One of the most highly-anticipated games of 2021 is now one of the most highly-anticipated games of 2022. Hogwarts Legacy, a Harry Potter RPG that is supposed to let every fan live out their dream of creating their own character in that universe, is being delayed until next year.
The reasoning for Hogwarts Legacy‘s delay was not given, but we can only assume that the world at large made it rather difficult to develop a video game in 2020 and finish development in 2021. As a result, the developers are choosing to delay it until the game is given “the time it needs” to be finished. Their statement on Twitter, while vague, definitely implied the game is not going to be ready by the time it was originally set for release.
— Hogwarts Legacy (@HogwartsLegacy) January 13, 2021
This is really disappointing for the legions of Harry Potter fans that were waiting for their opportunity to traverse Hogwarts without having to fork over the cash to go to an amusement park. This also makes Hogwarts Legacy our first big title delay of 2021, and given how hard it is to create a game amid the COVID-19 pandemic, we probably shouldn’t be surprised if it’s not the last.
Hopefully this does not mean the developers of this game are going to have to grind themselves to dust to get this prepared. The good news is that they will be given a whole extra year to work on it, so we have to hope that’s not the case, but with the Cyberpunk disaster fresh on our mind, it’s hard to not think about.