Warner Bros have released the cover art for all the different platforms of the LEGO Harry Potter Years 1 - 4 game. On it, there is the trio (Hermione, Harry, and Ron - with Scabbers) and then Hogwarts, Snape, Hagrid (and his hut) and the Hogwarts Express in the background. You can see them in our gallery beginning here.
Thanks much to Warner Bros!
Videogamer.com had the chance to speak with LEGO Harry Potter Years 1 - 4 game producer Loz Doyle. In the interview, he was asked about whether he felt Hogwarts was too big and if the players will get lost, character development, and whether J.K. Rowling (or her people at least) didn’t like some of the things they did. They also had some new screen shots from the game, which you can see in our gallery starting here. Here are a few excerpts:
Q: Throughout the Harry Potter books and films, the characters get older. Do they change in the game as you go from years one to four?
LD: There are quite a lot of outfit changes, but that’s just to match them with the films. They have the casual clothes, they have the Quidditch uniforms, and they have the school uniforms. The main characters stay the same because the mini-figures stay the same. But there’s a bit of a balance, because LEGO has done some more models, so we may use some of the newer models if it makes sense. In film four, Dumbledore has a different outfit than he had in year one, so we would use that. But mostly the characters will stay looking the same because they do in the plastic.
Q: Hogwarts is the biggest single area you’ve ever created. Is there a danger players will get lost or not know where to go next?
LD: We have the same concern ourselves. In year one, while the whole of Hogwarts does exist, you can’t access it. We lock off doors, areas, you can’t go outside right at the beginning. You start in the common room, and even though it feels like you’re in Hogwarts - you see the main hall and you’re like, oh this is huge - you can’t go in very many places. Right at the beginning you can only go and do your first lesson. We guide the player to that first lesson. There’s nowhere else they can go. So despite the fact that they can mess around in a few rooms on the way if they want, there’s no chance of them getting lost because there’s only one place to go. And then after that there’s only another place to go. We gradually open up Hogwarts so the player can get their bearings. As the years progress we open up more and more and more, until year four - when you should know your way around by then - it’s all open; the grounds, the secret rooms.
Q: Just how big is Hogwarts?
LD: It is big, but what we’ve done is, even though it feels like Hogwarts, we haven’t just recreated Hogwarts exactly as it is in the films. Whereas in a film they can have a location over here, location over here, then they just edit and they arrive at the place, in a game you’ve actually got to travel. So we’ve made it look like Hogwarts and feel like Hogwarts, but we’ve designed it around being able to get around and get to the places you want to go more easily. So, for example, all of the common rooms are off one area, whereas in the film there’s one in the basement, one up in the tower and one over here and one over there. We allude to that by having all four common rooms in one place and then to get to the Slytherin one, which would normally be down nine flights of stairs, you just go through a door, down one set of stairs and you appear in the common room. So while we say, yes, it’s down there, you don’t have to physically do it. It’s the same with the Great Staircase. In another Harry Potter game you had to go from the bedroom, walk down these seven or eight flights of stairs just to get down to the ground. It’s just not fun. So we just have down the stairs, and you appear as if you’ve come down six flights of stairs. It’s just being sensible in the game, and thinking about the game and people playing the game rather than, I must be exactly perfect.
Q: Has J.K. Rowling ever poopooed one of your ideas?
LD: She has a group of people who deal with that.
Q: Well, have her people poopooed one of your ideas?
LD: They’ve been understanding of the game. They’re not necessarily gamers themselves. They’re into the books and that side of things. For them to come to LEGO Harry Potter, which is a little bit wacky compared to what they’re used to, and get a grasp of what the game is like, how you can have a cutscene that isn’t exactly telling the film perfectly, and the characters are doing things with their arms and heads flying off - it took them a while to understand. But once we showed them the game, they instantly got it, and they were laughing, going, okay, when we saw it written down we were like, no, there’s no way that’s going to happen. But now we see it in the game, it’s fine. So it was a matter of them seeing it to understand.
Read the entire article here.
