Hogwarts Legacy fans really want to be bad, but the game won’t let them.
Avalanche Software’s new action-RPG offers plenty of dialogue options and branching quest lines for you to tell the story of your custom witch or wizard. But despite the considerable freedom it offers, when it comes to your character’s personality, fans find it much more limited.
“Why won’t this game let me be a jerk?!” asks a gamer on the Hogwarts Legacy subreddit (opens in a new tab). do you still manage to make it polished somehow?
Others shared his disappointment at not being able to play the villain. “I just wanted to be mean. Like really mean. You give me cool evil spells but then you make me nice to everyone,” one fan wrote. Another responds: “I understand you. I would like to play a Slytherin with a somewhat dark character. But every time I decide to go for a bad dialogue, it’s just a friendly no.”
In response, some fans revealed how they still manage to be good two shoes. “Not telling Lenora how to solve the mystery of the paintings is how I show my dark side…mwahahaha,” says user HaleStormTV. Others admit to keeping Zenobia’s gobstones, while St0neByte takes the badness to a whole new level. “I keep people’s animals when they send me to pick them up,” admits the player. If you ask us, that’s worse than using any unforgivable spell.
GameRadar’s Jasmine Gould-Wilson was also disappointed that Hogwarts Legacy wouldn’t let you embrace your dark side. “It’s an RPG, but you type in the role of being a nice guy with no ability to sway the moral compass,” he wrote.
The release of Hogwarts Legacy has been the subject of criticism and debate due to JK Rowling’s public stance on gender identity, which continues to challenge inclusion at the heart of the Harry Potter community. Here is our explanation on the Hogwarts legacy controversy (opens in a new tab).