Saturday Morning Gaming: Hogwarts Legacy After A Week and Revisiting Duskers
Last week’s review imagined 3 players:
- The long-time Gamer who is vaguely aware of Harry Potter. Saw the trailers, maybe… never saw the movies or read the books. Is interested in the game because it’s a AAA game that is the #1 best-selling game in a long time and has Metacritic scores in the 80s and 90s.
- The long-time Gamer who saw the movies (and maybe read the books? But if they read them, they only read them once). Is interested in the game because they’ve heard it’s good and they have some fond memories of the Harry Potter franchise.
- The long-time Gamer who saw the movies, read the books, read fanfic, knows what House they got sorted into, went to Universal Studios to go to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, says stuff like “Points for Hufflepuff!” in real life, and so on. Is interested in the game because ARE YOU KIDDING ME IT’S AN OPPORTUNITY TO FINALLY GO TO HOGWARTS.
I figured we’d check in with each of them after another week of playing.
Player #1 has stopped playing the game. There’s copy/pasted “content” that is mostly filler. Much like books six and seven, this game badly needs an editor. It might have been a perfect 20 hour game, it’s a dull 60 hour game. Life’s too short.
Player #2 is still playing the game but is somewhat baffled by some of the choices made. There’s an astronomy class? And you have to go out into the world and find constellations? And the teacher mocked astrology? This is a world where magic is real. Why are you taking an astronomy class instead of an astrology class? Holy cow, the game is taking *FOREVER* to get you to the main story. If someone asked “what’s the main story for Hogwarts Legacy?”, you’d tell them “you mostly run around doing side quests. And there’s something about goblins? And ancient magic? But the game is mostly running around and not doing the main quests.”
Player #3 is still shrieking with delight. In the Slytherin witches’ bathroom, there’s a sink that has a snake on it. OMG OMG OMG. And there are so many things to do! You can collect magical animals! And do old Merlin trials! And play wizardly minigames like Summoner’s Court and broom racing! The map is *FULL* of stuff! You can’t walk 10 yards without finding yet another quest!
I checked in with my buddy who is married to a Potterhead non-gamer and his wife still *LOVES* the game. She hands off the controller for the racing section but grabs it back immediately when the race ends.
So all that to say: Hogwarts Legacy is not a particularly good game in and of itself. I can’t see someone who is into video games but not the Potterverse not being distracted by any given next big thing. Atomic Heart, say. HOWEVER! The game has sold about 12 million copies so far and it wouldn’t surprise me to see that number jump again when the versions for the previous generation consoles come out. And that tells me that the game was purchased by a heck of a lot more people than merely the hardcore “gamers”.
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Epic Game Store’s free game this week is Duskers. We talked about it back in 2018 and it’s, seriously, a good game. Atmospheric, creepy, intelligent, and it knows how to make you freak yourself out. If you want to play a game that will remind you of Firefly and Alien at the same time, pick this one up.
So… what are you playing?
Fans of Harry Potter over the age of 14 will be an eternal mystery to me.Report
Eh, I figure that it’s like Star Wars. Maribou and I were excited to see Episode 1 in the theaters.
Less excited coming out, of course…
But I think it’s one of those things where if you were the right age when the books hit, you’re a Potterhead for life. You can’t wait for your kiddos to read the books.
Where they will, of course, be confused by this old stuff when they could be reading… I don’t know what’s hot with the kidz these days. Everything that I can think of came out at least 10 years ago.Report
I believe Harry Potter fandom is the ultimate dividing line between the old and the young millennial. The older still had that parent or teacher that passed down the hobbit/lotr. The younger were there right in time for the Harry Potter fad. I really notice it with my brothers who are 6 and 10 years younger than me. I was/am too old to get it but it was very much the cultural touchstone for them, especially the youngest who was still in elementary school when the first movie came out.Report
As an older millennial, it was more Terry Pratchett than Tolkien.Report
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of him.Report
That’s a little surprising, he’s the second-best selling English fiction author:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_PratchettReport
I was of prime age for Star Wars (13 when the first one came out, and the whole non-sequential episode thing is baffling to me), but eventually ya grow up.Report
I was ~5 the first time and ~7 when they rereleased in 1979 as prep for Empire in 1980.
