Cursed

J. K. Rowling's legacy, summed up in a feverishly awaited dud of a game.

- LEWIS GORDON

“DOES IT GET ANY MORE COZY than Hogsmeade?” The first time you hear this refrain in Hogwarts Legacy, the new blockbuster video game based on the Harry  Potter franchise, you may find yourself agreeing with your character who has just said it. The higgledy-piggledy Hogsmeade Village is indeed cozy, a market town filled with a plethora of shops selling various wizarding wares. Then, as you hear the phrase for the fifth, tenth, and 15th time, you may begin to feel as if the long-in-development video game is trying too hard to convince you of this fact. Its repetition sums up almost the entire emotional register of Hogwarts Legacy—the wish-fulfillment fantasy of inhabiting the Potterverse it offers and the lack of confidence with which it does so. This is an insecure game, one you can tell is buckling under the weight of everything that accompanies it: the internet discourse, fan expectations, and J.K. Rowling herself.

When Hogwarts Legacy was announced in September 2020, it appeared that developer Avalanche Software was cooking up an open-world role-playing game to finally scratch the magical-boarding-school itch after years of subpar adaptations of this kind. The trailer spoke of players adding their “own story” to the “hallowed walls” of Hogwarts and “shaping the future” of the Wizarding World. For a generation of readers who grew up wishing they’d received a Hogwarts acceptance letter, it seemed like the next best thing. Warner Bros., the owner of the Harry Potter IP, clearly wanted this game to appeal to everyone and all playstyles, and that first preview tried to preemptively address the divided cultural waters into which it would be released. “Magic,” the trailer said, “binds together our long history.”