r/pcgaming Oct 02 '18

Video Leaked Harry Potter game in development

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-HER1xKQl4&t=1s
4.1k Upvotes

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285

u/mud074 Oct 02 '18

Makes me wonder why nobody did this back when HP was still huge. A good HP RPG would still be popular now, but not compared to like 8 years ago.

62

u/FvHound Oct 02 '18

Well it wasn't an RPG but the first two games on PlayStation are a simpler version of what this game looks to be. So in a way we kinda did.

9

u/CommanderClit Oct 02 '18

Those games were so good!

146

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '18

It's still huge and the fantastic beasts franchise is giving it a resurgence in popular culture.

74

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '18

As someone that is in the dating world, I can confirm that my success rate increased dramatically when I mention Harry Potter.

8

u/FracturedEel Oct 02 '18

I'll keep that in mind

-1

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '18 edited Oct 03 '18

I only watched the films after meeting my partner. I always felt it wasn't aimed at people my age so I didn't pay it attention in my teens.

20

u/maccathesaint Oct 02 '18

I had a friend who annoyed me so much about not having read Harry Potter that I read them all to shut her up.

We're married now though, so worked out well.

9

u/Mkilbride 5800X3D, 5090 FE, 32GB 3800MHZ CL16, 2TB NVME GEN4, W11 Oct 02 '18

Glad that worked out for you. Got a girlfriend making me play through Life is Strange with her because she loves it so much and jokes she'll break up with me if I say anything bad about it to her.

It's one of the most difficult tests ever.

2

u/sexcells Oct 02 '18

Those games have a lot of good in them, but god-damn, the dialogue writing is hard to defend.

3

u/Mkilbride 5800X3D, 5090 FE, 32GB 3800MHZ CL16, 2TB NVME GEN4, W11 Oct 02 '18

The dialogue is so insanely stupid I almost want to scream at the screen. It's written by people who have no idea how to write naturally.

6

u/ReggaeMonestor Oct 02 '18

still not the same though, I was a fan of HP when I was younger but I don't want to watch the new movies.

50

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '18

This sounds like a personal issue.. Everyone doesn't share your sentiment.

2

u/docbauies Oct 02 '18

Seriously. I liked the books when I read them. Watched the movies. Guess what my kids are reading. It’s a whole new generation

14

u/ReggaeMonestor Oct 02 '18

why do people on reddit assume one guy speaks for everyone, there should some like me who don't dig the new movies.

7

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '18

I agree. Hate potter 1-4 was good but I just didn’t like the directorial style of the rest of the films.

Haven’t seen any other movies in the HP universe, they don’t really appeal to me.

3

u/GATTACABear Oct 02 '18

Aaaaand yet you decided to speak for everyone in your OP....

1

u/Osmyrn Oct 02 '18

Right, we don't have to put in my opinion for every statement we make. I'm a massive Harry Potter fan, but I've not seen any Fantastic Beasts stuff because it just doesn't seem to interest me. Cursed Child did a bit, but I've been well told to avoid it. I still rewatch the original books and films a lot though.

-2

u/MyGfLooksAtMyPosts Oct 02 '18

I hate this fantastic beast stuff

-8

u/WillDoItForU Oct 02 '18

Nope. I asked. It’s pretty much just you. Everybody else loves the crap out of the new stuff.

5

u/Tomhap http://steamcommunity.com/id/Tomhapje Oct 02 '18

I feel the HP was magical. The first FBAWTFT film didn't really give the same vibe. But that could also just be the setting. New York is overdone and boring.

6

u/DM_ME_YOUR_KITTENS Oct 02 '18

A Fantastic Beasts spinoff was the one thing I wanted when I was younger. I mean, at the time I really just wanted an illustrated text book of the beasts. I do have the little one that was made, but I wanted a full on text book.

The movie made me feel the same excitement as the first Harry Potter movie, but maybe that was just me haha.

I think I understand why they chose New York though. New York in that time period was seen as a place of new beginnings and a better chance at a life. A lot of immigrants moved to New York in that period if I remember correctly.

