the mad vargrave girl

a critical hogwarts legacy sideblog

[witchwildvargrave]

Hello!

First of all, please check out this blog on a browser! It's got custom themes and everything and is much nicer there even on mobile, I promise.

Second of all, hello again! This is a critical Hogwarts Legacy sideblog where I talk about things as I play through the game. It's critical because most of my posts are me being critical of the game's design and narrative choices, but in the future I may also post character analyses, headcanons, funny game moments and fics. Stick around to find out when I do!

Current Game Progression: • Sebastian's third main quest, In the Shadow of the Mine; • Lodgok's second main quest, It's All Gobbledegook, at level 32.

Main Character: Catalina Vargrave, the 15-year-old sociopath and sole heiress to a once-extinct noble family skilled in combat magics. Read more about her here!

Feel free to reply or send asks with your thoughts, opinions etc. — I'm always happy to chat with fellow fans!

[ouroborosorder]

honestly I hate “can you pet the dog?!?” not for any of the common reasons but because it was initially interesting as a proposition of “can you interact with the world in a way that is not within the primary mechanical loop” and that very quickly fell away to being “well now any indie developer making a game has to have a pet the dog button or they’re going to get letters”

[ouroborosorder]

One of my dream projects has an NPC with a dog, and if you try to pet it, the owner tells you not to do that. If you try again, it bites you and you take damage. I want to do this entirely because I genuinely believe that this would make me feel way more grounded in the world than any “click button to see cute animation” would ever do, and also it would be really funny to have a game where people lose their runs because they tried to pet a dog they were told not to pet

[catgirldragon]

[sistertaxon]

[witchwildvargrave]

Fuck you, Summoner's Court: Match 4.

[witchwildvargrave]

Also, did Natty's voice actor also do Charlotte? I felt like she got some wires crossed there because sometimes Charlotte had an accent like Natty's, and sometimes her accent was English (south England? RP?? I know it's definitely not from the north, I don't think). Why wasn't it consistent?

[witchwildvargrave]

Fuck you, Summoner's Court: Match 4.

[astolat]

Heal Thyself (HP, Harry/Draco)

Heal Thyself (46902 words) by astolat Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Characters: Draco Malfoy, Narcissa Black Malfoy, Harry Potter, Luna Lovegood Additional Tags: Healer Draco Malfoy, St. Mungo’s, Medical School, Hospital, Medicine Series: Part 12 of Harry Potter works

Summary:

“Are you going for the course?” Lovegood asked. “You have the NEWTs.”

“What course?” Draco said, then, “No, don’t be ridiculous,” when he realized she meant the notice pinned up on the board he’d been staring at: Applicants To The Introductory Mediwizard Course For The Coming Term Shall Present Themselves In The Chief Mediwizard’s Office By August 24th.

“Oh, I thought you might,” she said. “Well, goodbye.” And off she wandered again in her addled way.

Read the story

[witchwildvargrave]

Sebastian: The Imperius Curse saved Anne's life. That goblin was going to kill her.

Catalina, combat pragmatist: A Diffindo to the throat would have worked just as well, you know.

[witchwildvargrave]

I mentioned it in the tags for the original post but I feel like it's worth talking about: the goblin that was going to strike Anne was a Loyalist Warrior, who can be very easily disarmed with a simple Expelliarmus. There were three other combatants on the field; either Solomon or the main character would have been able to strike down the goblin after Sebastian disarmed him.

What does it mean, then, for Sebastian to cast the Imperius Curse on the goblin and make the goblin kill himself? Earlier, Sebastian tells the main character that the caster needs to mean the Unforgivable Curses to successfully cast them (which raises some concerning questions about Sebastian successfully casting Crucio on the main character or vice versa during their search for Slytherin's scriptorium). He also tells us that he reacted on instinct to save Anne. But he didn't make the goblin drop his weapon or walk away or knock itself out once he had him Imperiused; he made the goblin kill himself.

It means that for Sebastian, saving or protecting Anne is secondary to his desire to see a goblin dead. He does want to save Anne. He does want to protect her. But in the heat of the moment, he instinctively prioritises causing pain instead of immediately eliminating the threat. That's why his arguments that he was saving Anne by using the Imperius Curse ring hollow; it was not to save Anne that he cast Imperio. It was to take control of that goblin and hurt him in the most painful way he could.

