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The Wizarding World beckons when Hogwarts Legacy launches on PS5 and PS4 February 10. Crafting the magical grounds of everybody’s favorite magical school is a labor of love by the dedicated team at Avalanche.
Explosions of color and light erupt from students’ wands across Hogwarts, harnessing the graphical potential of the PS5. Players can soar through the open world atop their sturdy broom or loyal mount, tapping into the super-fast SSD loading in the fantastical environment.
Starting this year, it’s now easier than before to find a PS5 thanks to increased console supply, which is great news for prospective Hogwarts students. To help players get a sense of what’s in store, Hogwarts Legacy Jose Villeta, Director of Software Engineering, shares some developer insights on how the Avalanche team tapped into the PS5 to enhance the magical journey.
We’re also excited to announce a brand new, limited edition Hogwarts Legacy DualSense wireless controller coming to the US and UK to celebrates the game’s launch on PS5. Artists Vanessa Palmer and Jeff Bunker at Avalanche Software talk about the design inspiration behind this magical DualSense controller.
Making magic with PlayStation 5
What were your first impressions when first learning about the power and capabilities of the PS5, from a developer perspective?
Since the first day I got early disclosure about the PS5, I knew we had on our hands a great gaming console. My video game career started with the launch of the original PlayStation and to know how much technology advancements have occurred since then was a dream come true. The DualSense controller felt next-generation right away. The fast accessing of assets through super-fast SSD combined with stunning 4K graphics and visuals set a foundation of what we will be able to deliver for our game.
What are the most significant ways that developing the PS5 version of Hogwarts Legacy enhances the overall experience for the player?
As we designed our game, we built it around the following five tech pillars.
- DualSense controller
- Fast loading times
- 3D audio
- 4K graphics and visuals
- Activities and Game Help
Each of these pillars contributed to the development of a complete, groundbreaking, gaming experience. We invested and leveraged the power of PS5 around them. From controlling our player avatar on foot or flying on broom to fast traveling to multiple game locations in a large open world to an audio sensory 3D experience to stunning, great looking environments and characters to the mission tracking and immersive gameplay, the PS5 version of Hogwarts Legacy allows the player to be the wizard or the witch wants to be on the Wizarding World universe.
Visually-stunning magic is a cornerstone of the Wizarding World. How does Avalanche tap into the PS5’s capabilities to create visual effects that “sell” the fantasy of the game’s spells?
From the early development days, we wanted to make sure we deliver amazing visual effects for all the spells and magic around the Wizarding World. Leveraging Unreal Engine, next-generation Niagara visual effects system combined with large computing and rendering capabilities of the PS5, Hogwarts Legacy delivered dozens of unique spells, each one with its own casting, impact and area of effect graphical presentation and treatment. We built a visual language for each spell and as you gain experience you get access to more powerful and advanced visual effects.
The DualSense wireless controller offers a unique level of immersion thanks to its haptics and adaptive triggers. What implementation of the DualSense wireless controller are you most excited about in Hogwarts Legacy?
The DualSense wireless controller enabled us to build a unique gaming experience leveraging key technologies like adaptive triggers, haptic feedback, LED light feedback, touchpad usage, speaker audio and tilt controls. The most exciting part of our game is the amazing combat experiences controlling your wand and casting all kind of unique spells. The combination of adaptive triggers with haptic feedback made our combat encounters felt authentic and totally immersive. You feel like you are in total control of your avatar and as you perform combos and finishers you get rewarded with stunning visual effects and enemy reactions.
Hogwarts Legacy DualSense wireless controller
We’ve said it before: The PlayStation 5 DualSense wireless controller is an extension of your wand in Hogwarts Legacy, seemingly putting the magic of the game directly in your hands. We’ve also detailed the DualSense features that will connect you with that magic, from haptic feedback providing unique sensations throughout the game to adaptive triggers that enhance spellcasting. Extending well beyond just spells, the DualSense wireless controller immerses you in Hogwarts Legacy’s 1800s wizarding world like never before, letting you feel the flap of a hippogriff’s wings and sense whispers of the mysterious Ancient Magic.
With that in mind, we were really excited at the prospect of creating a limited edition Hogwarts Legacy DualSense controller. We knew we wanted something special that looked as good as it felt to hold. But when it came time to land on a specific design, that was a much more difficult process to parse.
The Wizarding World franchise has so many elements to pull from, how could we possibly distill this game down into a single controller design? Do we go with a wand motif to represent that connection with the controller? Perhaps we lean into Hogwarts Legacy’s unique Ancient Magic themes? What about drawing inspiration from the four Hogwarts houses, or even “light” and “dark” to represent the choices you can make? But through the many ideas we had to choose from, we always came back to the thing that lies at the center of this whole experience: Hogwarts itself.
With so much consideration and thought being put into this design, I went directly to Avalanche Software Artist Vanessa Palmer and Art Director Jeff Bunker to get some insight into how the design of the limited edition Hogwarts Legacy DualSense wireless controller came to be:
Vanessa Palmer: “We wanted the controller design to combine magic with the decorative elements of the Victorian period. The sweeping magic and stars draw you to Hogwarts itself, creating a blend unique to our game and time period.”
Jeff Bunker: “We are thrilled to have had the opportunity to work with the PlayStation team on the creation of this new DualSense controller for the upcoming game, Hogwarts Legacy. Our goal was to bring a hint of the in-game experience into the player’s hands…literally. Many themes were considered, from the representation of the different houses, magic wands, beasts or even the sorting hat. But it was clear very early that we should focus on the star of the game, Hogwarts itself. So we centered the iconic castle and incorporated swirling motifs of Ancient Magic into the design, highlighting the player’s special role within the story.
“From the beginning, we had a vision of a simple, clean and sophisticated aesthetic. White, blue, and aqua, amongst a number of other colors, were tried but in the end, we chose matte black as the primary color for the controller, not only because it contributed to our desired aesthetic, but also because it hints at the darker themes that players can expect in the game. To add a touch of authenticity, we incorporated old-gold Victorian intaglio etching into the designs of the castle and Ancient Magic swirls, highlighting the era in which the game takes place.
“It was an exciting and fun process to bring a piece of the virtual world of Hogwarts Legacy into the real and interactive physical world of the controller. We can’t wait for players to get their hands on it and fully immerse themselves in the game.”
At Avalanche, our passion for the Wizarding World is poured into everything we do, whether it’s bringing fans an authentic Wizarding World video game experience or creating a custom controller with which to play it. We hope fans love the limited edition Hogwarts Legacy DualSense controller as much as we do.
Get it directly from PlayStation
The DualSense Wireless Controller – Hogwarts Legacy Limited Edition will be available in limited quantities and exclusively on direct.playstation.com in the US and UK only.
In the U.S., starting at 10AM PT on Friday, February 10, 2023, DualSense Wireless Controller – Hogwarts Legacy Limited Edition will be available for pre-order (while supplies last) on direct.playstation.com with a US launch date of February 28, 2023.
In the UK, starting at 10AM GMT on Friday, February 10, 2023, DualSense Wireless Controller – Hogwarts Legacy Limited Edition will be available for purchase (while supplies last) on direct.playstation.com with a UK launch date of February 10, 2023. Stay tuned to direct.playstation.com for more information.
Hogwarts Legacy launches on PlayStation 5 February 10.
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