Summary
- Hogwarts Mystery has redeemed itself in recent years and now has the opportunity to expand its romance system, allowing players to have deeper relationships as the characters age into adults.
- The introduction of enhanced romance features would make sense for the grown-up characters and add more narrative depth to the game.
- As the characters age, the romance sub-plots should have higher stakes and be more consequential, potentially including complications and the option for marriage and children in the future.
When Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery released back in 2018, it wasn't exactly what many gamers had in mind. The mobile game's point-and-click nature didn't immediately click with fans who wanted a more immersive, contemporary video game experience set in Hogwarts, and the game's reliance on microtransactions didn't help either. However, Hogwarts Mystery has redeemed itself in recent years, and with the arrival of the Beyond Hogwarts expansion that takes players into the adult side of the wizarding world, there are plenty of new directions the game can go, potentially expanding its somewhat rudimentary romance system.
Hogwarts Mystery, despite its issues, fulfilled a major fantasy for many Harry Potter fans: it let them journey through their own seven-year Hogwarts experience. Players would design a character and watch them grow, starting from Year One. This simulated the magic captured by the Harry Potter series, which followed its main characters from ages eleven to seventeen. This role-playing experience was no doubt gratifying for countless fans, but now that Hogwarts Mystery is aging its characters up, there is the opportunity to introduce a feature that is a staple of the RPG genre: romanceable characters.
Why Enhanced Romance Features Would Benefit Hogwarts Mystery
If recent successes like Baldur's Gate 3 have taught the gaming community anything, it's that players love to have the option to romance NPCs in their RPGs. In Hogwarts Mystery, romance options were relatively limited, being centered around specific quests and not progressing beyond those quests, for the most part. Now that the characters have grown into adults with careers and, presumably, adult problems, the introduction of more fleshed-out romance options makes a lot of sense.
These romance scenarios wouldn't have to be (and perhaps shouldn't be) as adult as those in mature games like Baldur's Gate 3 or Mass Effect, but there is still plenty of room for PG-13 relationships to deepen and grow now that the characters are adults. Although romance has featured in Hogwarts Mystery before, it was a bit simplistic, and the relationships players could enter into didn't have much narrative heft behind them. As the characters mature, it would only make sense for their relationships to mature as well, with certain romance options perhaps having more complicated or impactful side quests associated with them.
There are ways to make the player's choice of partner more consequential as well. Since the characters of Hogwarts Mystery have been children up to this point, the romance plots have been rather two-dimensional, centering on crushes and puppy love. This is all well and good, and it certainly fits the surprisingly great story of Hogwarts Mystery, but as the characters grow, it's likely that the story stakes will get more significant, which would mean that the stakes of the romance sub-plots should be raised as well. For example, relationships could be a bit more fickle for these adult characters, perhaps being damaged if the player decides to ignore their partner enough or if they show interest in another character.
One obvious addition to the romance system would be marriage and children. If a player were to progress their relationship past a certain point, they could take this next step with their partner. As Hogwarts Mystery looks to the future, a family system would be an elegant way to continue the Hogwarts side of the story, as players could have children who later end up enrolling at the school.
Hogwarts Mystery is serving up a lot of change with its Beyond Hogwarts update. Harry Potter fans have seen very little of the wizarding world beyond the context of Hogwarts, and this update provides the perfect opportunity to do that. If Hogwarts Mystery is going to show what it's like for adults in this magical world, deep, significant relationships would be a natural addition.
Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is available now for mobile devices.