And I like that! It's great from both meta and role-playing standpoints—it shows nuance in his characterisation, and it provides an interesting angle to the player character's relationship with him. The game obviously doesn't let you refuse to go along with him, so does your character do so begrudgingly if they don't agree with him? Does your character agree and encourage his use of the Dark Arts? Are they ambivalent about it? With the stakes this high (expulsion from Hogwarts, possibly getting sent to Azkaban), why exactly are they remaining by Sebastian's side throughout all this? It's fun to think about.

One thing I wish the game does is explain more about the Dark Arts, so that the player would be able to grasp the significance of the consequences without needing to rely on prior knowledge from the books or established lore. So far all we've gotten from the game is "the Dark Arts are bad and corrupting and a hallmark of evil witches and wizards", and while I get that the narrative isn't actually intending to present a nuanced take on this, it's not very fun to be told the Dark Arts are bad without being shown why. Or maybe we are being shown why, in how Sebastian's slowly getting more obsessed with it? But it doesn't really explain why or how the Dark Arts are corrupting him so, only that it does.

Admittedly this is less a fault of the game than the lore itself; the books suggest that dark magic can corrupt the soul because it requires genuine malicious intent, but what exactly is dark magic? Dark spells are categorised as spells intended to cause harm to others, so in all technicality an Expelliarmus can be a dark spell. A Diffindo can literally slice a man in half, that is absolutely a spell that can cause harm or death. What aspect of especially dark magic like the Unforgivables that corrupts the soul so? If Dumbledore says Draco Malfoy still had a soul "not yet so damaged" that he could be capable of murder, but casting Avada Kedavra would cause his soul to be "ripped apart", is there a magical component to the Killing Curse that rips apart the soul or is it the capacity for murder itself? If it's the capacity for murder, would not casting the Blasting Curse on someone with the intent to kill achieve that same effect? What about casting the Imperius curse or the Cruciatus? Mad-Eye Moody cast Imperio in class and sure it was Crouch Jr. in disguise, but when everyone thought it was Moody there wasn't exactly anyone protesting about the harm to Mad-Eye Moody's soul.

"Obviously it's implied," I hear someone say while rolling their eyes. "Does everything have to explicitly said and expounded on, you fusspot?" It's generally a mark of poor storytelling when critical aspects of the magic system in your fantasy world are handwaved around or left to speculation. Even if the characters in the world are vague about it—and they really shouldn't be! Centuries of magical scholarship and you're telling me they still can't pinpoint what aspect of dark magic corrupts the soul? Even if they can't because it's some sort of unknowable force or what have you, that's still a significant point in itself that should be part of the worldbuilding!—the creator should at least have knowledge of it, even if the characters don't. That's what being an author's about! That's what worldbuilding is about! You can't make "Dark magic corrupts all it touches" a significant plot point (Voldemort's spiritual and physical corruption and subsequent descent into madness, the question of Draco Malfoy's soul, etc.) without having a solid structure for its basis!

Astolat wrote a fantastic Drarry fic expanding on this very topic—the effects of using not just the Dark Arts but anything dark, and what it takes to recover from it—that really expands the (fan)lore excellently enough that you could probably go with it for your own HP worldbuilding, but that's still fanon. It would have been nice if the game had established something similarly concrete, instead of going along with the vague, handwavey "Dark Arts bad!" route from the books, is all I'm saying.

Here's the fic, by the way! It's incredibly well-done, very Draco-centric and light on the Drarry until about three-fifths into the fic. 10/10 would recommend.

[witchwildvargrave]

Sebastian: The Imperius Curse saved Anne's life. That goblin was going to kill her.

Catalina, combat pragmatist: A Diffindo to the throat would have worked just as well, you know.

