Image source @ Visual China
Text | Game Pizza, author | Flying General, editor | Jiaqi
Once again, the wizarding world is close to our lives.
On April 8, the third part of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" will be released in China. The film tells the story of the adventures of Newt Scamander, a fantastic zoologist who was expelled from Hogwarts before Harry Potter was born. Judging from the trailer, the third part still has the magical animals that Newt encountered, and there are many people who are interested in the big drama that GGAD will encounter again after many years of breakup.
The NetEase mobile game Harry Potter: Magical Awakening is also promoting the movie: the inspiration for the April wheel set was the dress of Credence and Nagini in the previous movie.
When Harry Potter: Magical Awakening first came out, there were a large number of Fans who happily downloaded the game, some of them staying in this Cyber Hogwarts for classes, duels, and forbidden forests, while some of them were already disappointed in the magical world in it and became "idlers".
However, a demo video of the console game Hogwarts: Legacy, developed by Warner's studio Avalanche Software, was released in March, which rekindled the hope of some Fans, looking forward to exploring the magical world from the open world design that they did not receive a letter from the owl.
Before Harry Potter: Magical Awakening and Hogwarts: Legacy, there were actually many games based on the "Harry Potter" IP, but most of them were older, unfamiliar to domestic players, and the development of IP was not comprehensive.
Taking advantage of the boom in the launch of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 3, before returning to that magical world, we can first take a look at the games that have taken us into this magic school, and based on these adapted games, to see if the original IP has more room for development.
A 21-year history of harry potter games
In 2001, a crucial year for the Harry Potter IP, Warner's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone came out, becoming a new beginning for many Muggles around the world to understand the wizarding world after the original book.
In the same year, the first two games of the "Harry Potter" series were quietly launched, and the game companies behind them, EA and Lego, also became the companies that later had the "longest love" for this IP.
EA released its first game "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" in 2001, which has the same name as the movie, the plot is limited by space, it is a condensed version of the movie, but the degree of reduction is not bad. Under the craze for the film and the original, the PC version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone sold 860,000 copies in the two months of release in North America.
In addition to the PC version, "Philosopher's Stone" also landed on the console PS1 and two handheld platforms GBC and GBA. However, the Philosopher's Stone on these platforms is different from the PC version, the GBA version is more inclined to solve the puzzle, and the GBC version is a 2D pixel-style ARPG. Later, "Philosopher's Stone" launched a remake of the plot that differed from the previous game, but perhaps because the game development was relatively hurried, it was not as good as the 01 version of "Philosopher's Stone" in terms of word of mouth.
Overall, the "Harry Potter" series produced by EA is obviously more focused on promoting the film, but the release time of each film is chosen for the year in which the film was released, which is more like a case of "movie-game linkage" than the development of the original. Among them, the fourth game found the voice of the movie actors, and the fifth part also obtained the music license of the movie, which was explored inside the game later, and could also unlock some easter eggs of interview videos for actors to talk about the game.
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I don't know if it is too closely related to the movie, some shortcomings that were criticized by the public in the later stages of the film, such as the lack of presentation of the magical atmosphere, etc., are also "faithfully" reflected in the last two works of EA's "Harry Potter" series: "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1)" The combat system has completely become an FPS shooter, and the sense of blow of the spell is more like a gun battle sudden, the game only got a super low score of 2.5 points in IGN, which was jokingly called "Harry Potter and AK47" by many players.
It is worth mentioning the fifth "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", which may be the closest to the current Ha fans' outlook on harry potter games.
Due to the mixed reviews of the previous game's Goblet of Fire peer-to-peer mission model among players, EA abandoned the changes from the previous game in Order of the Phoenix and adopted an open-world gameplay instead. The game's Hogwarts Castle is highly restored, and some classic scenes such as the Owl Tower, Hagrid's Hut and even the Slytherin Chamber are presented in the game. You can figure out most of the structure of Hogwarts Castle through this game, and you can even use the Floating Charm to manipulate the teaching aids to hit Professor McGonagall on the head, and she will deduct points for Gryffindor (Snape Ecstasy).
Lego's Harry Potter series dates back to 2001's LEGO Creator: Harry Potter and 2002's Creator: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. In 2010, Lego's most well-known "Harry Potter" game was released, the first spanning four academic years from "Philosopher's Stone" to "Goblet of Fire", and the plot of the last three school years was included in the 2011 sequel "LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7", the characters in the game are very "Lego", the reputation is also good, and the sequel even received a high score of 80 points (out of 100 points) on Metacritic.
On the other hand, as the consoles have been iterated, Harry Potter games have also added new settings and gameplay. For example, EA's "Order of the Phoenix" landed on the Nintendo Wii, and the player had to cast the correct spell through the Wii's remote control to use the corresponding gestures. Sony released the PS3-limited Book of Spells and Book of Potions in 2012 and 2013, requiring PS3 peripheral hardware to break the "dimensional wall" and experience casting spells and boiling potions.
