Hogwarts houses in theHarry Pottermythology have always been entertaining barometers for what a character’s defining personality traits are, even if they can be derivative or reductive. By placing a sentient, magical witch hat on a child’s head, the house that will define them for their entire seven-year education at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is decided. These houses separate students into either Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, or Ravenclaw.
InHogwarts Legacy, players will have the freedom to choose their house. This already hints at a degree of replayabilityHogwarts Legacymay have, inspiring at least four different playthroughs to experience what life is like as a student in each house. But while house selection is a fun option, it also comes with predetermined biases that have been influenced by stereotypical and archetypal depictions of characters from theHarry Potternovels and films. Gryffindor is depicted as good and Slytherin is depicted as bad, for example, andHogwarts Legacymust avoid this tired trope.
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Player Choice and Morality Should Not Be Binary in Hogwarts Legacy
Harry Potterhas romanticized the idea of Gryffindor due to how many exemplary characters belong to that house.Gryffindor is only ever portrayed as being the pillar of braveryand benevolence, honoring students such as Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger for their heroic feats year after year.
On the other hand, Slytherin is only ever portrayed as the house that harbors mischievous or malevolent students, including characters who adamantly express bigotry and supremacy as pure-bloods, such as the Malfoys. Gryffindor is thus in perpetual contention with Slytherin. Meanwhile,houses Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw are dismissively back-burnered, despite arguably being the more interesting houses in terms of what students may be selected to belong to them.
Hogwarts Legacyhas the opportunity to represent each individual house uniquelyand with comprehensive characters belonging to each, rather than simply denoting a Slytherin student as wholly bad or a Gryffindor student as wholly good.Hogwarts Legacyshould feature NPCs from different houses that surprise fans with characteristics that still adhere to the arbitrary personality traits that placed them in their houses, but are not so rigidly defined as to make them predictable, uninteresting, or incomprehensive.
Players will surely not approach every character or scenario with only their house’s personality traits in mind, for example, so it should not be expected that characters in either Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, or Ravenclaw will do so either. It is unclear how many choices players will have when it comes to narrative paths, but it would be more engaging if students from each house could represent a dynamic range of traits, rather than pigeonholing them into their defining house characteristics.
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Hogwarts Houses Could Offer Unique Personality in Other Ways
Houses have already been confirmed to feature distinct common rooms and dormitories, even if the main difference between them is their respective interior decoration. It will be interesting to see how dynamic the interactions with characters inside and outside the player’s own house are, or if house distinctions will make any difference at all.
Becauseit is up to players to select which Hogwarts house they would like to be affiliated with, the fun possibility of an RNG selection system is now forfeit. Characters are initially intended to be sorted into houses based upon the discretion of the Sorting Hat, which loosely defines the character’s overwhelming personality traits in order to assign them a house.
This is somewhat arbitrary since some characters may possess characteristics emphasized in multiple houses, and especially due to the fact that Harry was able to circumvent being placed into Slytherin whenthe Sorting Hat abided by his plea. Therefore, if house selection was decided through RNG inHogwarts Legacy, it would ultimately feel less personalized.
Some fans may be open to that because of how house selection is meant to be determined by someone other than themselves anyway, adding to its immersion. However, it is fair that Avalanche Software decided to leave this choice up to players who will almost assuredly have house choices prepared for whenHogwarts Legacyreleases this holiday.
Hogwarts Legacyis scheduled to be released in the holiday of 2022 for PC, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