[witchwildvargrave]

Still taking my time going through the quests and pacing issues aside, the House companion quests are slowly but surely starting to showcase the characters' personalities more. Natty's headstrong, reckless and impulsive, Poppy's surprisingly vindictive when it comes to magical beasts, and Sebastian's... a massive nerd. For some reason I really like that about him (laughs)

[witchwildvargrave]

I've just finished the Minding Your Own Business quest and good god, Officer Singer absolutely takes the cake for the most absolutely useless adult in this entire game. I've pointed out how ridiculous it is that Sirona's cheerfully sending off a 15-year-old student to go meddle with murderous goblins with nary a concern, and how Professor Fig essentially leaves the 15-year-old protagonist to deal with things on their own for the most part, but there are a few instances in the game where the main character's identity as an underage student is acknowledged in the form of the NPCs not wanting them to endanger themself by getting involved in whatever troubles the NPCs have found themselves in. Some NPCs will tell you their woes but insist that you stay away because it's too dangerous for a student (Alexandra Ricketts in Troll Control and Edgar Adley in Absconder Encounter), or give in after you convince them you can handle yourself (Crispin Dunne in Tangled Web). I really like it when NPCs acknowledge the fact that the main character is a student, because it rather adds to the immersion.

It's why Officer Singer pisses me off so much. I can't fault her for letting two teenagers deal with the troll during the Hogsmeade attack because the first troll was very clearly intended as a diversion to distract the sole law enforcement officer in Hogsmeade, leaving the second free to wreak havoc—it was pure luck that the main character and their companion were available to deal with it whle Officer Singer was occupied with the first troll.

But then we get to Natty's questline, and she tells us Officer Singer says there's no evidence that Rookwood and Harlow are up to no good, and when Natty goes and gets that evidence she turns around and writes to Professor Onai berating her for not keeping a closer eye on Natty instead! What the hell! I get that as a responsible adult Officer Singer wanted to make sure these kids are staying safe, but the only reason Natty got herself involved was because she wasn't doing much in the first place, and she had no right to be reprimanding Professor Onai on how she's managing her own child! Report Natty, sure, let her mother know that she's being reckless and getting involved in dangerous things, and probably there's no harm in gently suggesting Professor Onai to keep a closer eye on Natty, but Professor Onai specifically used the word "berated", implying it's more than just a gentle rebuke, and that's just not on.

Then Minding Your Own Business happens and Officer Singer goes "You bought Cassandra Mason's shop?" all disbelieving-like, and it aggravated me so much I immediately selected the second response where the main character scathingly goes "I am perfectly capable of owning a shop, did you not hear the bit about the haunted dungeon trying to drive me insane???" Priorities, Officer Singer! Get them straight! I understand the scrutiny but she has this annoying habit of being dismissive just because Natty and the main character are students which wouldn't really be an issue if she wasn't relying on these students to do her goddamn job.

"But wait," I hear you say. "She's acknowledging them as students and treating them accordingly! Isn't that a good thing?" Yes! It is! I'm not bitching about that! I'm bitching about how she's being dismissive in one moment, and in the next she's imploring the 15-year-old student she was being dismissive of to deal with a rogue witch who has no qualms about killing said 15-year-old. And that was after being taken down by a single Stupefy! The main character's dealt with worse and got back on their feet mere moments later! How is this certified officer of the law so damned weak!

By no means am I saying that Officer Singer is a badly-written character on a meta level, mind you. I think it's good to have a mix of nuances when it comes to characters and their personalities and their behaviours, and Officer Singer is a good example of that with her dismissive and condescending attitude even towards adults (see: her berating Professor Onai), combined with her reliance on the same students she dismisses to do her goddamned job. You can't have all the NPCs sing the main character's praises, after all.

I can appreciate Officer Singer on a meta level, but as a player actually role-playing the main character? She's aggravating. So useless, ugh.

[witchwildvargrave]

Some of you may remember the Yellow Paint Game Design debate back in 2023, in which significant swathes of the gaming/game design community on Twitter got into heated debates about games using yellow paint to highlight objects that players can interact with. The argument was that it makes games too "hand holdy" i.e. coddling players and making things too obvious for them, with the assumption that they wouldn't be able to figure things out without the blatant visual hint to guide them.

Like so:

Image description: A Twitter screenshot dated March 11, 2023. It shows a tweet by FPSthetics with four images of breakable objects in Resident Evil 4 Remake marked with bright yellow paint. The caption reads: "this needs to end"

Image description: A Twitter screenshot dated October 2, 2023. It shows a tweet by feydemon with an image of a ladder in Resident Evil 4 Remake marked with bright yellow paint. The caption reads: "the yellow paint is so unnecessary obviously a ladder is climbable obviously a crate is breakable why did they do this"

My personal opinion is that it's perfectly fine to use visual markers to guide the player to objects they can interact with—the issue with these particular examples, for me, is that they're far too blatant. At a certain point, even, it crosses the line from being obvious to being lazy. There are so many ways to guide the player visually in subtle, tasteful ways—there's an excellent thread on Twitter about how The Last of Us 2 achieves this—that the bright yellow paint in Resident Evil 4 Remake feels more infantilising than anything.

