Open-World Harry Potter RPG Game Hogwarts Legacy Release Date Explained

Published: 13 Jan 2022 3:53 PM +00:00 Updated: 13 Jan 2022 6:44 PM +00:00

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A huge, ambitious, open-world AAA Harry Potter game is currently in development over at Avalanche Software (not Avalanche Studios who make the Just Cause games) and has been for some time. We haven't heard much about the game since its formal announcement in 2020 and gameplay leak in 2018, but new information has recently been leaked. In this article, we'll tell you everything you need to know about the upcoming Hogwarts Legacy.

What Is Hogwarts Legacy?

Hogwarts Legacy is an open-world action RPG set in the late 19th century at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy. In the game, you'll be able to create your own character, choose your own Hogwartz House, attend classes, and explore Hogwarts a fully-explorable open-world that includes places like Hogsmeade Village and the Forbidden Forest.

You'll be able to cast spells, brew potions, tame animals, make choices, and much more. There's going to be a variety of combat abilities in the game you can master and play around with, but we don't know much about the specifics of how combat will work just yet.

While, admittedly, information on the game's systems is relatively scant at the moment, the premise of the game is simple: Play the open-world Harry Potter RPG you've always dreamed of where you can create and customize your very own witch or wizard, attend classes, and fight fantastic, otherworldly creatures.

If you're a Harry Potter fan, this is the game you've always wished a studio would make. Harry Potter has had a long history of video game adaptations, but none of them were big-budget AAA games with a ton of ambition and scope. They were mostly just your usual movie tie-in games, even if some of them were reasonably well-liked.

In recent years, Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling has become an increasingly controversial figure with her radical remarks on Twitter, but according to publisher Warner Bros. she is not directly involved with the game's production at all. Naturally, she's indirectly involved as she's the writer and creator of the IP the game is set in the world of, but beyond that, she doesn't have some kind of role at Avalanche.

The game was originally announced in 2020 at a PS5 event and is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. There is no news about a Nintendo Switch port of the game at this time.

Hogwarts Legacy is also running on Unreal Engine 4, or at least it was earlier in development. Some have speculated the game may transition to Unreal Engine 5, but this isn't particularly likely if the game is set still set to come to last-generation consoles like PS4. Nonetheless, as of now, anything is possible.

Avalanche Software, the developer of Hogwarts Legacy, is often confused with Avalanche Studios, creator of Just Cause. Avalanche Software was acquired by Disney in 2005 after working on Disney games since 2000. Since being acquired, Avalanche has developed a ton of Disney games from Chicken Little and Bolt to the Disney Infinity series.

Hogwarts Legacy is Avalanche's first project on the PS5/Xbox Series X generation, and it's the studio's biggest, most ambitious project yet. They have a lot of experience working with major IPs, but whether or not this experience will transfer over to a much bigger project remains to be seen.

Hogwarts Legacy's Release Date

First off, there isn't an official release date for Hogwarts Legacy just yet. When it was announced, it was originally slated for a 2021 release, but like many other game development studios working through COVID-19, Avalanche was forced to delay the project into 2022.

We haven't got a specific date yet in 2022 when we can expect Hogwarts Legacy to actually hit store shelves, but the latest leak from famous gaming industry insider Tom Henderson suggests that the game will be coming soon.

According to Henderson, at the next PlayStation State of Play in February, Hogwarts Legacy will make an appearance. Henderson isn't guaranteeing there'll be a release date announced at the State of Play, but the game will be there.

While Henderson doesn't know if there'll be an official release date announced at the State of Play or what that release date might be, he does know the game is set for a Q3 2022 release. Where exactly within that period still remains to be seen and may not have even been decided just yet.

There were some earlier rumors that the game would be coming sooner than Q3 2022, supposedly it was to release in summer 2022, but these are altogether less reliable rumors than the information leaked by insider Tom Henderson. If another release date isn't announced at the State of Play, expect the game in Q3 of this year.

However, Henderson did note that an exciting new reveal for Hogwarts Legacy would drop at the State of Play: the game's second official trailer. While Henderson didn't give more details about what to expect in the trailer, since we're getting close to the game's actual release, a gameplay trailer with a good amount of gameplay is probably coming.

Regardless of what exactly we'll see at the State of Play, though, we can expect marketing for the game to begin sometime this year as we get closer and closer to the game's actual release. There'll probably be a big marketing push for Hogwarts Legacy, considering it's the biggest, most ambitious Harry Potter game ever made.

On top of that, as marketing ramps up, we'll inevitably learn more and more about the game, soon, before it drops. Since it's a single-player experience, as far as we know, it'll be unlikely there's any kind of beta before release, but you never know.

There's a good deal of hype around Hogwarts Legacy, so if you want to stay up-to-date with all the very latest Legacy news the second it drops, consider joining the r/HarryPotterGame subreddit. This is the Hogwarts Legacy subreddit, and it already has over 30,000 members interested in an unreleased game that's only ever had a single trailer drop in the near two years since its announcement.

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