Hey everyone,
Welcome to another installment of Harry Potter Theory. For today’s video, we’re going
to be jumping all the way back to 3 months ago when the Hogwarts Legacy trailer was premiered.
If you didn’t know already, Hogwarts Legacy is a new Harry Potter game set to be released
in 2021. While we’ve had plenty of Harry Potter Games in the past- not many of them
have been particularly successful- this new game aims to break that failure streak with
a new format:
“an open-world, single player, action role-playing game” which will allow you to create your
own personal witch or wizard, and spec them exactly as you want them to be.”
“Players will experience life as a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
like never before, as they live the unwritten and embark on a dangerous journey to uncover
a hidden truth of the wizarding world,”
“They will grow their character’s abilities as they master powerful spells, hone combat
skills, and select companions to help them face off against deadly enemies. Players will
also encounter missions and scenarios that will pose difficult choices and determine
what they stand for.”
In addition to approaching this game from a new and different perspective (open world
format)- the teams at portkey games and avalanche software who are working on the game have
expressed that the graphics and interactivity will truly set the game apart from former
games:
“With innovative high definition graphics, a player can practically feel the terror of
Inferi bearing down upon them, sense the ground rumbling beneath them as a herd of angry centaurs
surrounds them. Even dueling against a deadly dark witch takes on a new level of realism
thanks to the controller’s ability to imbue sound and touch into every moment.”
If you’re anything like me- the moment you heard of this game your mind probably wondered
this: will I interact with any of the characters that I know and love? Will this be the same
Harry Potter world that I’m used to? The answer to that is..well, sort of. It turns
out the game will actually take place around 100 years before Harry Potter starts attending
Hogwarts. You’ll play as a student attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
during the late 1800s, and, just like any other student at Hogwarts, you’ll attend
classes and learn magic alongside your classmates.
"You have received a late acceptance to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
and soon discover that you are no ordinary student: you possess an unusual ability to
perceive and master Ancient Magic.”
Even more exciting, it looks as though you will be able to somewhat determine your own
path-good or evil- while pursuing the games missions. This should certainly keep things
interesting and well, more realistic.
Since the trailer was released on September 16th very little extra information has been
released about the game- and in high anticipation fans have begun making all sorts of speculations.
We know one thing for sure: the game takes place 100 years before Harry begins attending
the school. This opens up a lot of questions- Will Dumbledore be in the game? Grindelwald?
Will we see familiar faces within the walls of Hogwarts?
But perhaps one of the biggest questions is- who is the main villain? Like most games-
there simply must be a primary antagonist- an enemy- a bad guy. Given that the game takes
place in a time that far precedes the traditional Harry Potter timeline- we should be able to
rule out the obvious choices. Voldemort wasn’t born until 1926- which means that he’s decades
too late to be the villain for this game, and Grindelwald was born in 1883- which seems
just a bit too late for the ‘late 1800s’ setting that game creators have mentioned.
So, the question remains- who is the villain? I’ve got a few theories. My first theory
is that it was a dark wizard by the name of Ekrizdis. I’ve mentioned Ekrizdis in my
past videos-but in case you don’t know about him here’s a recap: Basically- he’s a
dark wizard who is thought to have created the dementors. Very little is known about
him, other than the fact that he was alive during the 15th century, and that he was evil.
Oh, and he was massively powerful at performing dark magic as well.
Ekrizdis isn’t particularly well-known, but he certainly marked his place in wizarding
history- as he was a practitioner of the worst kinds of dark arts imaginable. No one even
knows his nationality, and even if it was known, I’m sure no one would want to claim
ownership of him.
Ekrizdis was the original inhabitant of the island fortress of Azkaban, what we now know
as the prison that holds some of the darkest witches and wizards within its walls. While
travelling in the 15th century, Ekrizdis stumbled upon the island- which at the time had no
infrastructure to speak of. Ekrizdis began to use the island for his own personal dark
arts experiments-luring muggle sailors to the island, then torturing and eventually
murdering them. Before ever stepping foot on the island, Ekrizdis was mad, but after
spending some time there, he became totally insane as he had completely lost touch with
reality. He became so wrapped up and enthralled in his experimentation with dark magic, that
he had lost his mind. In his madness, it has been speculated that Ekrizdis either unwittingly
or perhaps intentionally created what we now know to be Dementors.
Given that witches and wizards can live for hundreds of years, and that noone actually
knows what happened to Ekrizdis- I think that he would make sense as an antagonist for the
game. Sure, there have been other dark wizards throughout history- but Ekrizdis really seems
to fit the bill as far as proximity and timeframe are concerned. He’s been known to exist
on the island of Azkaban, which is not particularly far from Hogwarts, and he’s a massively
powerful wizard so I’m sure it would have been possible for him to stay alive longer
than average. He created the dementors- which we know to exist in the game, and I have speculated
in a previous video that he also created the inferi- which also happen to be in the game.
My next theory is that it was in fact one of the previous owners of the Elder Wand.
The Elder Wand is the most powerful wand in existence, and throughout its history it certainly
fell in to the wrong hands on more than one occasion- with all sorts of dark wizards using
it for evil. The wand would pass hands quite frequently- with one evil wizard besting another
every few decades. A few wizards come to mind that could have possessed the wand during
the games time period. The first wizard that comes to mind is Barnabas Deveril- a wizard
who, in the early-mid eighteenth century, began using the wand for evil- earning himself
quite the reputation. It has been expressed that Barnabas’ reign of terror only ended
when he was finally defeated by another wizard. Though Barnabas could potentially be the antagonist-
I do think that he may have existed a little bit too early. The next owner of the elder
wand however, a man by the name of Loxias- very well could be .Loxias is the man who
famously gave the elder wand the name ‘the deathstick’- as with it he ruthlessly murdered
many people throughout the wizarding world. Loxias wasn’t just a little bit twisted
or a little bit power hungry- he was a truly evil dark wizard that many wanted dead, and
according to Dumbledore- many claimed to have been the one to finish him off- even his own
mother. Because no one knew who killed him- this point in history is a bit blurry with
regards to who became the next owner of the elder wand.
And this is why I think that Loxias could very well be the villain- the fact that noone
actually knows who killed him seems justs so convenient. Additionally, it helps that
we know that: He was a ruthless dark wizard
He existed in the late eighteenth century He possessed the most powerful wand in existence
and He is even known to Dumbledore, which means
his life must have been significant
Perhaps we, the player, are going to be the ones to fill this void in history and defeat
the evil dark wizard Loxias.
However, there is also always the possibility that there will be an entirely new villain
altogether. We know for a fact that the game will follow
the wizarding world lore set out in the original Harry Potter novels, as the game creators
have confirmed this. We also know that we are definitely going to see some familiar
faces and places. HOWEVER, they have also expressed that the story for the game itself
is mostly original and was written by the studio - not by JK Rowling- what this means
is that we may just encounter a dark wizard that we’ve never seen before.
What do you guys think? Who is the villain going to be in Hogwarts Legacy? Are you excited
for the game? Let me know in the comment section below
Until next time
YER A WIZARD ARRY