Hogwarts Legacy's new last-gen port is actually prettier in some ways

pcgamer.com:

We all know that making games is very hard, but the truly unsung heroes of game development are the ones tasked with making new games run on older machines they were never designed for. Sometimes it goes surprisingly well, like Titanfall Xbox 360, and sometimes it's so insurmountable that last-gen editions are cancelled entirely, like Gotham Knights(opens in new tab).

One last-gen edition that seems to have gone over pretty well is Hogwarts Legacy(opens in new tab), which just released its PS4 and Xbox One versions on May 5, three months after PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.

Some predictable concessions were made in contorting this 2023 open world sandbox (which had plenty of performance issues on PC(opens in new tab) at launch) to run on 2013 boxes, like lower-res textures and fewer decorations littering the walls of Hogwarts, but Avalanche Software has also made several clever architectural changes in the name of compatibility, some of which are arguably prettier than what we got on PC.

As conveniently highlighted(opens in new tab) by Redditor Euden, the biggest changes in Hogwarts Legacy PS4's version are in Hogwarts Castle itself. The dozen-or-so footbridges between towers that usually open up to the world are closed corridors on last-gen, swapping fresh air for windows and ceilings that don't exist elsewhere. An understandable alteration to limit the game's loading demands, but Avalanche seems to have made the best of it—a few of these new tunnels are lined with beautiful stained glass windows that I'm a little jealous of.

Here's the bridge to Ravenclaw Tower, for instance:

The last-gen bridge isn't as bright as the PC/PS5 and it's hard to beat that view, but I love the ornate moodiness of the blue windows. I can't