We’ve been practicing our wand swooshes and elongating the o’s on our leviosas every day since the Hogwarts Legacy trailer first hit back in 2020. Unfortunately, we’ve had plenty of time to get good—the open-world Harry Potter RPG has been pushed back twice to an early 2023 release date.
Originally aimed for release back in 2021, Hogwarts Legacy was pushed into 2022 to later postponed for 2023. But the wait is now over, Hogwarts Legacy will arrive on February 10, 2023.
Also read: Harry Potter TV Series On Max: What We Know So Far & JK Rowling’s Response
Of course, pre-orders are already open, so you can make sure you’re among the first to get it. For those who can’t wait for wizarding school to begin, here’s everything we know about Hogwarts Legacy.
What’s the gameplay like in Hogwarts Legacy?
Hogwarts Legacy is an open-world RPG set in the Harry Potter universe. Set in the 1800s, the game will allow players to step into the Harry Potter fantasy world as a wizard.
From trailers and interviews, we know the player will be a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You’ll have the opportunity to immerse yourself in the life of a wizard school student. That means attending classes, socializing with other students, interacting with the ghosts and professors, as well as exploring Hogwarts and the surrounding areas (including Hogsmeade and the Forbidden Forest!).
Combat is also a big part of the gameplay. You will learn to conjure dozens of useful spells, including many spells from the movies and books (and a few ancient magic spells that are brand-new).
From the gameplay trailers, it appears you can combo the effects of certain spells to get a new effect. You can also roll to dodge and disjoint incoming jinxes with your wand. The gameplay trailer also showed a few special plants and animals that can be used as utility items in battle, such as a screaming mandrake that can be used to stun a group of enemies.
The player can cast a disenchanting charm to blend into the environment around them, making them effectively invisible for a short period. In the trailer, the player character used the spell to sneak up on an unsuspecting enemy before disabling them with a petrificus totalus jinx.
What is the story in Hogwarts Legacy?
Hogwarts Legacy is set in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the 1800s.
That’s nearly 200 years before Harry Potter was born and more than a century before Grindelwald’s reign of terror, so don’t expect to meet up with many familiar faces from the movies.
In Hogwarts Legacy, you play as a student at Hogwarts with the ability to perceive and conjure ancient magic. Due to your special talents, you’ve been given a late acceptance at the renowned wizarding school, entering the school as a fifth-year student in the year 1890.
The main antagonist of the game is Ranrok, a gruff-faced goblin with a natural talent for goblin magic that allowed him to go toe-to-toe with witches and wizards in magical combat. Driven by a burning hatred for wizards, Ranrok heads a goblin rebellion to destroy all wizardkind. Ranrok wants to use Ancient magic to achieve his goals.
Who are the characters in Hogwarts Legacy?
The main character is an unnamed fifth-year student at Hogwarts attending school in the late 1800s. The main character’s physical appearance, gender, House, and name are all decided by the player.
Your character will meet a few friends during their time at Hogwarts. Unlike Harry Potter, your closest companions will all come from different Houses. They are:
Natsai Onai: a brave Gryffindor driven by justice.
Sebastian Sallow: a sly Slytherin with a penchant for breaking the rules.
Poppy Sweeting: a kind-hearted Hufflepuff with an affinity for magical beasts.
What spells will be in Hogwarts Legacy?
We don’t know the full official list, but YouTuber Macheiramphus has put together a compilation of all the spells seen in the official trailers.
Here’s the list of known spells in Hogwarts Legacy and what they do:
- Wingardium Leviosa — makes objects/people levitate
- Flipendo — knocks objects/people backwards
- Accio — pulls an object to the caster
- Lumos — lights the caster’s wand, illuminating the area
- Expelliarmus — causes whatever the target is holding to fly out of their hand
- Confringo — produces an explosion
- Impedimenta — slows the target
- Petrificus totalus — freezes the target’s body
- Reparo — repairs non-magical items (e.g. bridges and homes)
- Avada kedavra — instantly kills target
- Protego — summons a magical shield that reflects spells and projectiles
- Diffindo — cut or tear objects
- Depulso — repels the target away from the caster
- Oppugno — causes the targeted object to attack a victim
- Incendio — produces fire
- Descendo — causes the target to move downwards or fall
- Disillusionment charm — disguises a target as its surroundings
- Various Ancient magic spells
The most interesting thing here is that your character can cast Ancient magic. Ancient magic is a forgotten branch of magic that even very few Hogwarts professors understand, so having the ability to conjure it at will makes your character pretty special. The game’s primary antagonist, the goblin Ranrok, wants to use Ancient magic to destroy all wizards.
As for the locations included in the game, here’s a list of what you can expect:
- The Great Hall
- Hogwarts Library (and the Restricted Section)
- A Potions Classroom
- A Charms Classroom
- A Herbology Classroom
- A Defence Against the Dark Arts Classroom
- A History of Magic Classroom
- The Fat Lady’s Corridor
- The Gryffindor Common Room
- The Slytherin Common Room
- The Hufflepuff Common Room
- The Ravenclaw Common Room
- The Hogwarts kitchens
- The Prefects’ Bathroom
- The Room of Requirement (this is used as your personal “home base” in the game, and where you can manage your upgrades and such)
- The Courtyard
- The Owlery
- The Boathouse
- The Headmaster’s Office
When is the Hogwarts Legacy release date?