I do think that if Episode 1 had been good, it would have been much more difficult to dismiss it as kid’s stuff.Report
I saw the 1st three when they came out in the ’70s. The first was indisputably great, the 2nd not so much, and the 3rd a nice return to form. I saw Phantom Menace, and like you, I was disappointed. I may have seen the next one but I don’t remember. By then I was around 30, so I’d probably just lost interest. I did see the one where Han Solo dies and it was absolutely atrocious.
I’m not sure any movie where the characters are so black and white can be anything but kid stuff.Report
My problem with people still being attached to crap is that it’s crap.
Sure, a 10 year old could watch “Yor, The Hunter From The Future” and think “THIS IS CINEMA” while a grown-up would know that it’s crap. Crap, crap, crap.
But the kid stuff that is good (and not crap) is worth visiting as an adult. The problem with the Harry Potter books is that somewhere around 4, Rowling thought she was smarter than her editors and somewhere around 6, Rowling thought she no longer needed them at all.
But there is more than just dross in the early books and there is some serious fodder for some serious conversations about serious topics with the younguns once you get into years 3-5.
“You need to grow up” always feels like a variant of “don’t like what you like, like what I like” and, seriously, I am never going to enjoy a college basketball game. Never ever.
But crap? Yeah. Stop liking crap. There’s good stuff out there. Consume that stuff instead.Report
Heh. I’m with you, at least on basketball. The emphasis on scoring has rendered the game unwatchable.
I did try to read the first HP book when my kids were reading them. I made it about 1 chapter in, found it not to my liking, and felt like an idiot for reading a kid’s book, so I put it down. I was probably in my mids-40s.
I’m not saying adults can’t be into HP. I’m saying I don’t know why they would.Report
This got me thinking about how way back in the 90s, I came across the Usenet “interactive fiction” group and was interested in the discussions about the possibilities and ideas for moving from the puzzle-game approach to something that was more like what the term implied, experiencing the story and being able to affect it without making it a bunch of puzzles. Part of the challenge was how to still make such a thing interesting to be in for more than a few minutes, and another part was how to get non-gamers to realize they didn’t have to be a “gamer” to try it.
How many people are like that Potterhead non-gamer, and how many stories/experiences could be created to cater to that kind of person rather than a gamer who brings in a bunch of expectations about what a “game” should be?Report
Yeah. I mean, when I say “fetch quest”, most people familiar with RPGs know immediately what I’m talking about. They’re capable of saying “oh, this is a hybrid survive, assassinate, fetch quest” when they see a mission where you have to handle two waves of enemies before fighting the miniboss and returning with the MacGuffin.
But people who need to have the acronym “RPG” explained to them? This is new and fresh. Oh my gosh! The evil wizard has lackeys and he won’t even deign to show himself until he has to! AND HE’S STANDING BETWEEN YOU AND THE POTION INGREDIENTS YOU NEED!!!Report
Here’s one of the main ludic problems I have with the game:
You kill people.
Like, when you’re out and about fighting dark wizards? You kill them. You burn them to death, you explode them, you implode them, you pick them up and then slam them into the ground at great velocity.
AND YOU’RE A FIFTH YEAR.
How old is that? According to Google, fifth years are about fifteen.
You’re running around and killing dark wizards. There are animals that attack you and you kill them too. Wolves. Giant Spiders.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I have never killed anybody. When it comes to animals, I’ve killed insects galore (including a couple of really big spiders but “really big” means “about the size of a nickel” rather than “about the size of a tarantula” let alone “about the size of a kiddo’s wading pool”) but I’ve never killed a wolf.
I suppose I’ve outsourced my murder of chickens and cows to others and so it’s not like my hands are clean or anything, but this fifteen year old is wandering around dispatching entities like it’s no big deal.
Sure, it’s 1890. Okay. Fine.
But you’re killing a *LOT* of entities. Humans, goblins, animals. And it’s like nobody is noticing that this is kind of messed up.
“Jeez, Jaybird. Lighten up. You played Doom, right? You didn’t complain about shooting stuff in Doom.”
“Doom was a game about shooting stuff. I went into Hogwarts thinking that I’d be wandering around Hogwarts and not, you know, killing as many people as during Voldemort’s reign of terror.”
I thought I’d be going to school. Instead I am in a Mad-Eye Moody simulator.
Someone tweeted the other day that this is part of the charm of the Potterverse. There are Whomping Willows, Remembralls, and flying keys. There are also people who want to remove your intestines via your nose.
Just like real life, kinda.Report