Mireille Shah

Description

Lord Voldemort is the most well-known bad guy in the Harry Potter series, and the player character in Hogwarts Legacy has some surprising similarities to him.

Hogwarts Legacy from Avalanche Software was a love letter to a brand that delivered on a big promise of a fully realized wizarding world. Locations from the books and movies were shown accurately, but what really stood out, even though Hogwarts Legacy was set in a different time period, were the similar character traits and storylines. The main character of the game is most often compared to Harry Potter, but they also have some interesting parallels to Lord Voldemort.

Even though it was connected to one of the most popular IPs on the world, Hogwarts Legacy was met with a lot of doubt until it came out in early 2023. Concerns about its quality were put to rest when Avalanche made a compelling Harry Potter-themed game with a good story, easy-to-understand gameplay, and a peaceful setting. Hogwarts Legacy is not perfect by any means. Players have complained about bugs, optimization problems, and a lack of depth in some of the game's systems. However, most people would say that the final product is good enough to warrant a sequel, even if it may be hard to follow up on the game's main character.

Immersion had to be the most important thing when designing Hogwarts Legacy. For the first movie in the series, the company had to make it feel like you were part of its world and a student at Hogwarts. Some players don't like that there aren't any systems for day-to-day student life, but it is clear that the player character is in a living environment, and as the game goes on, the player character has a real effect on that environment.

One smart thing that was done to reach this goal was to make the main character as blank as possible. The player figure was meant to feel like the player, with a vague backstory and some control over how conversations went. This might make the comparison to Voldemort a bit shocking.
The main character of The Hogwarts Legacy starts out as a fifth-year and a channel for an old source of magic, but not much else is known about her past. Even though it's never said outright, it's clear from the story that they were an orphan with no ties to the magical world before they found out about their amazing gift. This fits with how Voldemort, then Tom Riddle, got started. He was an orphan who didn't know much about the world of witches and wizards until he was a teenager and discovered his own special skills. Hogwarts Legacy's vague background is meant to let the player fill in the blanks themselves, but there are hints all over Slope Game that this Voldemort-like childhood was planned.

The other thing that Voldemort and the main character of Hogwarts Legacy have in common is that they both have clear and scary power. Stepping into Hogwarts with a five-year knowledge gap and still doing well is a big challenge. The player character's extracurricular feats of skill and cunning, as well as the ancient magic MacGuffin they can use, make them one of the most naturally talented students of their time, just like Voldemort.

Even though there are some similarities, the biggest difference between the main character in Hogwarts Legacy and Voldemort is how they feel about right and wrong. Even if the player makes choices that make the main character more evil, Voldemort is still a much more honorable and likeable character than the main character. The comparison could lead to some interesting moral problems in a possible sequel, but there's nothing to suggest that players will fall from grace like Voldemort in the future.

Hogwarts Legacy is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. On November 14, a version for Nintendo Switch will come out.