Top Story
Avalanche’s Harry Potter RPG is named Hogwarts: A Dark Legacy
A source claiming to work in marketing for Warner Bros has leaked a bunch of information about the Harry Potter RPG rumoured to be under development at Avalanche Software.
The game is apparently called Hogwarts: A Dark Legacy and will not be directly Harry Potter branded. The story takes place after the conclusion of the Harry Potter books, and will follow a Hogwarts student from 5th grade to graduation.
According to the leaker, the game will feature:
- Full customization of a male or female muggle, half-blood or pure-blood
- Character creation determines which house you are assigned to
- Each Hogwarts House features a unique line of story quests
- You can’t side with the villain, but your decisions can have consequences including the deaths of major characters
- The villain is a former Death Eater, and Harry Potter’s children have already left Hogwarts
- Harry Potter and other notable characters will make appearances
- The skill tree will have five major branches and includes a morality system
- Slow-burn story that builds to major conflicts and events
- Features an elaboration on the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor
- Emphasis on exploration from major hubs including Hogwarts, Hogsmead and The Ministry
- Dark tone, not made for children; developer expects T or M rating
- Minigames include Quidditch and a Gwent-like card game, plus House points
- Romance plots complete with marriage if love interest survives the story
Trailer and gameplay footage will apparently be shown before August, and the game is supposedly scheduled for release in June 2021. All the leaks remain – surprise, surprise – unconfirmed by either developer or publisher.
Time For A Quick Daily Quiz?
Who wrote the music for the first five Harry Potter games?
- Jeremy Soule
- John Williams
- Bear McCreary
- Ramin Djawadi
The answer will be revealed at the bottom of today’s issue. Join up with our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss what the answer could be.
Daily Fact
Virtua Fighter started as a team sport
Virtua Fighter actually started out as a sports game, building on experiments with human models in Virtua Racing. The problem was that the arcade hardware at the time couldn’t handle an entire team rendered in 3D.
The developers ditched the teams, and decided to focus on just two characters at a time, which made the fighting game genre a natural choice. The fighter Dural was created to show off the 3D rendering technology, and was named after the villain Duke Duralumin from the manga Princess Knight.
Join up with our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss today’s fact.
Cyberpunk 2077 News
CD Projekt RED tries to predict the stupidest things players can do
Designers at CD Projekt RED are doing their best to predict every move you might make in Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City, to make sure the show goes on even if the player is an idiot.
According to interviews with the German magazine GameStar, the difference in complexity between The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 is on par with the leap from the second to the third Witcher game.
Highlights of the podcast:
- Three times as many ways to complete missions as in The Witcher 3, including the idiot way
- The Witcher 3 DLCs were attempts to widen the range of solutions for quests as The Witcher was too repetitive
- Every NPC in Night City will have its own routine
- No rules or guidelines for mission design: If it’s fun to play, the team will keep and expand it
- Dev team keep replaying missions over and over to find bugs
- CD Projekt RED sent 700 workstations to developers working from home
- You can summon fantasy creatures from cyberspace to attack people
The team is particularly happy that no-one leaked Keanu Reeves’ involvement before the big unveiling at E3 2019. They’re also keen to point out that the melee combat system shown last year has been overhauled since then. Cyberpunk 2077 launches for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in September.
