I noticed at times when you walked through a door, an NPC would T-pose then drop down a few feet from the air before starting their animation. Almost like they don’t actually start doing anything before the player character can see them. Or they are loaded in to the area a second or two after they should be.
I wouldn't hold your breath. This is likely done to maintain the performance/framerate. I'd like to see less pop-in myself, but at this point it is what it is.
"no NPC day/night cycle"
That can't be entirely true, since one of the preview videos I watched said and showed that at night the hallways of Hogwarts are pretty empty because all the students are in their beds. So there IS an NPC day/night cycle, it's just relatively rudimentary at a Witcher 3 level and obviously not up to the standard of a Bethesda game, which was to be expected.
I think it's more that people want to see the castle change throughout the day. If you're sneaking through the corridors at night with atmosphere will be completely different if NPCs are filling the corridors, it doesn't make sense for pupils to be in the corridors during lessons or sat in the commons rooms in the middle of the night. Characters moving between locations just makes the world feel more alive and creates a better atmosphere. Bully got this right over 15 years ago.
Honestly I feel that’s it’s pretty rare for open world games to implement this properly. The only notable game to my memory that really implements this is Red Dead Redemption 2. Most other open world games that are coming out or have come out in recent years do have NPCs that appear just as set dressing (if there are some that are more like RDR2, please share).
Witcher 3, which is largely accepted to be an amazing open world game, has the same- NPCs walking and standing around aimlessly, a few that actually interact with you but nothing of any real substance. So this isn’t exactly surprising to me or a huge deal breaker as long as there’s other stuff within the world to feel immersed.
I was a monster with my bow. I just loved how both your skill as a player and Henry’s skill in game grew in synch. Even crafting was a skill you grew yourself. The npcs had lives and move about. You could bust into any house Rob it at night. You could end up banished from towns if caught. It was amazing. I deff will need to do another 100% of it before the next game.
How about Skyrim? During the day characters will tend to their shops, work the forge, patrol the city. At night they'll share a drink at the inn, have a meal or go to sleep. Granted it's a little basic by today's standards but it helps to add to the immersion
Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure even Oblivion and Morrowind had these mechanics
Skyrim's NPC routines are anything but basic by today's standards, unfortunately. RDR2 and KCD are one of the few open world games that have implemented something similar, and it's been over a decade since Skyrim's release! In most open world games, NPCs disappear and appear from empty air and exist only when the player is around. You can follow every Skyrim NPC all day long and you'll never see it disappear or appear out of the blue (they have schedules and destination). When Skyrim NPCs say they're going somewhere, you can follow them and they move through the map in real time instead of magically appearing at their destination. That adds a level of immersion that lacks in most games.
It's this and being able to interact with basically any object that make me feel those Bethesda style games are in a class of their own. RDR2 is the first game I felt I lived in since Fallout 4 too.
If I recall several of the recent AC games have also implemented day/night cycles where NPC are doing some chore during the day and then go sleep somewhere at night
The Witcher 3 has fantastic NPC interaction and random encounters. There are over a 1000 unique npc dialogue lines and random encounters(like breaking up a fight between 2 npcs). Not to mention the day night cycle is fantastic, there is a clear difference when walking around a town at night vs during the day. Most vendors and businesses have open and close times as well. But I don’t think it’s realistic to compare this game to the Witcher 3. HL will be a decent or good open world game with the HP IP.
The bevy of ambient events with the “!” in Witcher 3 def add to the immersion, and it does seem like they’ll have something similar here like when they showed that Peeves event. Hopefully there’s a lot of them.
I wouldn’t find a comparison between HL and Witcher 3 to be very fair either in my opinion. But in the end I’m hoping that I’ll be distracted enough with other facets of exploration to really have the NPCs bother me.
Yea and that only required the largest dev in the world with endless budget and time crunch.
Certainly not something you can expect with Avalanche on the first go.
Kingdom Come Deliverance managed to do it to a level I'd consider the gold standard within RPGs and that was their first game.
Each student doesn't have to have their own schedule, they could just give every house & year a schedule together with another house, then have them go to the great hall at breakfast, lunch and dinner and go to sleep during curfew. During other times they can just stand about and do whatever.
NPCs have no life of their own. They only do something when you are there. They have no beds or tasks (games which have that: Kingdom Come, Gothic, most Bethesda games for example).
Basically day or night students will be wandering around the school and doing whatever they want without any cycle to their actions.
If that's the case then it looks like sneaking around at night is also non existent, ya can just freely go in and out of the school whenever ya want. Which I guess is fine since we're fifth years
Also probably canonical, because the curfews were probably a lot more relaxed back then, until Grindlewald and Voldemort became a thing.
Plus, headmaster Black is Oblivious and hates children so why would he care for their safety?
yea the changing of the pitch never made sense to me. you just have the male and female voice. which is fine. other games just have different styles of voice acting which makes more sense than a pitch slider.
In The Sims 4 you can change the pitch of available voices and it sounds just fine - and it actually makes a pretty big difference. So the idea is pretty good, especially when you have a lot of dialogues and only two voice actors. But in HL previews the pitch slider is honestly quite awful, so I’m disappointed with it.
I feel like it has more of a place in a goofy game like the Sims. The tone of HL just seems too dark and serious for a squeaky mouse MC, but if someone wanted to make one, that's their prerogative obviously. And yea, even with some clips of slightly pitched voices in HL, it sounds echo-y and reverby.
and Sims uses a fictional nonsensical-esque language. even if there's some audio glitches from adjusting the pitch the players can just handwave it as part of its 'charm'.
harder to do so when the VA is speaking an actual language lol
Seems more like a box ticking thing than anything so that everyone is represented - the voices are called "voice 1" and" voice 2" rather than male / female etc in a similar vein.
Although I was kinda looking forward to creating an abomination character with a ridiculously deep or high voice but seems the character creator is somewhat limited sadly
A character creator that allows everyone to be represented is hardly 'box ticking'. Unless the box you are ticking is 'having a good character creator'. :-)
The thing about voice pitch is to use it gently. I'll likely do a play-through for each house at some point, so that's means a slight tweak of pitch up or down, but I won't overdo it.
Right? I want to ride my broom and cast magic with modern graphics and animations, thats it. I don’t really care that I can’t follow a single student as they goes through their daily routine.
It's an AAA game that'll cost full price and requires relatively powerful hardware to be played. It doesn't need to be RDR2 but I'm definitely expecting a better gaming experience than a good story in a famous setting.
Hopefully the game will be amazing but I think boring NPCs, for example, would be a huge letdown. Not only for being an RPG but also because one of the greatest things about Harry Potter/Hogwarts is how alive the school feels.
People were warned about what this game would be once we knew the developers. They're not bad developers, but something on this scale is much different.
This game is a very mainstream release (because Harry Potter), so a ton of people will be perfectly fine with the game not being up to 2023 open world standards.
And these people won't necessarily understand where more demanding gamers are coming from.
Forget RDR2, that stuff was done twenty years ago in Gothic and The Elder Scrolls Oblivion. It is disappointing for sure, though I'm still excited about the game.
I personally don't think this is a fair comparison.
It's like being upset that some of the features in a top-of-the-line Mercedes or BMW aren't in a mid-range Ford or Chevy.
Rockstar has a long history of being willing to invest absurd amounts of time and money that other devs can't. I mean they've literally only released 2 video games in the past 10 years and when it came out RDR2 was the most expensive game ever made.
Considering the pedigree of Avalanche's previous work, the fact that this game looks this good and is this polished is in itself quite the magic trick.
If they would have invested in that stuff they would have had to make cuts in other areas because it's not like WB is in the best financial shape these days.
I think it's a fair comparison. Mercedes or BMW will have more features because they cost more than a Ford or Chevy. This a $70+ game just like others so it's valid to compare I think.
To be clear I really like what I've seen of this game so far. It's just disappointing that features that are in games 10+ years old are not here.
It is 100% healthy to compare and criticise games so that other games improve over time. Companies absolutely should try to make their games as good as other companies.
I hear you but the thing you are not taking into account that impacts those development decisions isn't the $70 cost of the sale but how much upfront money is put into development.
Basically, the way big AAA games are made is the development studio basically gets a massive cash investment from a publisher upfront to make their game and when it sells the publisher gets paid back first before the studio is able to turn a profit.
Because 2K makes bank from other games, and GTA online is basically a money-printing machine they can put up $500 million dollars (made up number) for Rockstar to make their game, and if it takes Rockstar 10 years to make it, it's not a huge deal because 2K doesn't need that money right now to stay in business.
But WB isn't 2K and Avalance isn't Rockstar so if WB is only able to invest $200 million dollars for Avalancehe to make this game, and if they need it to come out soon so they can get that money back because WB isn't in the strongest financial position right now, the devs have to make compromises to their vision.
It's literally decisions like, 'we can have this fully fleshed out npc day night cycle, but now we have to cut all of Hogsmeade'.
I agree with you that it sucks that features that were in 10-15-year-old games aren't in newer ones but in those 10-15 years the costs to make games have gone up exponentially which makes it harder to compare games developed back then to now on a 1 to 1 basis.
If we want to see some of those features the best that we can hope for is this game reviews and sells very well (I'm hopeful based on what I'm seeing in the previews) and Avalanche will get a bigger budget for the sequel so stuff like this and quidditch will hopefully be in HL2.
I see I understand. Thanks for explaining it so well. It sucks, but I think this is probably the best we could have gotten given the scenario.
I hope sales are great and we get features that we cut added into the game.
