Avalanche Software’s upcoming open-world action RPG Hogwarts Legacy is set to debut in less than a month, and a new trailer offers a glimpse of what players can expect to encounter in the wizarding world. While it’s tough to separate potential locations and gameplay elements from simple set dressing in this trailer, it nonetheless shows off an interesting variety of magical moments. From a battle against a dragon to a peek inside the Hogwarts owlery, there’s quite a bit of information about Hogwarts Legacy to glean here.
Of course, fans of the Harry Potter franchise hardly need to be convinced of the title’s intrigue; Hogwarts Legacy is currently one of the best-selling games on Steam despite the fact that it won’t officially release until February 10, 2023. It’s also the first AAA Harry Potter title to release since the conclusion of the lineage of film adaptations in 2011—and very few of those games could be said to boast similar production values.
While a TikTok highlight reel of Hogwarts Legacy recently showed off some of the premier locations players can visit, this new trailer broadens the scope somewhat. Not only are there multiple excellent external views of Hogwarts Castle, but there are also a few snippets of the Great Hall, the Forbidden Forest, and a few places presumably far beyond the school’s grounds. The trailer also includes more than a few magical creatures and fantastical characters; while the aforementioned dragon steals the show, there’s also a wily hippogriff, Aragog-esque spiders dueling against students, and everyone’s favorite partially-decapitated ghoul Nearly Headless Nick.
It’s also worth mentioning how incredible Hogwarts Legacy’s graphical fidelity looks to be, particularly when compared to Harry Potter titles from decades ago. In fact, a recent viral TikTok video comparing Hogwarts Legacy to a Harry Potter game on the Nintendo GameCube proves just how far polygon-pushing technology has come in 20 years' time. The video shows off two similar areas of the Hogwarts grounds, but they’re virtually indistinguishable thanks to the limited capabilities of Nintendo’s sixth-gen system.
Naturally, a visual marvel like Hogwarts Legacy will require powerful hardware, and, while the game is primed for release on current-gen consoles, ports to last-gen machines have been pushed back until April, possibly to allow developers time to tweak performance on the older hardware. Hogwarts Legacy’s system requirements on PC are also pretty beefy; while most players should be able to meet the minimum requirements, cranking everything to max might only be possible on a particularly pricey rig.
Hogwarts Legacy launches February 10 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X with PS4 and Xbox One versions coming April 4, and a Switch version releasing July 25.