Big risk preordering this one. There’s at least a 50/50 chance it’s a forgettable 7/10.
For Qt3’s demographic of 40+ year old dudes, is pre-ordering any game that big a risk…?
I dunno, I wouldn’t be concerned about being thrown out on the street but I’d be bummed if I just burned a hundred dollars.
Speaking as one of the dumbasses that ponied up $89 for Battlefield 2042, you are 100% on target. It’s a real bummer to buy into the hype (literally and figuratively) for a preorder on a game only to find you’ve blown it.
I have an internal miser (from growing up poor) that even if it’s not really an issue of money I care about whether it’s a good deal or worth the money. PC gaming has evolved where it doesn’t take long to get a discount or sale not to mention the backlog of doom.
Eh, on the other hand if the setting is well realized (which it sounds like it is) for a nostalgia title like this a 7/10 experience is probably as good as it needs to be. The gameplay doesn’t need to be transcendent it only needs to be competent.
That was my thought process and with a 20% coupon, it was a decent enough discount. I have some free gaming time during the early access period so I wanted it for that as well. I generally don’t pre-order but the stars aligned with this one.
I’m cautiously optimistic it will be worth getting, but no way in hell am I plunking down a pre-order. Got plenty to do until it launches and probably thereafter.
If you’re a huge HP fan who’d be happy just wandering around Hogwarts then sure, the preview videos showed off their amazing worldbuilding and it should be safe to preorder.
So that’s why you post so much about it! :P
I’m gonna get my damn money’s worth from that bad game even if it kills me!
Personally, preordering this was worth it to me just to be able to print out the order confirmation and put it in an envelope.
Our Christmas travel plans got wiped out by the Southwest meltdown, so we were stuck at home with no food and nothing planned instead of doing all the fun snow activities we had told the kids was the main gift this year.
So at 2 a.m. Christmas Eve, while on hold with Southwest trying to find a way to get there (after several hours on hold they finally just hung up on me), I preordered this. Then I opened up the 4-pack of Nintendo gift cards we’d wrapped for each of them, and instead constructed a series of clues and riddles, each leading to a gift card with the next clue on a post-it. The final clue was split across both of their post-its, so they had a moment of bafflement thinking it was completely incoherent before realizing they had to put them together to get the full message, which led them to the envelope with the pre-order.
They’ve loved the books and movies for years, and have been looking forward to this since it was announced, so this wound up being super fun and exciting for them.
I love it, Thraeg! That’s some good parenting! You inspired me to search my documents folder for some old treasure hunts I wrote…
AMELIA’S BIRTHDAY
TREASURE HUNT!!!
Welcome girls, this shall be fun!
You’re holding now, clue number one.
To lead you to Amelia’s treasure,
Will truly be my rhyming pleasure
And all you other girls, don’t worry.
You’ll find stuff too, but better scurry!
At every stop along the way,
There’s something new with which to play.
So grab your treasure sacks and run.
But hurry now, this will be fun!
Clue number two is ready, waiting
It’s in the driveway, license plating!
What’s this? Just dumb old stinky socks?
Best go and check inside the mailbox.
Pencils! Yay! Now that’s much better.
Next go and find Amelia’s sweater.
You guys are good, that much is clear
Now check a closet near to here.
Candy necklaces you have spied!
Let’s head out back and check the slide.
Can’t stop now! No taking breaks!
Go look where we keep the rakes.
Planting is fun! Just add water
Laundry room – it’s getting hotter.
Don’t be slow, we have to zoom!
Open cupboards in the playroom.
These clues can drive me batty, yo.
Investigate the patio!
Puzzle fun for all to take.
Now dining room for birthday cake!
Congrats! You did it! Awesome deal, ya.
SING HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO AMELIA!
Nice. I made my son a personalized escape room for his birthday last week. Was fun watching the kids run around for an hour solving dinosaur themed puzzles to get the key to unlock the treasure chest.
That’s so great. Something tells me us gamers know how to do birthdays right. :)
Hmm. So the evil magic we saw in previews is considered evil in the 1890’s setting as well. There’s just no drawback to using them.
Lead designer Kelly Rowland expanded upon how casting these spells might affect our character’s standing in the eyes of their classmates. “Characters will react visually and audibly to seeing the player cast an Unforgivable, but we don’t have a morality system that punishes them for doing so.” But before you make plans to murder your friends, Squier warns that there are limitations in place. "The spells are not learned in school, and the player very specifically chooses whether or not to learn them.
Judgement from your peers aside, Murphy described the element of choice as integral to Hogwarts Legacy. “This is because it is the ultimate embodiment of role-playing; allowing the player to be evil,” she said. “Additionally, this was important because it comes from a place of non-judgement by the game creators. If you want to be evil, be evil.”
That reads as if the choice & consequence effects are going to be limited. Some cosmetic-type stuff, like voideovers of npcs chastising you, but you aren’t going to get closed quest lines from your friends or anything like that.
Yeah its basically the “screw it do whatever you want” solution.
Edit: I get why the decision to allow evil spells makes sense from a financial/dev resources perspective. It’s infinitely easier to just let players “shoot” baddies and clear them from the game world than have a ton of incapacitated enemies hogging all the memory or needing to explain why the poachers you defeated 3 weeks ago are still tied up. And going the other way, building real in-game consequences for using Dark Arts would cost more and add more dev time, etc, and you’d still have to explain why evil Harold Puffer can blast enemies into smithereens and still get kudos from all the teachers.
It just doesn’t make much sense at all from a worldbuilding/lore perspective.
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”
Maybe there should be consequences to being a murderous tapir in a school. Even in the Scholomance, you couldn’t just kill a bunch of your classmates without taking a social hit.
Like, I dunno, five points from Hufflepuff.
What platform are you all planning to get this on?