The game will be out in May 2010. You can pre-order them at our Amazon store here:
Warner Bros have announced that they’re teaming up with LEGO to develop LEGO Harry Potter construction sets and a board game. They’ll be released in conjunction with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on November 19th. Read their press release below!
WARNER BROS. CONSUMER PRODUCTS ALIGNS WITH LEGO GROUP
TO BUILD AN ARRAY OF MAGICAL OFFERINGS BASED ON THE
HARRY POTTER FILM SERIES
BURBANK, Calif., – February 12, 2010 – Warner Bros. Consumer Products (WBCP) announced today an extension of its successful partnership with leading toy manufacturer, The LEGO Group, to bring the magical world of Harry Potter to fans everywhere. Under the agreement, The LEGO Group is creatively tapping into the Harry Potter magic to develop spell-binding construction sets and a board game inspired by the property in anticipation of the November 19 theatrical release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I, as well the upcoming release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 in 2011.
“We have enjoyed a longstanding, successful partnership with The LEGO Group around Harry Potter and we are delighted to continue this relationship as we approach the release of the seventh film,” said Karen McTier, executive vice president, domestic licensing and worldwide marketing, Warner Bros. Consumer Products. “Fans of the franchise will be excited to discover the wonderfully original LEGO products inspired by the beloved stories and characters.”
“The world of Harry Potter has inspired some of our most successful products and we are thrilled to continue creating imaginative play opportunities for fans everywhere,” said Jill Wilfert, vice president, global licensing for LEGO Group. “The magical stories brought to life in the films give us the potential for an incredible array of offerings, the best of which are represented in our upcoming lines.”
Based on the compelling stories and characters of the Harry Potter films, the new line includes six construction sets derived from iconic scenes and locations, including the Hogwarts Castle, Hagrid’s Hut, Hogwarts Express and Quidditch Match and leveraging building surprises of previously released LEGO® Harry Potter sets, some of which ranked among all-time LEGO best-sellers. Available in October, the sets feature new and newly decorated minifigures, like Bellatrix Lestrange and Luna Lovegood.
Additionally, as the LEGO brand rolls into the board game category for the first time in 2010, it brings the Harry Potter property with it in a premium, constructible board game called Hogwarts, launching in August. Players build and then move throughout the iconic castle to be the first to collect various objects to win the game – but even the most skilled players can be foiled by an ability to move classrooms around the board.
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and TT Games also announced LEGO® Harry Potter™: Years 1-4, the latest addition to the blockbuster LEGO video games franchise. Releasing this May on multiple gaming platforms, the game takes players on a magical adventure through the first four Harry Potter books and movies, as they build, make potions, solve puzzles and cast spells.
Thanks to WB for letting us know!
More photos and a preview of the LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 game are now online. The photos, posted by Gamespot, give us more shots of the the flying lesson, the Great Hall, and more!
Also, Eurogamer have done a review of the game, comparing it quite often with the LEGO Star Wars game. Here are a few excerpts:
But as we’re hurtled through a quick hands-off demo of the latest game at a suitably Wizardy location in central London - there’s plenty of wood panelling, ushers decked out in school robes and, rather worryingly, real owls - it’s obvious that, while LEGO Potter is hardly a revolution, the designers have certainly spent the last few years hard at work, sounding out the peculiar strengths of JK Rowling’s books and seeing how they can tailor their own formulas to mesh with hers.
Mostly, Traveller’s Tales has been looking at Hogwarts. A familiar ramble of stonework and tapestries, stained-glass, shifting staircases and talking portraits, in LEGO Potter the venerable old pile is not just a simple hub. It’s the heart and soul of the game, in much the same way as it is with the novels: a place that will change while the teenage wizard grows, gradually unlocking its secrets as the adventure progresses.
It’s been created with typical class: sunlight slants through windows, beds in the dorm rooms are ripe for bouncing on, and everywhere you look there are pots of LEGO flowers to destroy for studs, or promising stacks of bricks gently spasming on the floor, calling out for investigation. The latest LEGO game may be unusually focused on a single location, but it’s the series’ biggest area yet, and its busiest too, filled with endless distractions and little gags.