In addition to console games, the "Harry Potter" mobile game series, before NetEase's "Magic Awakening" came out, the most famous should be the "Harry Potter: The Mystery of Hogwarts" released in 2018, the plot evaluation is not bad, the operation is relatively simple, but the degree of freedom is not high, and the modeling is a little too rough...
How much of the wizarding world can be shown in the game?
Throughout the seven original novels, J.K. Rowling has created a wizarding world that has a fixed battle mode (wand casting spells), a faction setting (four colleges), a race setting, and a confrontation between good and evil, which has supported enough skeleton for the game's worldview.
After the basic worldview is formed, what remains is the part that needs to be polished by the game manufacturer.
From the timeline, EA and LEGO's game chooses the most basic role-playing type, with players playing Harry Potter himself, walking through the original plot of seven novels.
This mode can arouse the feelings of the player, but it is useless to use more - the novel has been finished for a long time, many readers are familiar with the original plot, if the game has puzzle elements in the setting, it is difficult to play its original role, such as the philosopher's stone protection level Card Resnep's logical reasoning problem, Ha fans can directly lock according to the bridge in the novel - the smallest bottle must contain the correct potion that can pass through the black flame.
Danger is in front of you, safety is in the rear, and there are two of us in the middle who can help you.
Drink them down, and one will lead you forward and the other will send you back to where you were.
Two were filled with nettle wine, and three were murderers, waiting in line.
Choose, unless you are vain and will always be here.
Most of the games launched after the end of the movie set the timeline in an era where they can play freely, and players no longer have to play the main trio, but have their own story.
We talked about hogwarts: Legacy and Harry Potter: Magical Awakening timelines in our previous article, but Harry Potter: The Mystery of Hogwarts also sets the timeline back to the time before Harry enrolled, where you can be friends with Ron's big brother Bill Weasley and meet Professor Snape, who will hardly appear again in subsequent episodes (he will be weird to you in Potions class).
There are 13 courses in Hogwarts in the original novel, but Rowling's main line is still Harry's adventures, and will not be portrayed in detail (Defence Against the Dark Arts is already a relatively more course content), and the game can only be adapted according to the original description.
In "Magic Awakening", the magic spell class is a reproduction of the classic passage of the original women's toilet floating spell fighting trolls, the history of magic and Muggle research is a knowledge quiz, the crystal ball divination of the divination class is what you draw I guess, as for Harry's no elective, the original work is also rarely mentioned in the arithmetic divination and ancient magic text, generally will not appear in the adaptation of the game.
In EA's Harry Potter game, the daily lessons are spell learning and training, and the basic way is to run the maze. At the beginning of "Prisoner of Azkaban", the player has to find the crazy escape spots, and even walk the maze in the carriage of the Hogwarts train, and finally bump into the Dementor, and the horror atmosphere is rendered in place.
Hogwarts' campus life is actually suitable for adding some details to the game. For example, in the Order of the Phoenix novel, it is written that when the Weasley Twins leave Hogwarts on a broom, the students rack their brains to cause trouble for Umbridge and oppose her dictatorship. In EA's Order of the Phoenix game, this episode also sets tasks for the player who plays Harry, and in the original game, Fred and George turned an entire corridor into a swamp, where Harry will also engage in some pranks that make plants cover the entire courtyard and so on.
As for the Quidditch games that accounted for a large part of Harry's after-school life, it was not a very easy part to restore. The Quidditch in Magic Awakening has been simplified, the player's perspective is the chaser responsible for scoring goals, and the game mode is close to parkour, but in fact, the Quidditch team in the original game is diverse, EA once released a "Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup" game in 2003, players can freely choose the role they play in the team, and there is a multiplayer mode.
Niantic Labs, the producer of Pokémon GO, once made an AR mobile game "Harry Potter: Wizarding League", the timeline is set after "Deathly Hallows", players have to work with the protagonist trio who entered the Ministry of Magic to maintain the International Secrecy Law, solve those magical phenomena that appear in the Muggle world, the gameplay is similar to "Pokémon GO", requiring players to go out from home to explore the surrounding community.
The game has been closed at the beginning of this year, but for the Pokémon GO game mode, it may be more suitable for the "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" movie than the story events, to find the sniff, moon beast or tree protector near the home.
However, for IP games, the worldview of the original game may still be the core of the game's charm. As long as the wizarding world remains in mobile phones and consoles, players will have a hard time resisting Hogwarts' attraction.
Hopefully, future Harry Potter games will be able to realize the player's vision and fully present the wonders of the world - this may also be what every Ha fan looks forward to and can find in the game.
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