Significant details about the long-rumored Harry Potter RPG may have surfaced via an unverified leak on Reddit. In many respects, the details sound like wish fulfillment, and the leaker has no previous track record, so the following details should be approached with extreme skepticism.
A poster claiming to work in the marketing department of Warner Bros. has revealed that the game will avoid the Harry Potter branding, instead tentatively being titled Hogwarts: A Dark Legacy. The game will reportedly take place at Hogwarts long after the events of the book and movie series, with Harry’s children already having graduated, though some familiar characters will return.
Players will take the role of a fifth-year transfer student, following them through the remainder of their schooling and potentially into their first year as an Auror with the Ministry of Magic. Their school house will be determined by choices made during character customization, with each house having a unique quest line, though an overarching story of conflict against a former Death Eater will remain constant.
In terms of gameplay, the Harry Potter RPG is said to be based around four “extremely detailed” hubs, including Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, and the Ministry of Magic. Each area will host an array of side missions and secrets. Meanwhile, combat will, of course, be magic-based, with players developing their character via five distinct branches of a skill tree. The extent to which those skills may be used in the course of ordinary play is unclear, though the game will feature a dedicated duel system for battles against rivals.
Those rivals will be procedurally generated using a modified version of the Nemesis system from Monolith Productions’ Middle-Earth duology. Fewer rivals will be generated, but they will have more detailed characterization.
The leak further states that the game “gets extremely dark,” expected to be struck with a Teen or possible Mature ESRB rating.
According to the poster, Hogwarts: A Dark Legacy was scheduled to be unveiled at some point this month, but is now planned instead for “before August,” with a targeted launch of June next year for current- and next-gen consoles, as well as PC.
Some of the details align with the mission of Portkey Games, a Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment label created in 2017 for the development of games set in the Wizarding World universe. This Harry Potter RPG project has been rumored since at least 2018 when a purported gameplay video leaked.