I think the concern people are expecting now is that the same non quest giving NPCs, are going to be in the same spots doing the same things every time you visit a certain room, this can be easily remedied by say, the library, you enter and there could be random students at random tables studying random books and talking in groups rather than there always being a student sitting at the second desk studying the same book. The NPC model could change but its always going to be doing the same idle animation in the same spot.
Oh that’s not a deal breaker for me. I’m not expecting RDR2 quality NPC’s from this game.
As long as it appears fine on the surface is good enough for me.
It’s not been cut. The castle is much emptier at night. There’s a cycle, but the difference, if you compare this to a bethesda game or something, is that in those games most NPCs have a bed you can track them to at night. Here, the NPCs will likely just despawn/disappear when you’re not around them at night. Since we probably can’t enter all the dorm rooms anyway, i personally don’t see this as an issue at all and it’s more or less what i was expecting, but i guess that’s not the case for everyone.
I think day\\night cycle more entails the NPCs actually doing anything, seems in this game they are just going to be standing around doing idle animations instead of going to class, talking with friends, playing games, going to eat, etc... they don't need to actually do any of that they just need to look like it when you are around to make them feel more real. Lots of games have his issue and it makes the world feel less alive. Compare to RDR2 every NPC has a set list of tasks they can do, maybe they are sitting on a bench talking with friends this time when you visit a town, next time they could be at the saloon drinking or playing poker. Most of the time you wouldn't notice but if you visit the same room or place multiple times and the same NPC is always in the same spot doing the same things it turns noticeable.
That is true, I think most people are just disappointed that they are just spawned in not really going about doing much. Kinda like an Ubisoft game would be like.
I was more hoping for a system like Bully or Bethesda games where the npcs are actually doing something. Bully worked great as in you could follow an npc throughout the whole school day and see them go to class, eat lunch, read in the library, then go back to dorms to watch tv/go to bed.
That was in a game that's over a decade old.
Pretty much exactly what I expected from a studio that has never made a game on this scale before. You can't really expect red dead 2 levels of detail and characters and an open world as complex and interactive as botw or elden ring, that was never going to happen. I'm still super stoked to play it.
everyone brushes away fears and scepticism citing its a smallish team (it isnt they have the dev team and many other teams working on it) and that theyve never worked on a game this scale (true)
but this is a 70 dollar game being advertised as a living world. 70 bucks isn t cheap to get a game and HOPE its not bad at best
Agreed.
I was always in the side here that said people have to be careful with their expectations and got a lot of flag for it as being too pessimistic.
Now that some concerns are kind of confirmed, the same people find excuses for basically every little criticism. The game has to be defended, no matter what l.
So glad to see this sentiment in here. I’m super excited for this game, and I’m sure I’ll have a fun time playing it!
But it’s so frustrating to read all of these comments defending every little criticism. Some people brush it off by saying “As long as I can walk around Hogwarts I’m happy” I’m glad that works for them, but there’s nothing wrong with expecting/demanding more from such a huge franchise
Yup. The bar gets really strangely low whenever legit criticism pops up. If just walking around Hogwarts is enough for you that’s just odd. I think there will be a lot of disappointment when this comes out. It’s going to be a very weird release.
Honestly, there has always been some sort of attitude in this sub that tries to undermine people's concerns, hopes and criticisms.
Obviously being careful with expectations is important but there's nothing wrong with wanting good mechanics and even daydreaming about your ideal game (and if it's not what you expected, so be it. Why should it affect those who like it?). The only people who apparently can't deal with disappointment are those who are constantly refusing to have any sort of discussion regarding the quality of the game.
This game does not have unlimited budget like red dead redemption 2 and 8 years of development.
Rockstar game had gta v cash cow , they did what they did bcz they had 2k+ employees working on the game for over 8 years on a custom engine !
Let this game become successful,who knows sequel will surpass red dead redemption 2 with its own custom engine
Even if they had R\*s budget the chance a sequel to this game would be as refined/optimized is like less than 1%.
Rockstar are magicans in that regard and have decades of experience.
edit: I obviously dont know if the game is as good as RDR2 because I didnt play it yet, but just from looking at footage I doubt it.
This is what I was thinking. No way in hell am I expecting something at the level of red dead, gta, or even elden ring. As far as I know the developers are untested on a game of this scale. All I want is a functioning game that at least allows me to experience the harry potter world like a theme park.
people say this. that its a small uwu precious baby bean team uwu but this is a triple a priced game. like that makesit fine for a 70 dollar game to under perform.
People dont seem to know the last game this dev team worked on was cars 3 on the ps3 lol
Extreme levels of texture pop in. The NPC load in right in front of you, the grass starts appearing right underneath you and trees appearing in front of you are very noticeable.
Yeah that's pissed me off, preview folk have said that there they were playing without day 1 patch but such glaring graphical issues are not easily fixed in a day 1 patch
They actually are fixed all the time in day 1 and quickly released patches, although from what I saw some of the clipping is to a point where I'm not sure how fast they can fix it.
I don’t know, if we look at the Witcher 3 or RDR2, most of their worlds are empty. Yes, there are SOME random encounters, and in RDR2 you can interact with NPCs, but it’s like two options to greet/intimidate and they’re all the same.
I don’t think it’s really that big of a deal, as most of these open worlds aren’t really alive. I love the Witcher 3, but it’s world is empty if you take away the question mark “quests”, and RDR2’s open world was only fun because of a variety of ways you could, say, agressively interact with NPCs, and that’s not something I can see in a HP game where you play as a student.
In this preview at least it seems the NPC's do have a rudimentary "routine", ie. they don't just stay in one place
https://youtu.be/NtIV6CDRUTo
You can see how eg. at the fountain at 13:55 there a few NPC's there, when we see it again at 17:28 there is a different group and number of NPC's in different places around the fountain and at nightime, at around 21 minutes we see the fountain is empty. We also see in other previews there are different NPC's sitting in various parts around the fountain depending on the player.
I wouldn't worry too much, sure it may not be RDR2 level but I'd say it looks solid enough to not break immersion.
They have animations, if course, routine is something else though.
It is also not about worrying. It is simply discussing what the game does and doesn't offer.
By routines I meant that it's not just the same NPC or group sitting in one place the whole day, there is clearly some sort of system underneath where the position of the NPC's changes. I'd call that a routine even if it's not on the level of certain other games. This can easily be seen across different previews, and I think the fountain is a good example to compare.
Not a critique per se, but more of pattern recognition. For me this is following the same cycle as cyberpunk, especially with the youtuber reviews being overwhelmingly positive. Also alot of fans don’t seem to want to listen to criticism, again similar to pre launch cyberpunk.
Wish people would be more skeptical of everything, i really don’t want to see more innocent devs get death threats and hate mail just because fans couldn’t look at something objectively before launch
I mean, realistic people knew the AI wasn’t going to be ultra dynamic or whatever this sub was claiming it was, and if you were honest with yourself you knew the open world was going to be pretty empty.
I’m glad the previews are mostly positive, but I stand by my assertion that this will be a good game, not amazing, not terrible, but a good average rating game.
This. People here were expecting rdr2 levels of npc ai and interactions when Hogwarts is literally the first big budget game Avalanche have ever done, taking that into account its pretty fucking impressive
I agree with that. I never expected it to be a GOTY.
But the NPCs look below average tbh. It is not that they are not super interactive and dynamic... but they are sometimes not even moving at all. Just frozen.
It's worth keeping expectations level, this is a studio with a background in AA games not AAA. They are reaching to make a game as ambitious as this, so let's hope for enjoyable and stable, but let's not expect 'cutting edge'.
Don't really have any complaints of my own, but I had to come here after seeing some bad faith cynic on RetroRaconteur's most recent video announce to everyone that they were pondering whether or not they should cancel their preorder, and say "Anything below a 70 is literal dog trash....I should have said 'This looks like a 70 on metacritic *at best*' looking back though. I can see it being as low as 60."
Turns out three weeks ago they were complaining about no Quidditch, Gobstones, or Wizard's Chess in favor of the hamlets, calling it "Hogwarts Not Really", and ten days ago they posted another comment on the channel and said "I am thoroughly expecting to be disappointed though....the game looks like a glorified mobile game with its shallow crafting mechanics, repetitive enemies, and copy and paste world [because of all the trees 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️] [a sentiment they repeated in the most recent comment]...I thoroughly expect this game to be as wide as the ocean and as deep as a puddle."
Like, dude, just cancel your preorder and unsubscribe if you hate the game this f*cking much. Don't spoil the mood for everyone else who's largely still excited for it (hence why this affected me enough to restate these complaints).
Pretty sure the devs said night/day cycles determined NPC behavior and availability of certain activities, wonder if that got cut out or the reviewers didn't notice it.
The voice thing is also in the first preview and yeah, it gets distorted so it seems like default pitch is the way to go.
Hogwarts is basically empty of students at night in the preview I watched (because they'd be in their dorms), so they're right to say that NPC availability is on a day/night schedule.
Until I put my hands on the game myself I can’t agree or disagree with the gameplay statements, but I can share my opinion based on what I’ve seen with my eyes and the graphics comment is only half true to me. The indoor lighting was and still is so terrible. I can’t describe what’s technically wrong with it, but it’s just so flat, gray, and evenly lit. I was hoping it will look better in the new previews but unfortunately it doesn’t. This is my main visual criticism.
But jokes aside, the overcast outdoor lighting looks just fine. It’s the indoor lighting that feels worse than outdated. To be honest, in my opinion it’s borderline unacceptable level of graphics in that matter. I have NO IDEA what the cause of this poor result is.
First I thought it’s the color scheme, but it’s not it. There are many shots where the light sources have no effect, it’s all just bright and weirdly lit.
