New Hogwarts Legacy Behind The Scenes Video Puts The Spotlight On The Music's Composers

Portkey Games have released a new video of Hogwarts Legacy’s composers, sharing what they have done for the game’s all-original soundtrack.

They revealed these key names who worked on the music:

chuck E. myers “sea”, Lead Composer
Nathan Ayoubi, Audio Production Coordinator, Avalanche Software
Peter Murray, Composer
J Scott Rakozy, Composer

As we had reported before, Portkey has made only original music for the game so far, serving to distinguish it quite strongly from the over a decades long legacy of Harry Potter games that leaned heavily on the John Williams score, especially the signature theme, Hedwig’s theme.

Hogwarts Legacy’s composers revealed that their first intent was to put their own stamp on the music, and so it deliberately does not lift entire themes from any of the prior media. With that said, they also wanted to evoke a sense of nostalgia. Not necessarily for Harry Potter itself, so much as nostalgia for movies and shows about magic and wizards, and also classical heroes. And so the compositions have a lot of heroic fanfare, evocative perhaps of things like kids fantasy movies or Peter Pan theatre shows. This leads to an unsual combination of songs that sound nostalgic, but are fresh for the Harry Potter franchise.

They also mentioned the idea of being inspired by Hedwig’s theme. Instead of reusing it in the game, the composers thought of making something that sounds like an earlier version of the theme, that would fit in that world’s fiction. That theme is Ancient Magic Melody, which interestingly enough doesn’t seem to have been revealed yet.

Hogwarts Legacy’s sound team also made some interesting choices on how to create these sounds and songs that evoke ideas of wizard times. chuck is shown playing a waterphone, an unusual, seemingly forgotten instrument, that looks like a bowl surrounded by pipes, but played with a violin bow.

Another unusual instrument is a plain giant sheet of metal, which chuck used to create the booming sounds of thunder. Sounds like something that belonged to the foley department, but they used this sound effect in the compositions itself.

Just yesterday, Portkey Games shared an entire performance featuring their 54 piece orchestra and choir. As it turns out, they didn’t make music for every single moment in the game. Not everything in the game needs music.

However, the game has been finely tuned that every decision you make in every area in the game, leads to appropriate music being played. They made music for every single one of those moments, from combat scenarios, to emotional highlights.

It certainly sounds like Hogwarts Legacy will be a feast for the ears as well as the eyes.

Hogwarts Legacy will be released on February 10, 2023 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. The game is also coming to Nintendo Switch. You can watch the full video below.