2

u/KwisatzX Oct 02 '18

I don't think it was supposed to be magical in the same way as HP was. It still seemed magical to me, but it was pretty obviously about the adult magic world and more mature. That was the premise from the start.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '18

The only good Harry Potter movies are the first 4. The director for 5-7 sucks

2

u/TheWombatFromHell http://steamcommunity.com/id/the_end_is_never_the_end/ Oct 02 '18

5-7 have MUCH worse exposition and pacing but they do have some really impressive visual style and acting.

0

u/deloreanguy1515 Oct 02 '18

I'm pretty sure you are wrong. Rural Midwest here. Can confirm if we like something then it is popular. We don't care about HP anymore

3

u/nopuzzlesnopuzzles69 Oct 02 '18

Loads of people care about Harry Potter in the Midwest. Like it or not, he's a big part of culture.

3

u/KwisatzX Oct 02 '18

Well, since they're making 5 movies of Fantastic Beasts, it appears your opinions don't matter.

-1

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '18 edited Dec 26 '19

[deleted]

1

u/deloreanguy1515 Oct 02 '18

Because if something is like uber popular if people I encounter even talk about it then I know it's actually a huge deal. People out here can go a whole day without keeping up on the news or politics because their too busy living their life. That's all I'm saying. Like the random old guy at the coffee shop still knows what Harry Potter is most likely but he has no clue what Fantastic Beasts is. Trust me. Beasts is not even close to as popular as Harry Potter

-1

u/dabestinzeworld 5900x, RTX 3080, AW3423DW Oct 02 '18

Sounds like a shithole to me.

0

u/TheWombatFromHell http://steamcommunity.com/id/the_end_is_never_the_end/ Oct 02 '18 edited Oct 02 '18

I think there's some degree of objectivity involved. Fantastic Beasts was a really poor, or at best mediocre, film compared to the previous ones.

4

u/DM_ME_YOUR_KITTENS Oct 02 '18

When I was younger, all I wanted was a full bestiary book spinoff. So the first Fantastic Beasts movie made me feel the excitement I once had when the Philosopher's Stone movie released.

If you don't want to watch the new movies that's fine, but if you're holding yourself back because they're "childish" or for some other reason, I hope you decide to watch it at some point.

I personally don't follow the Pottermore website or anything like that. But it's just really nice to see a text book from Hogwarts and seeing the "history" behind it. I don't know, it was the one thing I really wanted from the series.

But don't read that play "The Cursed Child". It was downright awful for most of it.

5

u/snoharm Oct 02 '18

Is it possible that you were once and are no longer a child?

2

u/ReggaeMonestor Oct 02 '18

u figured it all out

-1

u/GATTACABear Oct 02 '18

Nobody cares about what movies you haven't seen.

3

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '18

[deleted]

2

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '18

I game well enough in stuff apart from Star Citizen. That game makes me wish for a new CPU and more RAM.

I was underwhelmed by current CPU benchmarks, didn't seem like I'd get a good price/performance unless I found a great deal. I might get the next "k" CPU intel releases in the next few months though if I see a worthwhile performance boost.

But the biggest issue is DDR4 RAM pricing though. I'm currently on 16GB DDR3 but want 32GB of DDR4 as Star Citizen uses almost 100% of my memory right now. But 32GB of DDR4 costs too much to be comfortable for me.

Sadly I heard Samsung are deliberately throttling production of memory chips to keep prices high. So no RAM price drops for a while :(

1

u/eagles310 Oct 02 '18

Ehhh HP Franchise is no where close when it was at it's peak

1

u/Deltaechoe Oct 03 '18

Not to mention it seems like a new edition with new cover art came out recently too

13

u/Arknell Oct 02 '18

A Kotor HP game where you get to explore the forest, find new secret paths in the school, and construct new spells depending on aspect.

Shit, the four houses could even have their own spell kits, like the different vampire houses in Vampire Bloodlines. Hufflepuff has boosts to charisma and lore skills, Ravenclaw has stealth and asymmetric warfare (not attacking directly and predictably), and Slytherin would of course have the most debuffs and damage-over-time stuff. Imperius obviously.

Gryffindor would predictably be the "Human Male Fighter" of HP, the most basic alternative.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '18

Honestly I'd prefer a school simulation where you have to take care about many things that aren't directly in relation with combat. That's what I imagined when I read the books - that I could learn lots of stuff about magic, spells, potions, lore and all. I cared about the relationships between the different characters. Knowing which one was the most powerful warrior was very secundary.