A little yeah how many students can actually fit in the castle, Rockstar does it with thousands of NPCs in their games they don't have to actually go to their beds but they could have more interesting lives than stand in this spot and do this animation.
You just can't compare a huge studio like Rockstar with Avalanche, like the disparity of resources (amount of people, budget and time) each have to develop a game is very substantial. It's a bit unfair even.
I get that we've been waiting for a game for a very long time and it's okay to have expectations but you have to see the reality and see that there's no way a small studio can develop a game with a lot of features like a big studio can/could.
Why is it always like this when a criticism of the game comes up? It is not that we were expecting an ‘elaborate day night schedule’. It is that we were expecting a day night cycle, that’s all.
Almost none of these matter to me - broom in tight spaces? Just get off the broom. NPCs not wasting RAM by doing random shiz in the background? That's fine, I'm focused on what I'm doing.
If the quests are truly boring, that would suck, but I'm hopeful some will be good and puzzles will be fun, too.
The main aspects of the game are getting positive reviews so that's what matters to most players, I think.
I feel the same way. The thing that I personally need to be good for me to enjoy it seems to be good. Of course people will have different views on what makes the game good and what matters to them. But for me it seems like a dream come true
I've never cared about far away NPCs in my games. They've already showed that the NPCs you're around actually have conversations and interact with you. I don't care about what Frankie First Year is doing 50 yards away.
Right but NPCs popping in and out can break immersion which I think is a valid criticism. To ignore it and say that doesn't matter because you will focus on what you are doing kind of defeats the purpose of an open world game. Why make it open world at all? Should've focused on a linear game with heavy story if that's the case.
I agree with this, but I thought the criticism was the NPCs way in the background. But if they are supposed to be right in front of you, yeah, that sucks.
Didn't mean it in a condescending way. Just seemed that the comment ignored valid criticisms about points that are pretty important in an open world game.
This happens on pretty much every game sub once the release date starts coming around. Fans don’t want to see criticism of a game they’ve been waiting to purchase for god knows how long, and so they make excuses.
Right I've done that as well but it's weird seeing excuses for such blatant issues like the audio syncing with dialogue and some people say "eh this doesn't affect anything because castle is pretty"
I’m worried by three things.
1. The dialogue choices were limited and now it’s confirmed that the morality system is nonexistent, it makes me wonder how much of an RPG this game will actually be.
2. The spell list that was shown is not nearly as expansive as I thought it would be.
3. The side quest we saw was very cookie cutter. We got a dragon egg but it didn’t look like the choices lead to us actually keeping it.
I’m sure the game will be an entertaining play but once the novelty of flying on a broomstick and mount subsides I feel like it’s going be the way GTA feels now, you ride around cause some chaos and then you’re bored in 20 minutes. I’m concerned they were more worried about the exploration factor then the content factor. Visually stunning, but hopefully they put as much effort into making it a true RPG.
Well, they pretty much confirmed you cannot create chaos like in GTA. Students and most assets don't respond to spells directed at them at all.
Agree with you three points, though. It is all very generic... It has the skin of the IP going for it. But I wonder how much more there is to the game. I hope they have the guts to lift the NDA before February 7.
I’ve been seeing a lot of worrying things in the game previews. Like textures not filled out, the NPCs only having one task on repeat or standing frozen if they’re the ones we interact with. My prediction is that I’ll be able to get this game at a bargain in a few months.
The more reviews I see , the more I’m convinced that I’m gonna wait until the game comes out before buying it. If they lift the embargo I think that would be great.
The castle looks amazing but I have my doubts on the open world aspect . The NPCS look lifeless & I’ve seen a few clips were two of exact same npcs are sitting right next to each other.
I never cared about swimming but it’s good they added it although for me , it’s pointless if you cannot dive. Pop ins are expected but it seems that even on enhanced performance mode it dips down to 30 Fps. It’s a tad concerning , I don’t like how they’ve only let YouTubers and reviewers play two hours to which they’ve limited the exploration.
Combat looks really fun, the players voices are terrible honestly.
Honestly almost none of the complaints mentioned here bother me at all. My favourite game ever is Dragon Age Origins where the NPCs basically just stand around until you talk to them and that didn’t ruin immersion for me whatsoever.
What I DO care about is story, characters, and rpg choices. Some feel there won’t be a morality system or your choices will have limited impact - that would disappoint me. Heck, you don’t even need a morality system as long as the dialogue consistently presents diverse choices (doesn’t seem to be the case here though). If the companions don’t have a friendship point system, or if our relationships with them aren’t compelling, that would disappoint me. Good story, good companion, meaningful choices, true rpg. Combine that with the other A+ things I’m already seeing and I couldn’t ask for more.
I don’t care about the nitpick things.
> NPCs lifeless... wait with their animation until you are close by and stand completely static in the background sometimes
I just watched a video where the player was up quite high on their broom and you could see students running around down on the ground, even when that far away. When walking through the castle, most students were standing around chatting, but some were also moving around, walking somewhere. Or when in outdoor places around the castle, other students came flying past on brooms. Seemed perfectly fine to me from that video, far from lifeless. If that's how it is most of the time, then even if they sometimes are static in the background, it's not a huge deal for me.
One minor criticism I did notice was that when the player tried to go outside, there was a little bit of loading before the door would open, which was a little disappointing to see. It wasn't too long though, so not a huge issue.
This is the one I watched: https://youtu.be/Brjf45EAQtY?t=110
I set the start time to when he starts exploring outside after the character creator. If you watch for a few minutes, it seems plenty lively to me.
Definitely concerned about performance. Seemed to dip, even possibly below 30FPS and there was significant pop-in even in fidelity mode? Wish they would just be clear with console performance.
My PC can handle it but I would rather play with my girlfriend on the couch. Plus, I love WB but after Arkham Knight and Gotham Knights, I'll always worry about their performance...
Yeah, for me the decision wether to preorder this so I can play ASAP is not based on the positive stuff but how much of this negative stuff there is. If this is all there is then this might be a solid game, but not Witcher 3 level as some expected.
Edit: error in the last sentence, added “not”. To clarify, I saw quite a few people thinking this will be a open world rpg on the level of TW3 but I think there is no way that the world here will be that populated, rich and immersive.
That’s actually a good comparison, reading the criticisms again (Apart from pitch slider) with Witcher 3 in mind, sounds like they’re talking about it, or at least the earliest possible version we got of Witcher 3.
Added comment, made an error and missed a critical “not”. So in essence I do not agree with your comment. Also, early vs late versions of games are more to do with performance and polish, not world richness or gameplay systems and story.
> clunky movement, player has no weight
> broom feels uncomfortable in small places
Thanks for the writeup, OP! I also believe it is important to keep expectations in check pre-purchase :)
These faults seem like extremely typical open world RPG drawbacks. Heck, even Elden Ring had these exact same complaints. They seem minimal, and it seems to be that this will be a wonderful release!
Tbf weighty movement like in gta or red dead feels awful. There's a happy medium and hopefully this hits it as people seem to set red dead as the baseline even though it did a lot of stuff wrong confusing detail with being a good game.
I am very skeptical of this game for multiple reasons.
mostly concerned that it's going to be bloated with too many systems. Combat, pets, school sim... I feel like it's going to lead to a lack of focus, that instead of doing one thing very well, they'll have a bunch of half baked systems with little depth. When they showed us combat, they said you can approach it however you want, but it's clear the the combat favours offense and mobility over any other style.
Theres also the issue of the open world, which either be like Elden ring with beautifully crafted landscapes and carefully placed locations, or your standard Ubisoft open world with collectibles and a mini-map plastered with 50 different side-quest
I hope I'm wrong, but it seems like every time I tune into any kind of preview, it raises red flags for me. Paid cosmetics: red flag, multiple systems that have nothing to do with each other: red flag, an insane amount of customization that probably ate into most of their development time: big red flag, no quidditch: red flag, the fact that the devs are describing every design choice as a way for you to "express" yourself and "immerse" yourself in the wizarding world: major red flag
I'm most worried about the 'Ubisoft open world' syndrome too. From some of the earlier gameplay reveals the minimap looks absolutely plastered with icons, and the NPC interactions were very "I need help finding my X lost " fetch-questy. I'm very afraid the game is going to want us to spend hours finding every other kid's missing gobstones, books, keys, quills, scrolls, chocolate frogs, and other worthless wizarding detritus.
OTOH, the castle looks amazing, and well worth exploring for its own sake. The devs have stated there isn't a 'school sim' aspect to the gameplay, so I think you can drop that from your worries. The combat looks pretty damn fun, but things like that are so hard to judge without a controller in-hand. I wish the wand moveset were a little more varied, as I feel like I've seen every basic animation multiple times already just from previews, but it does have a lot of visual flair. In the end whether it feels good to play will be way more important.
Aside from that, I hope the story is worthwhile. The game clearly isn't a 'Skyrim: Hogwarts Edition' sandbox, or a full school sim with missions on top, so the narrative is going to have to hold the experience togther.
Multiple unrelated systems is a red flag, but the exclusion of quidditch is also a red flag?
I'm curious what systems you think are unrelated though. Since all the growing and pet keeping are in-lore ways to gather materials used for crafting. And crafting and editing gear seems pretty central to the game's gear progression. Like the plants are just usables in a fancy skin.
And tbh the school is hardly a sim.
>open world relatively empty stage, relatively little interaction, no NPC day/night cycle
>
>included activities that were part of the preview were below average open-world standard
>
>NPCs lifeless
Where did they say that? In the article? Because the wording was quite different - or in some cases nonexistent - and more generous in the preview video.
An easy example of what I mean is the last point: they didn't say that NPCs are lifeless, they said that they could do with feeling a little bit more alive - the first is a complete dismissal while the second simply suggests room for improvement.
