For those who like talking about games as much as playing them.

The depiction of Hogwarts never was so realistic as in Hogwarts Legacy. The overworld and the whole castle looks awesome and believable and is a wonderful combination of depictions in the book and the movies. It’s really great to finally have a video game that brings this world to life like that. But with the evolution of graphics and the demand to make everything look and feel realistic, problems arise that are not as problematic in simpler and more illustrative video games.

It seems so incredibly strange to me that a game in which you play a 15 year old student has greater adventures and more brutal adventures than most adults while single handenly masterting the everyday school life. You’re supposed to be a child but even in the intro you see someone chewed on by a dragon and noone is fased by it at all. Then a attack on Hogsmeade by trolls which came straight outta Warcraft 3 and you just fight to win even though all the people around you run for their life. It gets even worse when there is a cutscene which reveals that the troll attack was all about you and you’re supposed to be kidnapped by some evil people. What’s the next step? Drinking a butter beer I guess?

Even away from the main plot, there are similar problems all the time. Such incredibly strong dissonances everywhere that I don’t know why people ignore them so hard. For example, you’re supposed to be a good person, but the next moment you’re killing animals and people in cold blood. You smash them around, set them on fire, freeze them to death and even later you have the ability to use the unforgivable curses. And a lot of rewards are locked away and random homes of others people in which you break in and rob them. I don’t understand why they make it this way. It would make more sense if you’re a professor instead of a child but even then the things you do seem wayy to vast. Bigger than any adventure seen in any previous book or movie.

Why does the game try to so hard to be the next Skyrim or something? Why doesn’t it concentrate more on the lessons, puzzles, everyday life (dialoge with other students and professors), stealth, defensive options, exploration on the school ground and basically a lot of stuff that is already in but is sidecontent instead? It doesn’t really work the way it is and that’s a real bummer. If it would be very different if it was a SNES game from 1994 but that’s not the case. I still enjoy my overall experience because a lot of good things are in place but I really really need to be blindfolded sometimes. The game is so stupid in so many ways.

Has anyone also had similar experiences and can’t get past this dissonance?