What does this have to do with Hogwarts Legacy? Behold:

Image description: A screenshot of the game Hogwarts Legacy. The player character is facing the camera. Behind her is a crate next to a wooden stall with faint white paint on one side of its wall. The paint signals to the player that the wall is climbable.

The white paint of interactive object! Hogwarts Legacy is actually a pretty cluttered game visually, in my opinion; it can be challenging to discern a path to your target destination without resorting to Revelio or visual markers like this white paint. In some circumstances, the environment is designed well enough that it can guide the player onwards in more natural ways as mentioned in the TLoU2 thread above. For the most part—especially out in the wilderness like this—though? It really isn't.

(Anyone having fun with Merlin Trials whose puzzles take ages to find because they're spread so far apart and so well-hidden amidst the environment? Anyone?)

So in cases like this where Revelio doesn't tell you anything and the path forward (or upward, in this case) can barely be distinguished from the environment, a little white paint to guide the player along isn't a bad idea. And frankly, it's done subtly enough that it brought a little smile to my face when I spotted it; the white paint was faded enough to have simply been part of the ruins, and I thought it was a nice touch. The lighter wooden bar at the top was a bit obvious, yes, but to be fair your eyes likely would have skipped past it when you first looked around the area for clues, so it needed to be a little obvious to catch the eye.

All in all, it's certainly miles removed from the bright yellow paint in Resident Evil 4 Remake, I'd say!

[witchwildvargrave]

Nobody's calling Hogwarts Legacy GOTY—in fact I believe the consensus is it's so okay it's average—but honestly. Honestly! I wish they'd at least worked out the kinks properly before shipping out the game.

I've been procrastinating on continuing the main quests because I'd accepted the Absconder Encounter quest and gone on to fight the Absconder without realising the minimum level suggested was 30, meaning the level 32 Absconder absolutely kicked my level 26 (at the time) ass. For some reason it's made me want to get to level 30 so I could have a rematch before I continue with the main quests, and that means going around the map looking for sidequests to complete. For today's session I went and did three: Venomous Revenge, A Friend In Deed, and Summoner's Court: Match 3.

For Venomous Revenge, I declined going into Lawley's cellar to steal the Venomous Tentacula because, well, why would Catalina do such a thing? She's got 20k Galleons and a flourishing indoor garden in the Room of Requirement—she doesn't need anything from Lawley's cellar. So I made her hand over a Venomous Tentacula from her inventory and still Sirona tells me this when I enter the Three Broomsticks:

Image description: A screenshot of the game Hogwarts Legacy, showing the character Sirona Ryan in the Three Broomsticks inn wiping down a table as she talks to the main character. The subtitles read: "Alfred Lawley's none too pleased. Seems he's been burgled. I shall pretend I never heard the rumours of your involvement."

What gives? What rumours? Also, Catalina has broken into every single locked and unlocked home in Hogsmeade and looted all their chests and sacks of items and this is what she's being blamed for? It's not even true!

After Venomous Revenge, I went and did Sirona's quest and oh boy. The fewer said about that quest, the better. Why did Mrs. Sprottle tell me about getting Horklumps in Horklump Hollow when I've already given her Horklump Juice? The moniker "hollow" implies a natural cavern of some sort, so why is it called a hollow when there are human ruins inside? And more importantly...

Image description: A screenshot of the game Hogwarts Legacy showing a very large pile of fresh and bloody corpses, origin unknown, nestled next to a rocky outcrop.

...why is there a large pile of bloody remains, flesh and blood and skeleton and all right next to the hollow's entrance??? What even is this? Why is this here? Is it meant to be a warning about how dangerous the hollow is? Because I assure you, a lone level 30 troll isn't anything to worry about.

I got Sirona's letters back to her, not bothering to ask her about them because I'd have enough of the whole deal, honestly, and went back to Hogwarts to collect items and complete Summoner's Court: Match 3 where this happens:

Image description: A screenshot of the game Hogwarts Legacy showing the minigame Summoner's Court, where players take turns using the summoning spell Accio to pull a ball across a platform divided into four colours. The closer the ball is to the player without falling off the platform, the higher the points. The character Samantha Dale is speaking to the character offscreen. The subtitles read: "My brother's doing well, thanks to you. And he listens to me now. Turns out having beets for feet teaches a memorable lesson."

