Hogwarts Legacy 2 Has an Impossible Decision to Make Now

The first Hogwarts Legacy landed with a bang, launching in 2023 and outselling every other major release, including landmark titles like Baldur’s Gate 3 and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the game is perfect—myself and many others have endlessly criticized Hogwarts Legacy’s tone, bland open-world, and underbaked RPG systems, among other things. But it clearly struck a chord with Harry Potter fans.

Indeed, you could easily argue that the Harry Potter license, which allows Hogwarts Legacy to feature such iconic locales as Hogsmeade, Azkaban, and Hogwarts itself, is the game’s greatest strength. Hogwarts Legacy is certainly the closest we’ve come to a proper “AAA” Harry Potter game on the level of Assassin’s Creed Origins or The Witcher 3: it’s a sprawling, photorealistic open-world with vast gameplay variety, customization, skill trees, and the like. Smartly, the game is more like a new adaptation of the Harry Potter books than another adaptation of the films, although it certainly still borrows from the movies in several ways, from the appearance of key locations like the Hogwarts Great Hall to myriad Easter eggs and visual gags. One would assume that this reverence for the films will bleed into Hogwarts Legacy 2, but will the sequel attempt to squeeze in the Harry Potter TV show as well?

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It’s not exactly a glamorous reason, but Warner Bros., and Avalanche Software by extension, may include certain elements of HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter TV show in Hogwarts Legacy 2 in an attempt to promote the property. The rights holder may feel especially motivated to include TV show content of some kind in the Hogwarts Legacy sequel because of the releases’ vast differences in optics: Hogwarts Legacy 2 is hotly anticipated by millions of gamers, whereas the Harry Potter TV show seems to inspire cautious optimism at best.

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Of course, Hogwarts Legacy 2 will almost certainly launch after the December 2026 premiere of the Harry Potter show, but certain decisions about what the game will include have probably already been made, or will be made before December. If Avalanche wanted Hogwarts Legacy 2 to feature, for instance, the TV show’s rendition of the iconic Chessboard Chamber, this would have already needed to be designed. Other examples of this kind of cross-promotion might include the appearances of certain characters, explanations/framings of various lore concepts, or more general tonal aspects.

The Harry Potter TV show will supposedly remain faithful to the source material, but there’s always the chance that it will wind up introducing some smaller changes to the series’ canon, such as new characters or spells, that could theoretically appear in Hogwarts Legacy 2 as well.

This is what the first Hogwarts Legacy does at many points, clearly attempting to recreate the atmosphere and style of the classic films at several points. Granted, this is a big part of the game’s magic: it can come across as an interactive version of the movies. If the Harry Potter TV show manages to be a hit, then parity with Hogwarts Legacy 2 could wind up paying dividends, as players would feel like they’re diving into a world that they’ve fallen in love with all over again.

Making Hogwarts Legacy 2 More Like the Harry Potter Show Could Be a Major Risk

Again, if Avalanche wants to somehow link Hogwarts Legacy 2 to HBO’s show, then steps towards that end have likely already been taken. Assuming, for the sake of discussion, that this is the case, Avalanche would be risking quite a bit, given the lukewarm-to-vitriolic reception of the Harry Potter reboot so far. Essentially, Hogwarts Legacy 2 could wind up standing next to its uglier friend to make it look prettier, which doesn’t really work. Any connections to the Harry Potter show in Hogwarts Legacy 2 would age poorly, potentially looked upon as blemishes.

This obviously depends on how the show itself shakes out, but why take the risk in the first place? Hogwarts Legacy has a lot of flaws, but something I’ve always respected about it was its willingness to offer its own interpretation of the Harry Potter world, one that, while perhaps not replacing the unforgettable depiction of Hogwarts in the films, stands on its own as a more colorful and mystical take. Even if the Harry Potter show blows audiences away and surpasses the films, incorporating this fresh take into Hogwarts Legacy 2 could result in a “too many cooks” sort of situation.

In general, it will be interesting to see how the Harry Potter IP evolves over the next several years. The original movies were like lightning in a bottle, and their respective video game adaptations, while painfully quaint in comparison to something like Hogwarts Legacy, had a unique charm of their own. Needless to say, those days are over now, and with Hogwarts Legacy charting a new path for Harry Potter’s gaming endeavors, anything is possible, especially if Warner Bros. is trying to evolve the IP into a more robust and varied multimedia franchise.