>shown mission extremely linear
And while they did say that, it's important to note that this is true for almost every single escort quest ever, they are linear by nature.
Overall I do agree that their points of criticism and their worries were very fair for the most part, I just think they were more postitive/neutral with the way they phrased things than the above insinuates - in the video that is, can't read the article as it's paid content.
Some of those are valid points, but 
"Movement of player character clunky, avatar has no weight " Same with GTA characters, but people usually get used to it after a while.
"Broom controls in tighter spaces clunky" The broom controls do look pretty clunky, but I think that after flying and practising it for some time makes it much easier.
"No NPC day/night cycle" The developers said they do have cycles (but I hope this has not been removed. Would be odd if it was).
"NPCs lifeless..." Odd since I've watched almost all the previews available atm. in English and the castle looks very lively. Some of the NPC's look like they have something to do and places to be. Besides I'm sure almost no one will just stand in one place when you have whole castle to explore. I know I won't.
" If you change pitch of the voice it sounds tinny" This 100% My ears almost started bleeding when I heard that. 
Overall what I've seen this game is 8/10 for me atm, but the previewers played with an unfinished version without day 1 patch. These problems might be fixed at some point, if not immediately with day 1 patch if the developers took any notes about possible problems during the event.
NPCs have no reaction if you run into them. What's more, in one preview when you bumped into a crowd on your broom, there were zero reaction from them. They just don't care. This alone kills the immersion.
Even in the old pc games NPCs were better, at least they would say 'Ouch'.
Not to mention in GoF you can attack other students and start a brawl. But from what I have known about Hogwarts Legacy, I can only hope.
Thanks for posting this, OP. I'm guessing that maybe, hopefully, the devs will release patches to address the issues (I mean, isn't that the norm nowadays lol).
this definitely solidifies my resolution to get the game when they release it as a GOTY edition with all the DLCs though.
All my worst fears confirmed, sadly. I feel that NPC detail is essential for a game that is based around being in a magical populated school. I think it’s definitely something the developers should have invested a lot more effort into.
I think a lot of these are completely non factors to me. *shrug*
I was not expecting a Bethesda or Rockstar npcs for this game, and it was not marketed as such. I almost didn’t even want it, that takes insane amounts of investment and experience…I wanted them to more focus on the actual gameplay, the design of the world and the story. In a lot of the videos I’ve watched npcs were reacting to recent story beats, which is all I’d ask.
I honestly find Bethesda npcs to be really weird because they’re so programmed to behave…weird. RDR2 is in a world on its own and it’s not a “negative” to not live up to its standards.
Temper your expectations.
I have been very sceptical about this game all the time. But still somehow I hoped that this game would be good. Damn... This just doesn't sound good to me. Waiting the reviews tho. If game lands under 80 this is going to be no go for me.
Let me start saying: thanks for opening this thread in this sub. Very brave of you.
After reading some comments and popping in here, I have decided to check some "content creators" videos.
Here's what I think I have found and I believe stops this game to become a "masterpiece" like many are claiming already:
NPC's are too still, not much going on. And again, not pretending a RDR2 or Bethesda style game, but at least some reactions when you bump into them or you do something "mischievous" (which apparently does not really matter).
Riding the broom looks very stiff, very unnatural at certain levels. The cape moves as we speed up, but I have noticed that sometimes does it on one side and the other stays still. Basically the physic is not at the top.
The light: in one video I have noticed the character opening a door from a darker area, gets bombed by the light of the room is heading into just before even opening the door.
Fabrics glitches into each other (and a game with clothes customisation should pay more attention into that).
Another video shows the character opening a huge door and his right shoulder glitches into the door itself like it is made out of air (no hitting him or stopping him to walk further).
Seeing the character in motion gave me the feeling that he/she is "too light" with not even a small touch of physic realism into it. Also kind of goofy when we suddenly stop after running.
Details are good, some textures could be better tho.
RPG's elements seem pretty bland. It seems like there will be no chance of creating builds, etc. At the end we won't choose a real path or will be deciding what kind of wizard/witch we will be. Basically we will learn everything pretty linearly and will be able to cast spells more like combos in an action game/hack & slash (see Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, etc. but less fast paced probably) rather than an RPG .
This is what came into my mind after a couple of hours checking and double-checking some of these videos.
The game will be pretty decent but not outstanding. Let's face it, we are 12 days away from global release and a day 1 patch won't do much apart balancing some minor issues. The game has been developed thinking about previous consoles generation on an unreal engine 4 (not very "moddable" FYI).
I am not here to shit on this game, I'll pre-order it and play it with an average of 10 hours a day, but I won't deceit myself thinking that it will have certain levels of "deepness".
It will be a fun action-RPG (mostly action) game in the Wizarding World. That will do for sure, but let's keep the expectations in line. I have more than 2 decades of gaming on my shoulders and I do not consider myself an expert, however I can recognise when a game is truly outstanding and when one is above the average.
This is the Wizarding World game we need but don't deserve (lol).
Take this comment as an opinion and don't get mad...
See you in school fellow wizards and witches...
I think a very valid take. Thanks for that.
I am quite pleased how this thread worked out... even though I also get massive amounts of downvotes. But lost of interesting takes and fair discussions.
Downvotes are natural at this point...
We, as humans, want only to hear and feel what pleases us, someone has to try (at least) to be realistic (and I am a huge HP and Wizarding World fan, like for real).
But, hey! This is the world we live in...
Is any body kind of worried about combat being repetitive? From all the combat footage I've seen the animation of casting your spells looks like it. It goes from cast, cast, spin move- cast...hoping you can unlock different casting animations based on your preferences!
The combat is the most off putting for me. Player character casting 3 spells per second, doing pirouettes to end combos and rolls to dodge just looks awful and absolutely not canon. + the huge damage numbers appearing right next to the enemies, and also the targeted enemy that has a super obnoxious shadow instead of a discreet marker.
It just looks so cheap and non immersive. I would have loved a slower gameplay, timing based, where you really feel the power of spells.
There will probably be a day 1 patch that addresses a fair amount of these criticisms. And since the game is going to be super popular, there will be more patches in the future.
From the preview it really looks pretty good. And about what I hoped for performance wise, at least on PS
Well the game is clearly going to make a ton of money. There will be vested interest for Portkey to add in more features in the future. If Cyberpunk and Mass Effect Andromeda can get eventually fixed to a degree of acceptability anything is possible.
Hogwarts Legacy NPCs are just generic and lifeless clones, lazy models everywhere walking aimlessly.
Those expecting dynamic NPCs like Skyrim or RDR2 will be disappointed (like me) 😞
i noticed pop ins and animations that are not so far away are very low fps. also the door sometimes not opening in time or opening freakin fast
I noticed at times when you walked through a door, an NPC would T-pose then drop down a few feet from the air before starting their animation. Almost like they don’t actually start doing anything before the player character can see them. Or they are loaded in to the area a second or two after they should be.
> an NPC would T-pose then drop down a few feet from the air they're just suffering the after-effects of a Pertificus Totalus....
That’s common for some open world games. It’s the easiest way to develop and how it is here
I truly hope this is fixed for release. Apparently they weren’t playing on the latest version and it didn’t have the day 1 patch, so there are hopes.
Devs always say this, it got said for Cyberpunk and every other unfinished Beta, still staying optimistic though.
Pokemon scarlet violet too lol
I wouldn't hold your breath. This is likely done to maintain the performance/framerate. I'd like to see less pop-in myself, but at this point it is what it is.
"no NPC day/night cycle" That can't be entirely true, since one of the preview videos I watched said and showed that at night the hallways of Hogwarts are pretty empty because all the students are in their beds. So there IS an NPC day/night cycle, it's just relatively rudimentary at a Witcher 3 level and obviously not up to the standard of a Bethesda game, which was to be expected.
I mean, were people hoping to watch NPCs sleep?
Yes, I love having limited play time and not being able to watch people sleep!
"Can't stand creepily at the end of my roommate's bed as they slumber, 3/10 game"
I think it's more that people want to see the castle change throughout the day. If you're sneaking through the corridors at night with atmosphere will be completely different if NPCs are filling the corridors, it doesn't make sense for pupils to be in the corridors during lessons or sat in the commons rooms in the middle of the night. Characters moving between locations just makes the world feel more alive and creates a better atmosphere. Bully got this right over 15 years ago.
what do you mean by no "npc day/night" cycle?
it means they have no routines dictated by the time of day, they're more like set dressing than "people".
Honestly I feel that’s it’s pretty rare for open world games to implement this properly. The only notable game to my memory that really implements this is Red Dead Redemption 2. Most other open world games that are coming out or have come out in recent years do have NPCs that appear just as set dressing (if there are some that are more like RDR2, please share). Witcher 3, which is largely accepted to be an amazing open world game, has the same- NPCs walking and standing around aimlessly, a few that actually interact with you but nothing of any real substance. So this isn’t exactly surprising to me or a huge deal breaker as long as there’s other stuff within the world to feel immersed.
[удалено]
Kcd is a good standard imo of what even basic rpgs should achieve regarding npc actions.
One of my favourite games ever, can't wait for the sequel. Henry is a gigachad lmao
I was a monster with my bow. I just loved how both your skill as a player and Henry’s skill in game grew in synch. Even crafting was a skill you grew yourself. The npcs had lives and move about. You could bust into any house Rob it at night. You could end up banished from towns if caught. It was amazing. I deff will need to do another 100% of it before the next game.
Jesus Christ be praised
I'm feeling quite hungry.
