing from this game, the less hype I have to play it. Maybe if there’s a Quidditch DLC in the pipeline…

 

Waiting for the reveal that the MC can see ancient magic or whatever because they're descended from a founder. Bonus points if you inherit their memories.

 

And their vault, and legacy seat on the Wizengamot, and title of wizarding aristocracy, and rare magical heirloom that lets us create soul bond harems.

 

That's in the sequel game obviously.

 

Definitely agree, some exterior shots are downright stunning and then they'll cut to a classroom scene and the lighting is terrible, like something that makes you nostalgic for the PS3/360 era of HP games. I looked it up and apparently PC will have more ray tracing options so hopefully that will improve things.

Some of the character models are also incredibly detailed (like the sketchy dark wizard guy) and then others seemed almost cartoonish. The troll thing in particular seemed to be lacking a few too many polygons to fit in with the rest of the games models. It also seemed to me the player character had some sort of artificial lighting on them that meant they didn't really blend in with the lighting of the interior scenes around them in some shots. I might be nitpicking a bit there but I've been trying to mod out a similar issue for the Witcher 3 so it stood out.

Hoping that I'm worrying over nothing, but I've always been a little bit skeptical with this game just because the studio hasn't really made much of anything significant before and it can be difficult for new studios to attract enough talent to break into the AAA space. A big franchise like HP can definitely help though, and I suppose Warner Bros have essentially done it before with Rocksteady and the Arkham games.

Edit: It occurred to me that the trailer is also likely recorded on an earlier build and I've heard lighting is generally one of the things that devs continue to work on right up until the end of development, so hopefully they've made improvement. For an example of how much can change in a game while a trailer is being edited I like Arthur Morgan's face in the second trailer for RDR2, where he looks like an impersonator.

 

Reviews out tomorrow.

I have been watching a lot of gameplay preview type videos like this:



Plus there are various AMAs on Reddit from people who got a physical copy early, and apparently people streaming these on Twitch (though they get shut down quickly).

All in all, the news seems to be very positive.

Performance seems to be pretty solid/smooth. Fidelity mode on console is probably not viable unless you're fine with stuttering etc, but performance mode is reportedly a very solid 60fps and still looks pretty good.

This Redditor posted footage (spoiler free) of performance mode on PS5 and it looks great:



So overall, I am pretty confident that we are not going to get a Cyberpunk type disaster here.

As regards the gameplay, feedback seems to be:

- The Harry Potter vibes are strong.

- It has a slow opening.

- Side quests in the early game are fairly mundane, along the lines of Ubisoft type fetch quests designed to practice basic skills (essentially an extended tutorial), but they get more interesting as the game goes on.

- Hogwarts is massive. So big that you can easily be many hours into the game and have barely progressed the main story because you have been distracted by other stuff.

- Combat is fairly deep with a lot of combos, importance of timing etc.

- Main story takes about 20 hours to finish, all content around 60 hours.

- The RPG elements are reportedly rather light, with talents etc. being a pretty simple system without a lot of options or depth.

I will be getting on PS5 just because I want to play on a comfy couch in my living room rather than at my desk. But will not be partaking in early access as I am going to a friend's house on 11 Feb for us to play together.

Reviews drop tomorrow, which will be the real moment of truth. But I expect if they do criticise it, it will be for (i) too much open world busywork, (ii) lack of "Hogwarts life simulator" content and side games like Quidditch (iii) shallow RPG elements, (iv) JKR-related stuff.

 

The biggest question should be - is it easy to mod? Because if it is there is a chance of HP era mod in few years.

 

I'd love it if there were, but I unfortunately expect modding won't be very easy. Unreal Engine games don't tend to get thriving modding communities from my experience - SDKs don't really get released, probably due to the difficulty of releasing tools for an engine you don't own and in this age of DLC and live service the game publishers don't want to deal with allowing free competition for their own content. I doubt Warner Bros wants the bad publicity of people modding weird things into their big franchise either, so I really don't see them supporting mod tools. I think from memory WB are pretty litigious and don't support modding at all.

You can check the nexus for the Arkham games (although they were UE3 as opposed to UE4) to see what sort of mods we're likely to get, largely character model switches and texture changes. It is definitely possible that the communities love for Harry Potter and desire for more content means unofficial mod tools are made, but I'd say it would be quite difficult. Just from observing development on WolvenKit for Cyberpunk, it seems like a pretty arduous task even when you have the support of the devs and aren't getting lawsuit threats from them.

 

IGN breaks review embargo and gives it 9/10:

 

More reviews: https://opencritic.com/game/13898/hogwarts-legacy/reviews

Largely 8 or 9 out of 10 with a few 7s.

 

Most critical review I have seen is from The Guardian but it feels like fair criticism:

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2...zarding-wish-fulfilment-whose-magic-wears-off

There are also rumours of poor PC performance and bugs. So maybe stick to console version if you are pre-ordering.

 

Comes out at 9 PM for me today. Got a bunch of work on my plate that I need to finish but I've spent the first 2 hours of the day reading reviews and watching gameplay footage lol.

 

Although the final score is 9/10 watching the review made the game look fucking awful. The combat looks horrible, and so do all the cutscene animations. Using a red spell to break a red shield is given as an example of "depth".
Reminds me a lot of Shadow of Mordor, another Warner Bros game, and possibly the worst game I have ever bought. It also got a 9/10.

 

IGN/Kotatku et al reviews are worthless, they operate on a 3 point scale (7 to 9) that factually doesn't say much. Nevermind when they give high scores to trash. They gave 9/10 to CP2077, a game that was released in a broken, shameful, unacceptable state.

 

That's a lava-hot take, certainly.