New Hogwarts Legacy Gameplay Highlights Flight, Customization, and Murder

ign.com:

A new gameplay showcase has highlighted a number of new features in Hogwarts Legacy, including flying around the castle, customizing the Room of Requirement, and murdering other people with the killing curse.

The first segment of gameplay shows the extent of flight on both a broom and a hippogriff, which can be used to travel outside of Hogwarts to other villages and places where quests might be available.

We also see the seasons change during this section. Later in the showcase, we get an in-depth look at the customization of gear, magical creatures, and the Room of Requirement, a space that can be customized through conjuration spells obtainable through gameplay.

But maybe the wildest part of the showcase for those keenly aware of the Harry Potter franchise is a middle segment where the player travels to the Dark Arts Battle Arena. In this section, we see the player - who is a student at Hogwarts and thus a teenage child still - immediately perform the Avada Kedavra killing curse and straight up murder a man. The trailer continues with them using a number of combat spells to damage and eventually defeat (kill?) a number of other enemies, including goblins labeled "Loyalist Warriors."

It's obviously not unusual for a game to feature combat or even teenage protagonists engaging in it - plenty of games do. But it is a bit of a strange move given the game's basis in a book series that largely treated combat as a last resort and focused most of its attention on day-to-day school life and magical antics. Combat, murder, and torture in those books were almost entirely the province of its villains, with combat used as a last resort and the "Unforgiveable Curses" as, well, unforgivable.

It's especially bizarre to see the killing