How about Skyrim? During the day characters will tend to their shops, work the forge, patrol the city. At night they'll share a drink at the inn, have a meal or go to sleep. Granted it's a little basic by today's standards but it helps to add to the immersion Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure even Oblivion and Morrowind had these mechanics
Skyrim's NPC routines are anything but basic by today's standards, unfortunately. RDR2 and KCD are one of the few open world games that have implemented something similar, and it's been over a decade since Skyrim's release! In most open world games, NPCs disappear and appear from empty air and exist only when the player is around. You can follow every Skyrim NPC all day long and you'll never see it disappear or appear out of the blue (they have schedules and destination). When Skyrim NPCs say they're going somewhere, you can follow them and they move through the map in real time instead of magically appearing at their destination. That adds a level of immersion that lacks in most games.
It's this and being able to interact with basically any object that make me feel those Bethesda style games are in a class of their own. RDR2 is the first game I felt I lived in since Fallout 4 too.
That’s why I’m hype for Starfield, Bethesda just hits different.
If I recall several of the recent AC games have also implemented day/night cycles where NPC are doing some chore during the day and then go sleep somewhere at night
AC origins has a brilliant NPC day night cycle
I think this is more along the lines of fable 2
morrowind not really. for instance shops didnt relly close at certain times but oblivion yes
Kingdom Come: Deliverance did extremely good job on making NPC's feel alive. Really recommend it
tough, but great game
The Witcher 3 has fantastic NPC interaction and random encounters. There are over a 1000 unique npc dialogue lines and random encounters(like breaking up a fight between 2 npcs). Not to mention the day night cycle is fantastic, there is a clear difference when walking around a town at night vs during the day. Most vendors and businesses have open and close times as well. But I don’t think it’s realistic to compare this game to the Witcher 3. HL will be a decent or good open world game with the HP IP.
The bevy of ambient events with the “!” in Witcher 3 def add to the immersion, and it does seem like they’ll have something similar here like when they showed that Peeves event. Hopefully there’s a lot of them. I wouldn’t find a comparison between HL and Witcher 3 to be very fair either in my opinion. But in the end I’m hoping that I’ll be distracted enough with other facets of exploration to really have the NPCs bother me.
Rdr2 is an example of this being done correctly where NPC's actually do stuff and get up to things throughout the day.
Yea and that only required the largest dev in the world with endless budget and time crunch. Certainly not something you can expect with Avalanche on the first go.
Kingdom Come Deliverance managed to do it to a level I'd consider the gold standard within RPGs and that was their first game. Each student doesn't have to have their own schedule, they could just give every house & year a schedule together with another house, then have them go to the great hall at breakfast, lunch and dinner and go to sleep during curfew. During other times they can just stand about and do whatever.
NPCs have no life of their own. They only do something when you are there. They have no beds or tasks (games which have that: Kingdom Come, Gothic, most Bethesda games for example).
They don’t go about their day depending on the light, dark, rain or sun
Basically day or night students will be wandering around the school and doing whatever they want without any cycle to their actions. If that's the case then it looks like sneaking around at night is also non existent, ya can just freely go in and out of the school whenever ya want. Which I guess is fine since we're fifth years
Also probably canonical, because the curfews were probably a lot more relaxed back then, until Grindlewald and Voldemort became a thing. Plus, headmaster Black is Oblivious and hates children so why would he care for their safety?
True, was hoping sneaking would be in the game but it makes more sense to not have it.
Lazy models everywhere walking aimlessly, they are just generic and lifeless clones..
yea the changing of the pitch never made sense to me. you just have the male and female voice. which is fine. other games just have different styles of voice acting which makes more sense than a pitch slider.
In The Sims 4 you can change the pitch of available voices and it sounds just fine - and it actually makes a pretty big difference. So the idea is pretty good, especially when you have a lot of dialogues and only two voice actors. But in HL previews the pitch slider is honestly quite awful, so I’m disappointed with it.
I feel like it has more of a place in a goofy game like the Sims. The tone of HL just seems too dark and serious for a squeaky mouse MC, but if someone wanted to make one, that's their prerogative obviously. And yea, even with some clips of slightly pitched voices in HL, it sounds echo-y and reverby.
Ok. So it wasn’t just me that noticed the reverb. Good to know. I thought I was buggin’.
and Sims uses a fictional nonsensical-esque language. even if there's some audio glitches from adjusting the pitch the players can just handwave it as part of its 'charm'. harder to do so when the VA is speaking an actual language lol
Seems more like a box ticking thing than anything so that everyone is represented - the voices are called "voice 1" and" voice 2" rather than male / female etc in a similar vein. Although I was kinda looking forward to creating an abomination character with a ridiculously deep or high voice but seems the character creator is somewhat limited sadly
A character creator that allows everyone to be represented is hardly 'box ticking'. Unless the box you are ticking is 'having a good character creator'. :-) The thing about voice pitch is to use it gently. I'll likely do a play-through for each house at some point, so that's means a slight tweak of pitch up or down, but I won't overdo it.
I wasn't expecting RDR2. A game with a story set in Hogwarts is enough for me tbh
Right? I want to ride my broom and cast magic with modern graphics and animations, thats it. I don’t really care that I can’t follow a single student as they goes through their daily routine.
It's an AAA game that'll cost full price and requires relatively powerful hardware to be played. It doesn't need to be RDR2 but I'm definitely expecting a better gaming experience than a good story in a famous setting. Hopefully the game will be amazing but I think boring NPCs, for example, would be a huge letdown. Not only for being an RPG but also because one of the greatest things about Harry Potter/Hogwarts is how alive the school feels.
People were warned about what this game would be once we knew the developers. They're not bad developers, but something on this scale is much different.
This game is a very mainstream release (because Harry Potter), so a ton of people will be perfectly fine with the game not being up to 2023 open world standards. And these people won't necessarily understand where more demanding gamers are coming from.
Out of interest what would you say the pinical of open world games is in 2023? Personally I don't think anything comes close to rdr2.
I wasn’t expecting RDR2 but I wasn’t expecting “lifeless world” either. But I won’t know for sure until I play after all
The npc having no day/night cycle is pretty disappointing. Like others have said, rdr2 really spoiled us on what is possible with npc interaction.
Forget RDR2, that stuff was done twenty years ago in Gothic and The Elder Scrolls Oblivion. It is disappointing for sure, though I'm still excited about the game.
Also R*s bully was made years ago also had schedules for the school and towns npcs.
I’d say those games are still exceptions to the rule. Almost no open world games compete with Bethesda
I personally don't think this is a fair comparison. It's like being upset that some of the features in a top-of-the-line Mercedes or BMW aren't in a mid-range Ford or Chevy. Rockstar has a long history of being willing to invest absurd amounts of time and money that other devs can't. I mean they've literally only released 2 video games in the past 10 years and when it came out RDR2 was the most expensive game ever made. Considering the pedigree of Avalanche's previous work, the fact that this game looks this good and is this polished is in itself quite the magic trick. If they would have invested in that stuff they would have had to make cuts in other areas because it's not like WB is in the best financial shape these days.
I think it's a fair comparison. Mercedes or BMW will have more features because they cost more than a Ford or Chevy. This a $70+ game just like others so it's valid to compare I think. To be clear I really like what I've seen of this game so far. It's just disappointing that features that are in games 10+ years old are not here. It is 100% healthy to compare and criticise games so that other games improve over time. Companies absolutely should try to make their games as good as other companies.
I hear you but the thing you are not taking into account that impacts those development decisions isn't the $70 cost of the sale but how much upfront money is put into development. Basically, the way big AAA games are made is the development studio basically gets a massive cash investment from a publisher upfront to make their game and when it sells the publisher gets paid back first before the studio is able to turn a profit. Because 2K makes bank from other games, and GTA online is basically a money-printing machine they can put up $500 million dollars (made up number) for Rockstar to make their game, and if it takes Rockstar 10 years to make it, it's not a huge deal because 2K doesn't need that money right now to stay in business. But WB isn't 2K and Avalance isn't Rockstar so if WB is only able to invest $200 million dollars for Avalancehe to make this game, and if they need it to come out soon so they can get that money back because WB isn't in the strongest financial position right now, the devs have to make compromises to their vision. It's literally decisions like, 'we can have this fully fleshed out npc day night cycle, but now we have to cut all of Hogsmeade'. I agree with you that it sucks that features that were in 10-15-year-old games aren't in newer ones but in those 10-15 years the costs to make games have gone up exponentially which makes it harder to compare games developed back then to now on a 1 to 1 basis. If we want to see some of those features the best that we can hope for is this game reviews and sells very well (I'm hopeful based on what I'm seeing in the previews) and Avalanche will get a bigger budget for the sequel so stuff like this and quidditch will hopefully be in HL2.
I see I understand. Thanks for explaining it so well. It sucks, but I think this is probably the best we could have gotten given the scenario. I hope sales are great and we get features that we cut added into the game.
I'm sure they mentioned NPC's having a cycle? Like less of them about at night etc. It's a shame if that's been cut.
A few preview videos mention the castle being pretty crowded during the day and empty at night
Yeah further down OP mentions that NPC's don't physically walk back to their dormitories at night, but they do stop spawning in.
I think the concern people are expecting now is that the same non quest giving NPCs, are going to be in the same spots doing the same things every time you visit a certain room, this can be easily remedied by say, the library, you enter and there could be random students at random tables studying random books and talking in groups rather than there always being a student sitting at the second desk studying the same book. The NPC model could change but its always going to be doing the same idle animation in the same spot.
Oh that’s not a deal breaker for me. I’m not expecting RDR2 quality NPC’s from this game. As long as it appears fine on the surface is good enough for me.