When did I ever meet your brother?! I don't even know you, Samantha! I get that it's a pain keeping track of multiple dialogue trees depending on whether an event flag's been triggered or not but good god, man. This is the basics of it. The basics! If you're looking to make an open-world game instead of a purely linear, one-track one, you gotta at least work on this a little!

[witchwildvargrave]

Now that I think about it, no wonder Sebastian's arguably the most popular out of the four House questline NPCs you meet in the game—especially when you consider the way the game develops the main character's relationship with him so organically and naturally compared to the others'. Granted I haven't really met Amit yet outside of Potions class, but the difference between Sebastian, Natty and Poppy is like night and day.

You meet them all for the first time in much the same way: in a classroom setting. You engage Sebastian in a practice duel during a Defence Against the Dark Arts class. You make friends with Natty and go up against her in a Summoner's Court game during Charms. Amit introduces himself during Potions, and Professor Howin directly requests Poppy to help you out during your first Care of Magical Creatures class. What changes is how the game develops their relationship with the main character afterwards.

During Defence Against the Dark Arts, Sebastian casually mentions that he's no stranger to getting himself into and out of trouble in Hogwarts, which leads the main character to enlist his help in sneaking into the library after curfew and breaking into the Restricted Section. Natty asks you to meet her in Lower Hogsfield to enlist your aid in stopping poachers. Poppy asks you to meet her after Care of Magical Creatures to request the same: your aid in her investigation on poachers.

So how do these introductory forays into their individual questlines differ? First, in Sebastian's it was you asking Sebastian for help, whereas in Natty and Poppy's it's them asking you. Second—and I think this is the more important one—sneaking into the library after curfew to break into the Restricted Section are shenanigans. On the scale of getting into trouble with your teachers to courting death by investigating violent criminals, it is decidedly on the lower end of the dangerous stakes scale. Even after breaking into the library, Sebastian's questline doesn't immediately balloon into you delving into the Unforgivables with him—it's gradual, natural; he invites you to hang out with him practicing curses and meeting his twin sister to cheer her up. All decidedly low-stakes in the grand scheme of things, and after you've spent enough time together that it feels natural. Your main character and Sebastian have gotten into mischievous schoolchildren shenanigans; that friendship has commenced; they're friends now. It makes sense for your main character to accompany a friend to their home to see their twin sister.

That is not the case with Poppy and Natty. It bears repeating that the poachers are violent criminals. They don't just kill magical beasts, they kill people; in a rather lovely but scarce bit of environmental storytelling, you can find the corpse of what appears to be a forager—there's a basket of mushrooms next to them—near a hostile poacher camp in the North Ford Bog region. These are not the kinds of people 15-year-old schoolchildren should be getting involved with. These are not shenanigans; they are getting themselves into extremely dangerous life-or-death situations, and it's a bit much to ask of a schoolmate you don't really know all that well yet.

Compare Natty and Poppy to Sebastian. Sebastian spends time with the main character getting into trouble, doing secret things together in the Undercroft, and meeting Sebastian's family. Only then does he bring the main character into his personal conflict, which is finding the cure behind Anne's illness and delving into the Dark Arts. It's no less serious or heavy than hunting down poachers, but crucially it's also not commenced near-immediately after the two meet. It is, however, the case for Poppy and Natty: the main character barely spends any time with Natty—a single Charms class and a game of Summoner's Court do not friends make—before she's asking for their help with this incredibly risky business of investigating and taking down poachers. Poppy's even worse: she barely knows the main character aside from the stories about them taking down trolls in Hogsmeade, and immediately after their first meeting she's asking the same thing as Natty—for the main character to put their neck on the line investigating and taking down poachers.

The main character has gone up against poachers before. They have first-hand knowledge of how the poachers have no compunctions about killing anyone who gets in their path, even if it's schoolchildren. For Natty and Poppy to ask this of the main character almost immediately after meeting them, without bothering to build a relationship with them first, feels so rushed and unsatisfying compared to the slow build-up to Sebastian's questline. It makes you wonder: why in the world should you care about them? You barely know them, and now you're risking your life for them going on this risky endeavour that really should be left to adults? Why? It doesn't make any sense. Even just the smallest building of relationship would have sufficed to provide a reason—because you're friends and friends help each other out—but you don't get that with Poppy and Natty, and I think that's a shame.