Hogwarts Legacy will be released on February 10, 2023.
The game was originally slated for a 2021 release before being pushed back a year to 2022.
In early 2022, however, rumours were already circulating about development issues that would push back the game’s release date into 2023. It wasn’t until mid-August 2022 that these rumours were confirmed. On August 13, 2022, Portkey Games and WB announced another delay which would see the game’s premier moved to early 2023.
Although delays are always disappointing, there’s a silver lining: we finally got a fixed release date. According to the official Hogwarts Legacy Twitter account, wizard school should be in session on February 10, 2023.
Will there be a Hogwarts Legacy Collector’s Edition?
Yes. Start saving now, though, because it’s going to cost you $300.
On August 24, 2022, the official Hogwarts Legacy Twitter account announced that pre-orders for the Collector’s Edition would begin the next day.
According to a leaked listing by EB Games in Australia, the Collector’s Edition will go for AUS$500. A straight conversion brings it to roughly US$350, though according to the game’s community manager, Chandler Wood, “that pricing is not correct in USD.” Later, Wood confirmed that the official US price would be set at $300.
With the Collector’s Edition, you get all the goodies from the Hogwarts Legacy Deluxe Edition: special cosmetics, access to the game 72 hours before its official launch, and an exclusive mount. You also get a special steelbook, a nifty floating wand, a massive Collector’s Edition box, and those gaming on consoles will also get a physical disk version of the game (PC players will only get a digital code).
What engine is Hogwarts Legacy using?
Hogwarts Legacy is confirmed to be using Unreal Engine, very likely Unreal Engine 4, though there’s no official statement as to which version.
We know you’d love to see the wizarding world rendered with all the graphical bells and whistles available in Unreal Engine 5, but the odds of Hogwarts Legacy using the latest Unreal Engine are slim.
The game has been in the oven since at least 2020, and UE5 was only just made available to developers in April of this year. The Harry Potter RPG is mere months away from release and is likely too far along in development for an engine swap.
Fans later discovered a job posting by the game’s developer, Avalanche Software, looking for a general artist for Hogwarts Legacy with “experience with Unreal Engine 4.” That pretty much put the nail in the coffin for wizard school in Unreal Engine 5 (for now, anyway).
Is there multiplayer in Hogwarts Legacy?
No. Hogwarts Legacy will not have multiplayer.
This was one of the biggest questions we had when the game’s first trailer dropped. We loved the idea of donning the robes and wand with a buddy to re-enact the films, explore the halls of Hogwarts, or get into magical mischief, Weasley-twins-style.
Unfortunately, the game’s devs have quashed those fantasies on their official FAQ page, which reads:
“Hogwarts Legacy is a single-player experience and does not have online or co-op gameplay.”
We’re bummed about it, too.
Of course, this doesn’t rule out the possibility of multiplayer functionality in a future patch. It wouldn’t be the first time a big studio has done this (Ghost of Tsushima got a multiplayer update long after it was first released) though it’s an admittedly rare occurrence.
Conveniently, the answer to this question segues nicely into another popular one we’ve seen:
Will Hogwarts Legacy have crossplay?
No. Hogwarts Legacy will not have crossplay.
This should come as no surprise, as the game won’t have multiplayer.
Is J.K. Rowling involved with Hogwarts Legacy?
The game’s official FAQ is pretty clear about this one:
No. J. K. Rowling is not involved with Hogwarts Legacy.
That means everything from the story to the characters and designs is produced by the game’s developers and is different from what J.K. Rowling has done before. However, the developers did mention on the game’s website that J.K. Rowling’s team collaborated with them to make sure that Hogwarts Legacy makes sense to the world that Rowling created years ago.
Long-time fans needn’t fret, though. From what we’ve seen, Hogwarts Legacy is heavily influenced by the visual language and lore established in the movies and novels. The lack of input from Rowling might actually be a blessing considering some of the stuff she’s written after Harry Potter (yikes!).
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How are you sorted into houses in Hogwarts Legacy?
Players choose their House at the start of the game.
If you’d prefer a sorting experience more akin to the one in the books and films, you can undergo an official Sorting Experience by signing up for the Harry Potter Fan Club and then linking the account to Hogwarts Legacy. Don’t worry; it’s completely free.
What platforms is Hogwarts Legacy coming to?
The original 2020 trailer revealed what platforms Hogwarts Legacy will be coming to, confirming it would be a cross-gen title.
Hogwarts Legacy is coming to PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series S/X, and PlayStation 5.
If you want to get the game on Xbox, make sure to get some Xbox Live Gift Cards from OffGamers here beforehand!
That’s everything we know about Hogwarts Legacy!
You can expect Portkey Games and WB to release even more news about the game as we approach its release date. For now, it’s looking to be the immersive Harry Potter RPG we’ve been dreaming of since childhood.
Article contributed by Sarah Paul, a content outreach writer for OffGamers.
About Sarah Paul: I foster relationships between gaming enthusiasts and gaming developers to create relevant content for gamers worldwide. I also happen to be a passionate writer and certified night owl.
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