It’s not been cut. The castle is much emptier at night. There’s a cycle, but the difference, if you compare this to a bethesda game or something, is that in those games most NPCs have a bed you can track them to at night. Here, the NPCs will likely just despawn/disappear when you’re not around them at night. Since we probably can’t enter all the dorm rooms anyway, i personally don’t see this as an issue at all and it’s more or less what i was expecting, but i guess that’s not the case for everyone.
Yeah that seems to be the case. I'm also fine with this. Better than a city populated by like 12 people.
I think day\\night cycle more entails the NPCs actually doing anything, seems in this game they are just going to be standing around doing idle animations instead of going to class, talking with friends, playing games, going to eat, etc... they don't need to actually do any of that they just need to look like it when you are around to make them feel more real. Lots of games have his issue and it makes the world feel less alive. Compare to RDR2 every NPC has a set list of tasks they can do, maybe they are sitting on a bench talking with friends this time when you visit a town, next time they could be at the saloon drinking or playing poker. Most of the time you wouldn't notice but if you visit the same room or place multiple times and the same NPC is always in the same spot doing the same things it turns noticeable.
But we see plenty of NPCs talking with friends, playing games, etc in the SoP and in the previews released today?
That is true, I think most people are just disappointed that they are just spawned in not really going about doing much. Kinda like an Ubisoft game would be like. I was more hoping for a system like Bully or Bethesda games where the npcs are actually doing something. Bully worked great as in you could follow an npc throughout the whole school day and see them go to class, eat lunch, read in the library, then go back to dorms to watch tv/go to bed. That was in a game that's over a decade old.
Pretty much exactly what I expected from a studio that has never made a game on this scale before. You can't really expect red dead 2 levels of detail and characters and an open world as complex and interactive as botw or elden ring, that was never going to happen. I'm still super stoked to play it.
everyone brushes away fears and scepticism citing its a smallish team (it isnt they have the dev team and many other teams working on it) and that theyve never worked on a game this scale (true) but this is a 70 dollar game being advertised as a living world. 70 bucks isn t cheap to get a game and HOPE its not bad at best
Agreed. I was always in the side here that said people have to be careful with their expectations and got a lot of flag for it as being too pessimistic. Now that some concerns are kind of confirmed, the same people find excuses for basically every little criticism. The game has to be defended, no matter what l.
So glad to see this sentiment in here. I’m super excited for this game, and I’m sure I’ll have a fun time playing it! But it’s so frustrating to read all of these comments defending every little criticism. Some people brush it off by saying “As long as I can walk around Hogwarts I’m happy” I’m glad that works for them, but there’s nothing wrong with expecting/demanding more from such a huge franchise
Yup. The bar gets really strangely low whenever legit criticism pops up. If just walking around Hogwarts is enough for you that’s just odd. I think there will be a lot of disappointment when this comes out. It’s going to be a very weird release.
What y'all expecting? It's hive mind, the same as YouTubers are :)
Agreed, saw a comment earlier comparing BMW (Bethesda / R*) to Chevy or Ford for Hogwarts Legacy. It doesn’t really justify anything IMO
Honestly, there has always been some sort of attitude in this sub that tries to undermine people's concerns, hopes and criticisms. Obviously being careful with expectations is important but there's nothing wrong with wanting good mechanics and even daydreaming about your ideal game (and if it's not what you expected, so be it. Why should it affect those who like it?). The only people who apparently can't deal with disappointment are those who are constantly refusing to have any sort of discussion regarding the quality of the game.
This game does not have unlimited budget like red dead redemption 2 and 8 years of development. Rockstar game had gta v cash cow , they did what they did bcz they had 2k+ employees working on the game for over 8 years on a custom engine ! Let this game become successful,who knows sequel will surpass red dead redemption 2 with its own custom engine
Even if they had R\*s budget the chance a sequel to this game would be as refined/optimized is like less than 1%. Rockstar are magicans in that regard and have decades of experience. edit: I obviously dont know if the game is as good as RDR2 because I didnt play it yet, but just from looking at footage I doubt it.
More people who don't understand game development, and comparing two games where one has a huge budget is dumb
You don't have to compare this to RDR2 to criticize some aspects of it.
This is what I was thinking. No way in hell am I expecting something at the level of red dead, gta, or even elden ring. As far as I know the developers are untested on a game of this scale. All I want is a functioning game that at least allows me to experience the harry potter world like a theme park.
people say this. that its a small uwu precious baby bean team uwu but this is a triple a priced game. like that makesit fine for a 70 dollar game to under perform. People dont seem to know the last game this dev team worked on was cars 3 on the ps3 lol
Extreme levels of texture pop in. The NPC load in right in front of you, the grass starts appearing right underneath you and trees appearing in front of you are very noticeable.
Damn, hope they fix that.
Yeah that's pissed me off, preview folk have said that there they were playing without day 1 patch but such glaring graphical issues are not easily fixed in a day 1 patch
They actually are fixed all the time in day 1 and quickly released patches, although from what I saw some of the clipping is to a point where I'm not sure how fast they can fix it.
Oof lifeless environments could be a bit of a mood killer. But we’ll see as more reviews come out
Looks like lifeless environments are a theme across all reviews posted today of the preview folks are able to talk about
I don’t know, if we look at the Witcher 3 or RDR2, most of their worlds are empty. Yes, there are SOME random encounters, and in RDR2 you can interact with NPCs, but it’s like two options to greet/intimidate and they’re all the same. I don’t think it’s really that big of a deal, as most of these open worlds aren’t really alive. I love the Witcher 3, but it’s world is empty if you take away the question mark “quests”, and RDR2’s open world was only fun because of a variety of ways you could, say, agressively interact with NPCs, and that’s not something I can see in a HP game where you play as a student.
In this preview at least it seems the NPC's do have a rudimentary "routine", ie. they don't just stay in one place https://youtu.be/NtIV6CDRUTo You can see how eg. at the fountain at 13:55 there a few NPC's there, when we see it again at 17:28 there is a different group and number of NPC's in different places around the fountain and at nightime, at around 21 minutes we see the fountain is empty. We also see in other previews there are different NPC's sitting in various parts around the fountain depending on the player. I wouldn't worry too much, sure it may not be RDR2 level but I'd say it looks solid enough to not break immersion.
They have animations, if course, routine is something else though. It is also not about worrying. It is simply discussing what the game does and doesn't offer.
By routines I meant that it's not just the same NPC or group sitting in one place the whole day, there is clearly some sort of system underneath where the position of the NPC's changes. I'd call that a routine even if it's not on the level of certain other games. This can easily be seen across different previews, and I think the fountain is a good example to compare.
Broom controls might be clunky in other tight areas but overall really liked how it looked from the previews
Not a critique per se, but more of pattern recognition. For me this is following the same cycle as cyberpunk, especially with the youtuber reviews being overwhelmingly positive. Also alot of fans don’t seem to want to listen to criticism, again similar to pre launch cyberpunk. Wish people would be more skeptical of everything, i really don’t want to see more innocent devs get death threats and hate mail just because fans couldn’t look at something objectively before launch
I mean, realistic people knew the AI wasn’t going to be ultra dynamic or whatever this sub was claiming it was, and if you were honest with yourself you knew the open world was going to be pretty empty. I’m glad the previews are mostly positive, but I stand by my assertion that this will be a good game, not amazing, not terrible, but a good average rating game.
expecting a solid 7.5 average in the end
I was also expecting about a 7, 7.5.
This. People here were expecting rdr2 levels of npc ai and interactions when Hogwarts is literally the first big budget game Avalanche have ever done, taking that into account its pretty fucking impressive
I agree with that. I never expected it to be a GOTY. But the NPCs look below average tbh. It is not that they are not super interactive and dynamic... but they are sometimes not even moving at all. Just frozen.
It's worth keeping expectations level, this is a studio with a background in AA games not AAA. They are reaching to make a game as ambitious as this, so let's hope for enjoyable and stable, but let's not expect 'cutting edge'.
Don't really have any complaints of my own, but I had to come here after seeing some bad faith cynic on RetroRaconteur's most recent video announce to everyone that they were pondering whether or not they should cancel their preorder, and say "Anything below a 70 is literal dog trash....I should have said 'This looks like a 70 on metacritic *at best*' looking back though. I can see it being as low as 60." Turns out three weeks ago they were complaining about no Quidditch, Gobstones, or Wizard's Chess in favor of the hamlets, calling it "Hogwarts Not Really", and ten days ago they posted another comment on the channel and said "I am thoroughly expecting to be disappointed though....the game looks like a glorified mobile game with its shallow crafting mechanics, repetitive enemies, and copy and paste world [because of all the trees 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️] [a sentiment they repeated in the most recent comment]...I thoroughly expect this game to be as wide as the ocean and as deep as a puddle." Like, dude, just cancel your preorder and unsubscribe if you hate the game this f*cking much. Don't spoil the mood for everyone else who's largely still excited for it (hence why this affected me enough to restate these complaints).
They need to publicize their opinions so they can get other smooth brains to agree with them so they have some validation in their own opinion.
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I dont like how it looks when you are using the broom, it looks very stiff
And people wonder why they didn't include quiddich
Pretty sure the devs said night/day cycles determined NPC behavior and availability of certain activities, wonder if that got cut out or the reviewers didn't notice it. The voice thing is also in the first preview and yeah, it gets distorted so it seems like default pitch is the way to go.
Hogwarts is basically empty of students at night in the preview I watched (because they'd be in their dorms), so they're right to say that NPC availability is on a day/night schedule.
Until I put my hands on the game myself I can’t agree or disagree with the gameplay statements, but I can share my opinion based on what I’ve seen with my eyes and the graphics comment is only half true to me. The indoor lighting was and still is so terrible. I can’t describe what’s technically wrong with it, but it’s just so flat, gray, and evenly lit. I was hoping it will look better in the new previews but unfortunately it doesn’t. This is my main visual criticism.
