Rumor: Hogwarts Legacy May Have Cut Plans for Proper Companions

gamerant.com:

Voice lines in Hogwarts Legacy suggest that the open world Harry Potter action-RPG may have once included plans for the game to feature proper companions. Hogwarts Legacy has a few characters that players can complete special quest lines for, but these characters don't accompany the player outside their specific quests.

There are three companion-style characters in Hogwarts Legacy with their own questlines: Slytherin's Sebastian Sallow, Hufflepuff's Poppy Sweeting, and Gryffindor's Natsai Onai, aka Natty. Ravenclaw does not have an equivalent character for its House, though it seems Amit Thakkar may have once been intended to fill that role. Whatever the case may be, Hogwarts Legacy players can't bring these characters with them as proper companions while they're out exploring the game's massive open world, but there's a chance that the feature was once at least considered.

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Hogwarts Legacy mods have made it possible for players to bring these characters with them on quests, and it's been discovered that they have unique dialogue relating to certain quests in the game. This seems to strongly suggest that the developers once intended Hogwarts Legacy to have a proper companion system where the characters could join the player character outside their designated questline, only for the feature to be scrapped during production. There are other explanations as well, but fans won't know the full story unless someone from the development team decides to address the rumors.

When not accompanying the main character on their character-specific quests, Sebastian, Poppy, and Natty become barely any different from the other NPCs roaming Hogwarts Legacy's open world.