Harry Potter’s Series May Give Adaptations a Chance to Rewrite the Past

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home December 1, 2024 38 Views 6 Min Read
Harry Potter’s Series May Give Adaptations a Chance to Rewrite the Past



Hogwarts Legacy’s future is looking bright regardless of its association with Harry Potter and the IP’s source material author, which also hasn’t been a hindrance to a decade-spanning HBO series being greenlit. Surely there will be a Harry Potter-centric game at some point in however many years the show goes on for, whether that’s a Hogwarts Legacy successor or something more purposefully tethered to the show, and in doing so there will be inevitable revisionism regarding Harry Potter’s storied history with movie tie-in video game adaptations.



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Long Gone May Be the Day of Loose Movie/TV Tie-Ins

Movie/TV tie-ins, loose or otherwise, are seemingly on their way out the door as no big movies are ever released with accompanying game adaptations anymore. That said, there are some exceptions to this aside from the licensed LEGO titles whose sole job it is to adapt blockbusters with Traveller’s Tales’ signature whimsy.

Dune: Awakening is an example of a game that is certainly trying to absorb all of the movies’ hype it can, but it is not doing so as a direct or even loose adaptation of the movies themselves. Instead, while Dune: Awakening adapts the latest movies’ theatrical imagery, it is merely adapting Dune’s world and characters for its own alternate-history take on the IP (and with a fairly inventive premise for how to do that).


Plus, a game adaptation of Matt Reeves’ The Batman was recently rumored to be in the works—regardless of the fact that James Gunn shut that rumor down promptly—and such rumors, true or not, suggest that tie-in adaptations aren’t completely out of the realm of possibility anymore. Nonetheless, there may never be another unapologetic tie-in meant to promote or collaborate with a movie’s marketing quite like Batman Begins, The Lord of the Returns: The Return of the King, or X-Men Origins: Wolverine again.


Harry Potter’s HBO Series Can Give Its Video Game Adaptations a New Lease on Life

Once a tyrant of tie-in video game adaptations, Harry Potter’s best days are behind it with two Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone games, Chamber of Secrets, and Prisoner of Azkaban. These four games all have a tremendous amount of charm and whimsy with stylistic art direction (PS1’s polygonal Hagrid being as iconic and endearing as he is hilarious and meme-worthy) and fantastic designs for spells in combat and puzzles.


Goblet of Fire was where the magic dwindled and became unrecognizable, and Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and Deathly Hallows Part 1 and Part 2 thereafter are even more unmemorable. Part of Hogwarts Legacy’s success is probably due to there not being a halfway decent AAA Harry Potter game in a long time, and it taking place in an era untouched by a lot of the lore it could behave like an original tale in a beloved franchise.

Now, with Harry Potter being repurposed as an HBO show and reinventing itself for a brand-new audience, Hogwarts Legacy has a chance to behave something like an adaptation of that series. Of course, it shouldn’t need to be Hogwarts Legacy that is accountable for adapting the show as any random new Harry Potter game from any studio could achieve that, and by being an unapologetic adaptation it may even receive a bigger playerbase than Arrowhead’s action-RPG title. Players got to experience Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry during the late 1800s in Hogwarts Legacy, but knowing they could explore the school as Harry Potter and perceive it through a renewed wizarding world lens would be too extraordinary of a chance to pass by.


Harry Potter’s oldest games deserve to be preserved for their timeless and adorable atmosphere, whether players’ blood pressure is spiking from stress-inducing broomstick flying lessons or Gringotts’ nail-biting mine cart ride. Yet, many of Harry Potter’s games could be lost to time or overwritten in memory and be all the better for it, which is an opportunity the HBO show has if it is unafraid and competent enough to produce meaningful adaptations of its seasons or characters.

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