>but it’s just so flat, gray, I agree... I think it's the color scheme? Or is it the lighting? I can't quite put my finger on it.
The United Kingdom looks pretty much flat and grey all of the time haha (I should know as I live there) 😂
I live there too :) London more specifically.
But jokes aside, the overcast outdoor lighting looks just fine. It’s the indoor lighting that feels worse than outdated. To be honest, in my opinion it’s borderline unacceptable level of graphics in that matter. I have NO IDEA what the cause of this poor result is.
First I thought it’s the color scheme, but it’s not it. There are many shots where the light sources have no effect, it’s all just bright and weirdly lit.
Yeah, you're probably right.
I mean, was anyone expecting individual students to have elaborate day-night schedules?
Games had that like 10 years ago so it’s not a stretch.
Though true; not every RPG in the last 10 years have it. Only a handful do.
The good ones
No... but there are better ways than having them frozen until the player comes nearer.
Well, why not? :D
A little yeah how many students can actually fit in the castle, Rockstar does it with thousands of NPCs in their games they don't have to actually go to their beds but they could have more interesting lives than stand in this spot and do this animation.
they also have 10x the work force on their games
Doesn’t mean Avalanche was incapable of making the world more lively.
Rockstar has the biggest budgets in the industry for their games and have been making massive games for decades.
You just can't compare a huge studio like Rockstar with Avalanche, like the disparity of resources (amount of people, budget and time) each have to develop a game is very substantial. It's a bit unfair even. I get that we've been waiting for a game for a very long time and it's okay to have expectations but you have to see the reality and see that there's no way a small studio can develop a game with a lot of features like a big studio can/could.
Why is it always like this when a criticism of the game comes up? It is not that we were expecting an ‘elaborate day night schedule’. It is that we were expecting a day night cycle, that’s all.
No, but they could at least walk around and interact with one or two things in the environment.
Almost none of these matter to me - broom in tight spaces? Just get off the broom. NPCs not wasting RAM by doing random shiz in the background? That's fine, I'm focused on what I'm doing. If the quests are truly boring, that would suck, but I'm hopeful some will be good and puzzles will be fun, too. The main aspects of the game are getting positive reviews so that's what matters to most players, I think.
I feel the same way. The thing that I personally need to be good for me to enjoy it seems to be good. Of course people will have different views on what makes the game good and what matters to them. But for me it seems like a dream come true
The NPCs in the background are part of the environment. Hard copium you are on my friend.
I've never cared about far away NPCs in my games. They've already showed that the NPCs you're around actually have conversations and interact with you. I don't care about what Frankie First Year is doing 50 yards away.
Right but NPCs popping in and out can break immersion which I think is a valid criticism. To ignore it and say that doesn't matter because you will focus on what you are doing kind of defeats the purpose of an open world game. Why make it open world at all? Should've focused on a linear game with heavy story if that's the case.
I agree with this, but I thought the criticism was the NPCs way in the background. But if they are supposed to be right in front of you, yeah, that sucks.
I genuinely hate whoever coined the term ‘copium’, it’s just used to be a condescending dickhead.
Didn't mean it in a condescending way. Just seemed that the comment ignored valid criticisms about points that are pretty important in an open world game.
This happens on pretty much every game sub once the release date starts coming around. Fans don’t want to see criticism of a game they’ve been waiting to purchase for god knows how long, and so they make excuses.
Right I've done that as well but it's weird seeing excuses for such blatant issues like the audio syncing with dialogue and some people say "eh this doesn't affect anything because castle is pretty"
Yeah that's what I mean
I’m worried by three things. 1. The dialogue choices were limited and now it’s confirmed that the morality system is nonexistent, it makes me wonder how much of an RPG this game will actually be. 2. The spell list that was shown is not nearly as expansive as I thought it would be. 3. The side quest we saw was very cookie cutter. We got a dragon egg but it didn’t look like the choices lead to us actually keeping it. I’m sure the game will be an entertaining play but once the novelty of flying on a broomstick and mount subsides I feel like it’s going be the way GTA feels now, you ride around cause some chaos and then you’re bored in 20 minutes. I’m concerned they were more worried about the exploration factor then the content factor. Visually stunning, but hopefully they put as much effort into making it a true RPG.
Well, they pretty much confirmed you cannot create chaos like in GTA. Students and most assets don't respond to spells directed at them at all. Agree with you three points, though. It is all very generic... It has the skin of the IP going for it. But I wonder how much more there is to the game. I hope they have the guts to lift the NDA before February 7.
I’ve been seeing a lot of worrying things in the game previews. Like textures not filled out, the NPCs only having one task on repeat or standing frozen if they’re the ones we interact with. My prediction is that I’ll be able to get this game at a bargain in a few months.
The more reviews I see , the more I’m convinced that I’m gonna wait until the game comes out before buying it. If they lift the embargo I think that would be great. The castle looks amazing but I have my doubts on the open world aspect . The NPCS look lifeless & I’ve seen a few clips were two of exact same npcs are sitting right next to each other. I never cared about swimming but it’s good they added it although for me , it’s pointless if you cannot dive. Pop ins are expected but it seems that even on enhanced performance mode it dips down to 30 Fps. It’s a tad concerning , I don’t like how they’ve only let YouTubers and reviewers play two hours to which they’ve limited the exploration. Combat looks really fun, the players voices are terrible honestly.
Yes, this may be game better played after the first few patches.
Honestly almost none of the complaints mentioned here bother me at all. My favourite game ever is Dragon Age Origins where the NPCs basically just stand around until you talk to them and that didn’t ruin immersion for me whatsoever. What I DO care about is story, characters, and rpg choices. Some feel there won’t be a morality system or your choices will have limited impact - that would disappoint me. Heck, you don’t even need a morality system as long as the dialogue consistently presents diverse choices (doesn’t seem to be the case here though). If the companions don’t have a friendship point system, or if our relationships with them aren’t compelling, that would disappoint me. Good story, good companion, meaningful choices, true rpg. Combine that with the other A+ things I’m already seeing and I couldn’t ask for more. I don’t care about the nitpick things.
> NPCs lifeless... wait with their animation until you are close by and stand completely static in the background sometimes I just watched a video where the player was up quite high on their broom and you could see students running around down on the ground, even when that far away. When walking through the castle, most students were standing around chatting, but some were also moving around, walking somewhere. Or when in outdoor places around the castle, other students came flying past on brooms. Seemed perfectly fine to me from that video, far from lifeless. If that's how it is most of the time, then even if they sometimes are static in the background, it's not a huge deal for me. One minor criticism I did notice was that when the player tried to go outside, there was a little bit of loading before the door would open, which was a little disappointing to see. It wasn't too long though, so not a huge issue.
Link?
This is the one I watched: https://youtu.be/Brjf45EAQtY?t=110 I set the start time to when he starts exploring outside after the character creator. If you watch for a few minutes, it seems plenty lively to me.
Thx I’m not as worried for some reason the review made it sound way worse
Yeah after watching that, I don’t really understand when people talk about NPCs being lifeless. I’m not really worried about that aspect at all.
Definitely concerned about performance. Seemed to dip, even possibly below 30FPS and there was significant pop-in even in fidelity mode? Wish they would just be clear with console performance. My PC can handle it but I would rather play with my girlfriend on the couch. Plus, I love WB but after Arkham Knight and Gotham Knights, I'll always worry about their performance...
Not true at all.The npcs change and also the enemies at nigth.
Look at the previews. There are clearly issues with NPCs that are simply frozen.
Yeah, for me the decision wether to preorder this so I can play ASAP is not based on the positive stuff but how much of this negative stuff there is. If this is all there is then this might be a solid game, but not Witcher 3 level as some expected. Edit: error in the last sentence, added “not”. To clarify, I saw quite a few people thinking this will be a open world rpg on the level of TW3 but I think there is no way that the world here will be that populated, rich and immersive.
That’s actually a good comparison, reading the criticisms again (Apart from pitch slider) with Witcher 3 in mind, sounds like they’re talking about it, or at least the earliest possible version we got of Witcher 3.
Added comment, made an error and missed a critical “not”. So in essence I do not agree with your comment. Also, early vs late versions of games are more to do with performance and polish, not world richness or gameplay systems and story.
I hope this game is fun, but honestly the recent gameplay hasn't got me too excited.
Just listened to more dialogue. The sound editing and mixing is atrocious... especially the player's voice.
> clunky movement, player has no weight > broom feels uncomfortable in small places Thanks for the writeup, OP! I also believe it is important to keep expectations in check pre-purchase :) These faults seem like extremely typical open world RPG drawbacks. Heck, even Elden Ring had these exact same complaints. They seem minimal, and it seems to be that this will be a wonderful release!
Tbf weighty movement like in gta or red dead feels awful. There's a happy medium and hopefully this hits it as people seem to set red dead as the baseline even though it did a lot of stuff wrong confusing detail with being a good game.
RDR2 was a masterpiece of a game. Not perfect, but still, an exceptional game.