[witchwildvargrave]

One of these days I'll post about the good things in this game (because despite my many gripes and how average it is, I'm enjoying it! honest!), but it will not be today.

I keep thinking about how the game wants the main character to build connections with the other NPCs in the game, but it doesn't actually put in the work to make us care about them. Professor Fig is supposed to be our mentor who took care of us before we came to Hogwarts, teaching us all about magic and the wizarding world to the point where the main character already knows everything despite only knowing that magic even exists presumably a few months ago when they got their Hogwarts letter, but all that happens off-screen and we're just expected to accept that Professor Fig and the main character's got this strong bond between them; that the main character—and by extension we the player—cares about Professor Fig's dearly departed wife Miriam. In-game so far, the man's basically left us to our own resources! He hasn't done anything particularly helpful throughout our adventures, but rather we're the one providing him information on his quest to continue his wife's life-work. Why? Because the main character is his mentee and so they care about him.

We don't, though. The game hasn't done enough to make the player care about Fig and his struggling to deal with his wife's murder for sticking her nose into the goblin conspiracy, so when the game railroads us with scenes where the main character feels bad for Fig and wants to help etc., it feels forced.

It's the same deal with the House companions so far. Natty and Poppy's personal quests involve hunting down or stopping poachers, and frankly I don't understand why the poachers matter so much. We hear from the townspeople in Hogsmeade about how the poachers are getting out of hand and they're naturally Poppy's nemeses for being in direct opposition to her magical beasts-loving nature, but that's all we're being told. The game does a lot of telling instead of showing, which makes it difficult for the player to care. There's a reason why Sebastian's personal questline is by far the best in the game, because the game makes us care about him and Anne and Ominis.

Yes, he tells the main character (and us) about Anne and how much he misses her and how he's breaking into the library's Restricted Section to find a cure for her illness, but all this happens organically as the player spends time with him on quests that in no way focus on those things. We ask him for help sneaking into the library at night, and on the way he talks about looking for a cure for Anne in the Restricted Section. He takes us into the Undercroft to teach us the Blasting Curse, and after that he tells us about how he and Anne and Ominis used to hang out there all the time and how much he misses her, and hey while we're at it, how about we go to Feldcroft with him to see Anne sometime? It might cheer her up!

In contrast, in her very first companion quest Natty asks us to meet her in Lower Hogsfield specifically to tell us that she doesn't like poachers and wants us to do something about them with her. Same with Poppy—after we meet her in the main character's first ever Care of Magical Creatures class, she asks us to follow her so she can tell us about how much she hates poachers and ask us to join her in doing something about them. Both their introductory quests very specifically focus on what they want from the player, blatantly telling us about their motivation from the get-go without making it clear why we should care about it. We're shown a majestic Hippogriff (which our main character already knows how to interact with properly? despite only knowing about magic a few months ago? when not even those exposed to magic at a young age would be that familiar with Hippogriffs?) but so what? It's not a magical moment that the devs think it is—we're not taking one look at the Hippogriff and immediately waging war on the poachers because we're so overcome with protective instinct towards it and all other magical creatures. I'm looking at the Hippogriff and I'm thinking, I don't care about this.

Show me magical creatures suffering from being packed in cramped spaces after being poached en masse. Show me magical creatures missing limbs or dying after being butchered for ingredients. Show me the poachers boasting about their activities and being cruel and heartless and with grand plans to ruin the Scottish Highland magical ecosystem with their poaching instead of the occasional ambient dialogue. Make me care about magical creature poaching, and maybe I'll care more about Natty and Poppy.

This emotional disconnect is worsened by the open world nature of the game where you can just go anywhere and open every door and every chest and pick up every note you come across with no repercussions. Not to bring up Skyrim all the time, but even in Skyrim you'll have NPCs looking at you sideways for going into their houses at night or into their personal quarters. They'll call the guards on you if you break into their item chests and steal things from their homes; hell, they might even attack you for simply not leaving their house when they've asked you to. If you're playing a character who's disconnected from the NPCs around them and isn't looking to build any connections like the Dragonborn, that's fine! But that's not the case in Hogwarts Legacy: you're supposed to connect with these NPCs, so tell me why I can just go into the Sallows' home in Feldcroft and read the twins' personal letters to each other with no repercussions? That's not something you do to a friend! Friends don't read friends' personal notes to their twin sister or loot their homes!

