The Hogwarts Legacy team has shared a seemingly innocuous teaser for the game on its official Twitter account.
They shared a small clip spotlighting one of the Harry Potter universe’s most notorious curses, Imperio.
The clip gives this description of the spell:
“Imperio: One of three Unforgivable Curses
The Imperius Curse
Temporarily forces enemies to fight as if they were your companion. While under your control, they take reduced damage from other enemies to prolong their allegiance to you. Also curses the victim – and cursed enemies take extra damage.”
Imperius has been depicted twice in the movies. In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Barty Crouch, who was disguised as Alastor Moody, uses it on a spider. We also see that it gives the victim’s eyes a glazed appearance.
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, the curse takes the form of a mist that surrounds and intoxicates the victim, to play them in the bidding of the caster. In these forms, we will have a pop culture level of familiarity with the spell, but in the world of Hogwarts Legacy, we would be delving deeper and earlier in the history of Hogwarts.
And in that context, the curse of the Imperius was first created in the Middle Ages. Upon the convening of the Wizards Council, turning to the Ministry of Magic, the wizarding community decided that Imperius was dark magic, a curse considered “unforgivable”. In their world, this actually takes a forensic meaning, as it means any wizard or witch caught casting the spell would be sentenced to life imprisonment in Azkaban. The only exception to this sentence was if it could be proven that the caster was under the influence of someone else’s Imperius spell themselves.
While it’s well and good to talk about the lore behind Imperius, it will be interesting to see how it will be implemented as a mechanic in Hogwarts Legacy. Will players be capable of casting the spell against each other in multiplayer? Will using the spell be part of the single player campaign?
If this spell gets implemented as a form of body swap, there are many examples of such a mechanic that Avalanche Software could use and build on. For example, Lollipop Chainsaw has a very rudimentary body swap mechanic. In brief segments, you switch places from Juliet to her boyfriend Nick. Nick temporarily takes control of a body for a small, Simon style minigame.
A more evolved body swap mechanic can be found in GameCube exclusive Geist. The character uses Astral Projection to move his spirit to other people, to animals, even to inanimate objects. Developer n-space has progressively expanded on this mechanic, with the prodding of Nintendo, to encourage players to get creative with how to use it to get past levels.
There are definitely tons of old Geist players who would be tickled pink to see that kind of gameplay brought back in some way, especially for a Harry Potter game.
Hogwarts Legacy will be released in February 2023 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and Microsoft Windows, across Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG. You can read about more Hogwarts Legacy teasers below.
Hogwarts Legacy Has A Large Focus On Choices
Hogwarts Legacy Has Broom Races Instead of Quidditch
Source: Twitter