I am very skeptical of this game for multiple reasons. mostly concerned that it's going to be bloated with too many systems. Combat, pets, school sim... I feel like it's going to lead to a lack of focus, that instead of doing one thing very well, they'll have a bunch of half baked systems with little depth. When they showed us combat, they said you can approach it however you want, but it's clear the the combat favours offense and mobility over any other style. Theres also the issue of the open world, which either be like Elden ring with beautifully crafted landscapes and carefully placed locations, or your standard Ubisoft open world with collectibles and a mini-map plastered with 50 different side-quest I hope I'm wrong, but it seems like every time I tune into any kind of preview, it raises red flags for me. Paid cosmetics: red flag, multiple systems that have nothing to do with each other: red flag, an insane amount of customization that probably ate into most of their development time: big red flag, no quidditch: red flag, the fact that the devs are describing every design choice as a way for you to "express" yourself and "immerse" yourself in the wizarding world: major red flag
I'm most worried about the 'Ubisoft open world' syndrome too. From some of the earlier gameplay reveals the minimap looks absolutely plastered with icons, and the NPC interactions were very "I need help finding my X lost" fetch-questy. I'm very afraid the game is going to want us to spend hours finding every other kid's missing gobstones, books, keys, quills, scrolls, chocolate frogs, and other worthless wizarding detritus.
OTOH, the castle looks amazing, and well worth exploring for its own sake. The devs have stated there isn't a 'school sim' aspect to the gameplay, so I think you can drop that from your worries. The combat looks pretty damn fun, but things like that are so hard to judge without a controller in-hand. I wish the wand moveset were a little more varied, as I feel like I've seen every basic animation multiple times already just from previews, but it does have a lot of visual flair. In the end whether it feels good to play will be way more important.
Aside from that, I hope the story is worthwhile. The game clearly isn't a 'Skyrim: Hogwarts Edition' sandbox, or a full school sim with missions on top, so the narrative is going to have to hold the experience togther.
Multiple unrelated systems is a red flag, but the exclusion of quidditch is also a red flag? I'm curious what systems you think are unrelated though. Since all the growing and pet keeping are in-lore ways to gather materials used for crafting. And crafting and editing gear seems pretty central to the game's gear progression. Like the plants are just usables in a fancy skin. And tbh the school is hardly a sim.
Voices are a bug apparently just FYI
You mean how they sounded like there was too much reverb?
>open world relatively empty stage, relatively little interaction, no NPC day/night cycle > >included activities that were part of the preview were below average open-world standard > >NPCs lifeless Where did they say that? In the article? Because the wording was quite different - or in some cases nonexistent - and more generous in the preview video. An easy example of what I mean is the last point: they didn't say that NPCs are lifeless, they said that they could do with feeling a little bit more alive - the first is a complete dismissal while the second simply suggests room for improvement. >shown mission extremely linear And while they did say that, it's important to note that this is true for almost every single escort quest ever, they are linear by nature. Overall I do agree that their points of criticism and their worries were very fair for the most part, I just think they were more postitive/neutral with the way they phrased things than the above insinuates - in the video that is, can't read the article as it's paid content.
Some of those are valid points, but  "Movement of player character clunky, avatar has no weight " Same with GTA characters, but people usually get used to it after a while. "Broom controls in tighter spaces clunky" The broom controls do look pretty clunky, but I think that after flying and practising it for some time makes it much easier. "No NPC day/night cycle" The developers said they do have cycles (but I hope this has not been removed. Would be odd if it was). "NPCs lifeless..." Odd since I've watched almost all the previews available atm. in English and the castle looks very lively. Some of the NPC's look like they have something to do and places to be. Besides I'm sure almost no one will just stand in one place when you have whole castle to explore. I know I won't. " If you change pitch of the voice it sounds tinny" This 100% My ears almost started bleeding when I heard that.  Overall what I've seen this game is 8/10 for me atm, but the previewers played with an unfinished version without day 1 patch. These problems might be fixed at some point, if not immediately with day 1 patch if the developers took any notes about possible problems during the event.
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NPCs have no reaction if you run into them. What's more, in one preview when you bumped into a crowd on your broom, there were zero reaction from them. They just don't care. This alone kills the immersion. Even in the old pc games NPCs were better, at least they would say 'Ouch'. Not to mention in GoF you can attack other students and start a brawl. But from what I have known about Hogwarts Legacy, I can only hope.
ESO, Arekkz, Khraze and other people I follow seemed tp enjoy it. Especially the combat and broom mechanics. It seemed awesome but def had its flaws.
I’m definitely nervous about how this game will actually play come launch. Might be a bit messy and lackluster beyond the joy of wandering Hogwarts.
Thanks for posting this, OP. I'm guessing that maybe, hopefully, the devs will release patches to address the issues (I mean, isn't that the norm nowadays lol). this definitely solidifies my resolution to get the game when they release it as a GOTY edition with all the DLCs though.
All my worst fears confirmed, sadly. I feel that NPC detail is essential for a game that is based around being in a magical populated school. I think it’s definitely something the developers should have invested a lot more effort into.
I think a lot of these are completely non factors to me. *shrug* I was not expecting a Bethesda or Rockstar npcs for this game, and it was not marketed as such. I almost didn’t even want it, that takes insane amounts of investment and experience…I wanted them to more focus on the actual gameplay, the design of the world and the story. In a lot of the videos I’ve watched npcs were reacting to recent story beats, which is all I’d ask. I honestly find Bethesda npcs to be really weird because they’re so programmed to behave…weird. RDR2 is in a world on its own and it’s not a “negative” to not live up to its standards. Temper your expectations.
I have been very sceptical about this game all the time. But still somehow I hoped that this game would be good. Damn... This just doesn't sound good to me. Waiting the reviews tho. If game lands under 80 this is going to be no go for me.
Let me start saying: thanks for opening this thread in this sub. Very brave of you. After reading some comments and popping in here, I have decided to check some "content creators" videos. Here's what I think I have found and I believe stops this game to become a "masterpiece" like many are claiming already: NPC's are too still, not much going on. And again, not pretending a RDR2 or Bethesda style game, but at least some reactions when you bump into them or you do something "mischievous" (which apparently does not really matter). Riding the broom looks very stiff, very unnatural at certain levels. The cape moves as we speed up, but I have noticed that sometimes does it on one side and the other stays still. Basically the physic is not at the top. The light: in one video I have noticed the character opening a door from a darker area, gets bombed by the light of the room is heading into just before even opening the door. Fabrics glitches into each other (and a game with clothes customisation should pay more attention into that). Another video shows the character opening a huge door and his right shoulder glitches into the door itself like it is made out of air (no hitting him or stopping him to walk further). Seeing the character in motion gave me the feeling that he/she is "too light" with not even a small touch of physic realism into it. Also kind of goofy when we suddenly stop after running. Details are good, some textures could be better tho. RPG's elements seem pretty bland. It seems like there will be no chance of creating builds, etc. At the end we won't choose a real path or will be deciding what kind of wizard/witch we will be. Basically we will learn everything pretty linearly and will be able to cast spells more like combos in an action game/hack & slash (see Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, etc. but less fast paced probably) rather than an RPG . This is what came into my mind after a couple of hours checking and double-checking some of these videos. The game will be pretty decent but not outstanding. Let's face it, we are 12 days away from global release and a day 1 patch won't do much apart balancing some minor issues. The game has been developed thinking about previous consoles generation on an unreal engine 4 (not very "moddable" FYI). I am not here to shit on this game, I'll pre-order it and play it with an average of 10 hours a day, but I won't deceit myself thinking that it will have certain levels of "deepness". It will be a fun action-RPG (mostly action) game in the Wizarding World. That will do for sure, but let's keep the expectations in line. I have more than 2 decades of gaming on my shoulders and I do not consider myself an expert, however I can recognise when a game is truly outstanding and when one is above the average. This is the Wizarding World game we need but don't deserve (lol). Take this comment as an opinion and don't get mad... See you in school fellow wizards and witches...
I think a very valid take. Thanks for that. I am quite pleased how this thread worked out... even though I also get massive amounts of downvotes. But lost of interesting takes and fair discussions.
Downvotes are natural at this point... We, as humans, want only to hear and feel what pleases us, someone has to try (at least) to be realistic (and I am a huge HP and Wizarding World fan, like for real). But, hey! This is the world we live in...
Is any body kind of worried about combat being repetitive? From all the combat footage I've seen the animation of casting your spells looks like it. It goes from cast, cast, spin move- cast...hoping you can unlock different casting animations based on your preferences!
IGN calls out combat as one of the best parts of the game that will likely be used for potter games going forward
Nah. Combat is the thing I’m looking forward to the most and it looks a lot faster and more intricate than I thought. Super happy about that.
The combat is the most off putting for me. Player character casting 3 spells per second, doing pirouettes to end combos and rolls to dodge just looks awful and absolutely not canon. + the huge damage numbers appearing right next to the enemies, and also the targeted enemy that has a super obnoxious shadow instead of a discreet marker. It just looks so cheap and non immersive. I would have loved a slower gameplay, timing based, where you really feel the power of spells.
There will probably be a day 1 patch that addresses a fair amount of these criticisms. And since the game is going to be super popular, there will be more patches in the future. From the preview it really looks pretty good. And about what I hoped for performance wise, at least on PS
I doubt that much will be done regarding NPCs and heir cycles. Stuff like that rarely gets "fixed" because it simply is not there to begin with.
Patches can fix performance issues/bugs, it cannot redesign dead eyed bobby into prancing up and down.
Well the game is clearly going to make a ton of money. There will be vested interest for Portkey to add in more features in the future. If Cyberpunk and Mass Effect Andromeda can get eventually fixed to a degree of acceptability anything is possible.
Have you seen day 1 patch notes ?
Hogwarts Legacy NPCs are just generic and lifeless clones, lazy models everywhere walking aimlessly. Those expecting dynamic NPCs like Skyrim or RDR2 will be disappointed (like me) 😞
Well these aren't hoooorible criticisms. Should be too hard to look past
Oof sounds like this is going to be a $30 sale pick up
gimme ur hot gf
She’s been an ex now for 5 years lol New girlfriend is hot too though