Summary
- Hogwarts Legacy's success and potential for a franchise indicates that future games have a lot to live up to but also room for improvement.
- The field guide in Hogwarts Legacy is a practical tool for progression and enhances the narrative by allowing players to learn and document their findings.
- The lore of Harry Potter is essential in Hogwarts Legacy, as it reinforces the game's experience and gives players a chance to appreciate iconic locations from the books and films.
The huge sales and critical acclaim that welcomed Hogwarts Legacy when it released would indicate that a follow-up is likely, potentially meaning that developer Avalanche Software has a successful, long-standing franchise on its hands. Any future games have a lot to live up to, but also much to improve, with the first being plagued with performance issues and a largely unspectacular story, but wrapped in a world that is perfect for the RPG genre.
Even amidst a plethora of other fantastic games in what is shaping up to be an exceptional year for gaming, Hogwarts Legacy will be remembered as time goes on. One of the reasons for this is because it brings the best adaptation of the wizarding world to the gaming medium to date, and as fans have been asking for something of this magnitude for decades, it can be forgiven for some of its shortcomings. The lore is sufficiently documented in the game's field guide, and while it has already been used in the first game, the sequel can't abandon the formula.
Hogwarts Legacy's Field Guide is Practical, and Fuels Progress
The field guide in Hogwarts Legacy makes a lot of sense, not just when it comes to progression, but it fits snugly into the narrative, also. Being a new student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry means that the player character has a lot to catch up on, and having one concise tool they can use to learn and document their findings as they explore the beautiful open world is a wise inclusion. It's not a unique gameplay mechanic, however, as a lot of RPGs have some kind of compendium to achieve the same thing.
Should a Hogwarts Legacy sequel decide to follow the same protagonist as the first game, it would make sense to bring the field guide back. It's their eyes and ears, and if the game includes more places to visit and enemies to overcome, players have somewhere to document the additions, showing how much the sequel has improved on the last. Hogwarts Legacy's field guide is not only useful to give more context into the setting, world, and characters, but finding its pages can allow the player to feel a sense of achievement by simply exploring and stumbling across new areas and places of interest.
Lore is Essential at Hogwarts
Without the lore of Harry Potter to reinforce it, Hogwarts Legacy would be largely reduced to something of a cookie-cutter action RPG. It's the relationship with the license it falls under that makes the experience a worthwhile one. Perusing the books in the library's restricted section and stopping by the herbology classrooms is a chance to appreciate the locations from the books and films at the player's leisure.
The field guide is also the vessel to reach Hogwarts Legacy's true ending; while that presents its own problems, tying the collectible aspect of the game to the story isn't a bad idea, and one that should be developed on rather than discarded. Hogwarts Legacy shines brightest when it puts the world at the forefront, frequently giving Harry Potter fans something to love while also doing well to preserve a sense of history and originality that can welcome new players. The field guide is an essential tool for progression, and the most obvious justification for the wonderful world-building in Avalanche Software's magnum opus. It could be a costly mistake to omit it in the follow-up.
Hogwarts Legacy is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, with a Switch release scheduled for November 14, 2023.