Same thing with the faculty. You're supposed to be a student, and being a student entails being respectful towards your professors, so why in the world can you break into their offices and personal quarters and loot their belongings and read their personal correspondence? Where's the respect there? What even is the point of making the main character a student and a friend if the open world mechanics is just going to negate all the social requirements that come from that?

Does it matter in the grand scheme of the game? Not really. But it sure as hell ruins my immersion in my character—how am I supposed to play a student and a friend if the game won't let me?—and it's bugging me enough that I can't really enjoy the game as much as I want to.

[witchwildvargrave]

My biggest gripe about this game, I think, is how it's called Hogwarts Legacy, but the concept of a magical boarding school plays almost no significant role to the story. You play as a 15-year-old student but you're not bound by any school rules; you can literally break into faculty offices and rooms with no repercussions, you don't have a curfew, you can leave the school grounds whenever you want and spend days and nights wandering the Scottish highlands and killing poachers and goblins with impunity... why even make the protagonist a Hogwarts student when Hogwarts is just there as set dressing instead of something that could provide actual immersion? It would have been so much fun if the school actually meant something—if you could sleep in your bed in the dormitory and build relationships with your Housemates and go to classes and do class activities and assignments that would actually require you to learn something and have to balance your schedule for extracurricular activities, but no! Your classes are basically just cutscenes of you being out of place in your non-regulation outfit (you can literally be wearing anything while all your fellow classmates wear the same basic robe and uniform) and the occasional assignments that have you leaving the school anyhow! The school does nothing! It's such wasted potential!

Also, I think it bears repeating: you play as a 15-year-old student. The main character is fifteen years old! A teenager! I understand that the main character primarily serves as a blank slate to allow the player to go hogwild and do whatever they want in the game (hence the lack of rules as a Hogwarts student) but where is the logic in a 15-year-old teenager being asked to delve into ruins and kill poachers and goblins all by their lonesome?

Maybe wizards and witches are treated as adults at a young age and that's why Sirona—a full-fledged adult!—cheerily tells the fifteen-year-old main character to go deal with murderous poachers and goblins all by their lonesome without even offering to help or suggesting they find another trustworthy adult to help them, but nothing in existing canon supports that theory—even the Triwizard Tournament, notorious for its high death rates, was limited to students above 17 years old. It doesn't make any sense. The main character being a Hogwarts student where most of the main plot doesn't even require them to be one is bad enough, but the main character being 15 years old takes me out of the immersion completely. It's such a shame.

[witchwildvargrave]

Verrrry tempted to start multiple playthroughs so I could have multiple OCs from different Houses but I don't really have the energy to commit to multiple 200+ hour playthroughs...

[witchwildvargrave]

Was wandering around the Astronomy Tower and stumbled upon these two students talking about how Professor Garlick once sent a plant flying with a Flipendo charm and that somehow triggered her second assignment for Catalina? It's not the greatest because the owl mail autoplayed and overlapped with the students' dialogue, so it was a bit hard to focus on both at once. Is that how you get all the extra assignments? Just wandering around for it to be triggered by NPC dialogue? Seems a bit inefficient to me

[witchwildvargrave]

Unlocked the broom mount option and hoo boy do I have opinions about that.

First of all: the controls suck ass. Genuinely. Why would you have two separate controls for ascending/descending and steering? Why would you combine the controls for ascending/descending with the camera?? It is such hot garbage and so counterintuitive, I'm genuinely dreading the stupid flying trials later on.

Second of all, I know flying on a broom's an integral part of the universe but introducing flight this early in the game does more harm than good, I think. It takes away the slog of trekking through the highlands to your destination, sure, but it also takes away the possibility of exploration and adventure. You can't exactly wander into goblin camps or stumble upon Merlin's Trials and treasure ruins if you're flying in a straight line from point A to point B. It's not like riding a horse in Skyrim, where you're still limited to the ground but just faster. There's no joy in the journey anymore. Flying's insanely convenient, but I think I might forgo it lest I end up neglecting to explore the map.