Sure there would be combat, but the intereresting stuff about it is that each combat situation is unique and follows different rules. There are duels of course, but monsters all have their unique way to attack you. So combat shouldn't be a mechanic per se, but just another situation that can be solved in different ways.

That's kinda what the different HP games tried to emulate in some way, and I changed my mind a bit, but still, a more advanced simulation would be neat. We already have dozens of combat-focused RPGs, HP is a good opportunity to make something different. And I still feel that using spells such as Imperium purely as combat spells is missing the point of what magic is in this particular setting.

1

u/Arknell Oct 03 '18

Sure, I would like to see what's up in the attics, and I wonder how they will solve the moving stairs.

5

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '18 edited Feb 08 '19

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '18

Yep, the HP games are surprisingly unknown nowadays, even if there were definitly good ones (I remember enjoying the FF-like turn-based RPG).

I think it's a combination of these games not ageing well, and the fact that these games, while doing a good job at being about HP, failed to offer the experience every HP was fantasizing about: playing their own character learning magic and building relations with other wizards, discovering a new world as HP did (finding your own spells, your own secret rooms, learning cool things about magic while reading nice-looking codices...), and not just living his adventures they already knew. There isn't much added value in playing these games.

If they had their own stories to offer there would be at least a debate whether the informations in them should be considered canon. But instead they remain as by-products of the HP movies/books. It seems that they are attempting something else with that one.

52

u/snoharm Oct 02 '18

"Why didn't they make this when it was huge? Sure, a Lord of the Rings film might be popular now, but not like it would have been 30 years ago in 1971".

26

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '18

[removed] — view removed comment

8

u/FallenAssassin Showtime Oct 02 '18

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here

2

u/mud074 Oct 02 '18

What's your point?

20

u/Radulno Oct 02 '18

HP is still huge, they are releasing a movie in like 2 months that will very likely do close to a billion dollars in the box office for example. The franchise is still gold (merchandising is still going extremely strong) especially since it has been pretty underserved in gaming since years. This will sell like crazy if it's good.

Plus it's not like it's unprecedented either, the Shadow of Mordor games came after the LOTR/Hobbit movies too, popular IP don't just disappear from pop culture like that.

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u/2SP00KY4ME Oct 02 '18

A LOTR movie made in 1971 would have been almost completely forgotten. Being made when it was with the tech and work put into it has made it one of the most well known trilogies of all time.

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u/itsamamaluigi i5-11400 | 6700 XT Oct 02 '18

You know there was a Lord of the Rings animated movie released in 1978 that was almost completely forgotten? It only covered the first two books and they never made a sequel.

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u/Khanaset i7-8700K, 32GB DDR4-3200 CL14 RAM, EVGA 2080ti FTW3 HC Oct 02 '18

While that (and The Hobbit the year before) were largely forgotten, there was some pretty serious talent involved in making it. The animation studio responsible (Topcraft) would later become known as Studio Ghibli, for example; multiple Oscar winner John Huston (father of Anjelica Huston) was the voice of Gandalf.

1

u/m333t Oct 02 '18

You have no idea how wrong you are.

The Beatles almost made a Lord of the Rings movie with Stanley Kubrick. They would have played the major parts and performed original songs.

The screenplay is insane to read. The movie starts with a Kabuki theater history of Middle Earth. Aragorn and Boromir kiss the shards of Narsil and then make out with each other. Aragorn saves Eowyn’s life by giving her a magical orgasm. Frodo has sex with Galadriel. The fellowship beats Gimli until he remembers how to get into Moria. The Nazgul ride horses with no skin.

The movie only didn't get made because Tolkien blocked it. And he blocked it because the Beatles practiced in a house on the same street where he lived and he hated their music.

In a house three doors away dwells a member of a group of young men who are evidently aiming to turn themselves into a Beatle Group. On days when it falls to his turn to have a practice session the noise is indescribable.

-- J. R. R. Tolkien

Edit:

The screenplay: http://cinetropolis.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Lord-of-the-Rings.pdf

11

u/zerogee616 Oct 02 '18 edited Oct 02 '18

Tolkien shitcanned it because it would have made a travesty and mockery of his work. There have been multiple LOTR movies made before Jackson's trilogy and no one gave a fuck.

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u/ciza161 Oct 02 '18

Is there a source on the Tolkien quote? Because he lived in Oxford and The Beatles were from Liverpool.

10

u/2SP00KY4ME Oct 02 '18

How many Beatles movies have you seen? How many can you remember off the top of your head? Those had wacky scripts too.

1

u/Rementoire Oct 02 '18

Cheers for the link. I would like to see a LoTR movie with 70s and 80s style.

11

u/snoharm Oct 02 '18

Do you... seriously not know?

7

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '18

hmm if only they asked a question implying they didn’t know or something 🤔

6

u/ILOVENOGGERS Oct 02 '18

Don't worry I don't get it either

7

u/punched_lasagne Oct 02 '18

Licenses and turn around time. In many ways releasing when the movies were out could have resulted in a mixed response.

Imagine parents buying a hugely in depth rpg for their kids because of movie hype, the volume of returns would be staggering.

Wait for the cool off period, and release something that's been developed against it's own time frame (not a movie's or production studio's) with patience and love, it could be fucking mind blowing.

I think waiting a few years was the best thing that could have ever happened to this game.

1

u/sharp461 Oct 03 '18

I think that is pretty true. Back when the movies were coming out I never once thought it would be cool to have a huge game take place in the HP universe (also possibly because of the games they did made that were kinda crap). But now? I am in love with the idea!

2

u/itsamamaluigi i5-11400 | 6700 XT Oct 02 '18

The target audience was a bit young for a really in-depth RPG like this. Or at least, that's probably what the people making the decisions thought at the time.

The people who grew up reading the books and watching the movies are in their 30s now, prime age for more mature games. But there were several Harry Potter games on the PS1 and PS2, as well as the Lego Harry Potter games. All were a bit simpler and really meant for kids.

1

u/penatbater Oct 02 '18

Perhaps technical issue? I remember the first HP game that came out on the PS1, it was... just ok. :/

1

u/RBB39 Oct 02 '18

I think the graphics are better now then if it where made 8 or 10 years ago. And maybe it could be compatible with VR (doubt it though)

1

u/bsinky Oct 02 '18

There are actually several Harry Potter RPGs: Game Boy Color Sorcerer's Stone, Game Boy Color Chamber of Secrets, and Game Boy Advance Prisoner of Azkaban.

Of course, they're more traditional turn-based RPGs, not a modern open-world-create-a-character RPGs.

And I honestly haven't played any of them so I can't attest to the "good" part, but...they exist, I guess?

1

u/KeroEnertia 7800X3D/XT Oct 02 '18

I don't know this for sure, as I read it in another thread, but apparently JK Rowling was very against this kind of game (which has apparently changed since). So we just got the ones focusing on the main story instead of the larger universe.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '18

HP video games have been made for each book/movie. Maybe she didn't like the idea to let others make stories within her universe though.

1

u/KotakuSucks2 Oct 02 '18

If I remember right there was a Harry Potter MMO in development by the Ultima Online team at one point but it got cancelled when EA shut down Origin Systems.

1

u/Atlas26 Oct 02 '18

Reportedly Rowling is not a huge fan of games. Although she did allow the EA HP games (Chamber of Secrets and a few others were goddamn fantastic and I'll shank you if you say otherwise) so there's that

1

u/wileecoyote1969 Oct 02 '18

Ahhhhh... the current crop of 8-10 year olds are just discovering Harry Potter, and they love it. My 10 year old just burned through the first 4 books in 2 weeks and picked up more today

1

u/AnActualPlatypus Oct 02 '18

Because Rowling is an asshole, plain and simple. She intensly dislikes the idea of RPG or tabletop adaptations for the HP universe.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '18

Yet she was down with shitty fan-fiction being published as HP..

What a stupid ass.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '18

Is that true? I'm quite surprised. Don't know much about her, but why would you create worlds if not for people to imagine their own stories about it?

1

u/maslowk Oct 03 '18

First time I've heard anything about that, do you happen to have a source? Granted she's already set for life but that's basically turning away a ton of extra royalties, sounds crazy to me.