If it’s starting to sound a little lazy, there are a few surprises in store. The LEGO physics model has been reworked - characters now send blocks skidding along the floor while they wade through them, and exploding scenery scatters in a more satisfying manner. At the crux of the recalibration, however, is the new “magical building” system, which gives the player the chance to use the levitation spell to move certain bricks about as they wish, rearranging and experimenting with them at will.
Read the entire review here.
The game will be out in May 2010. You can pre-order them at our Amazon store here:
Some new videos are online for the LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 game.
The first shows how some of the animation for Buckbeak was done for the game.
The second is an interview with Jonathan Smith from Travellers Tales.
The game will be out in May 2010. You can pre-order them at our Amazon store here:
Source: SS
Warner Bros have provided fansites with a video and loads of new photos from the LEGO Harry Potter Years 1 - 4 game. The photos are specifically from years 1 - 2 (Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets). They include some great screen shots of Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, Platform 9 3/4, the Troll, Hermione, Dumbledore, Harry, Ron, Draco, and much more. Check out the many new photos in our gallery beginning here. And here’s the video (thanks to MN):
Thanks much to WB for these awesome photos and video!
IGN have posted an article that is a first look at the LEGO Harry Potter Years 1 - 4 video game. The article gives many kudos to the game, stating it’s slick and colorful. The writer, Greg Miller, also stated the game feels more like a traditional game than any of the LEGO games he’s played before.
…you’re going to play through the events of Harry’s first four years at Hogwarts, covering the events of Sorcerer’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Goblet of Fire. As you do, you’re going to mature just like the young wizard. You’ll need to go to classes to learn spells, those spells will get more and more powerful as you keep studying, and you’ll gain access to otherwise inaccessible parts of Hogwarts as the years go by.
Basically, you’re playing Harry’s life… but it’s all told via LEGO blocks.
The article also includes six new screen shots from the game and a new trailer. You can see the screen shots in our gallery beginning here.
Read the rest of the article here.
Source: SS
MSN Brazil have released some photos from the LEGO Harry Potter Years 1 - 4 game. They include the cover and many of the figure photos, including Hermione, Hagrid, Dumbledore, Ron, and more! Check them out in our gallery starting here.
Source: SS
Game Informer did an article on the Harry Potter Years 1 - 4 LEGO game, giving us more details and photos on the game. Loz Doyle, the producer of LEGO Harry Potter, spoke with the magazine to clear up a few facts. She stated that each year will be treated separately, so players will be able to play through the individual years. However, you will also be able to take characters into other years, although they may have been in only one year originally. They’ll be following the books very closely. When asked whether the game will feature a hub world, like the one in Indian Jones 2, she said that once a player is at Hogwarts in a specific year, they are living out that year, as in the films. She continued by saying that all the room and areas you’d expect to find in Hogwarts will be found in the game. All the lessons and levels are triggered from within Hogwarts; there’s no going to menus or different hubs from within that story.
To read the entire article, you can see the scans in our gallery, including closer looks at the characters in the game, here. You can also see the video vignette that was recently released here.
You can order the different platforms of the game in our Amazon store here. The game will be released sometime next year.
Source: TLC
Warner Bros have sent us a vignette of the Harry Potter Years 1 - 4 LEGO game. The game shows some of the interactive features, funny moments (Hermione hitting Ron when he tries to use a trumpet to lure Fluffy to sleep), the moving stairways, the sorting, Hermione and the troll, Quuidditch, and more! They also tell you to visit the website www.magicisbuilding.com and enter the password alohamora to get an early peek at the game.
Thanks to WB for sending us the video!
UPDATE: A video of the making of the game is now online!
Source: SS
Warner Bros have provided fansites with a video and loads of new photos from the LEGO Harry Potter Years 1 - 4 game. The photos are specifically from years 1 - 2 (Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets). They include some great screen shots of Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, Platform 9 3/4, the Troll, Hermione, Dumbledore, Harry, Ron, Draco, and much more. Check out the many new photos in our gallery beginning here. And here’s the video (thanks to MN):
Thanks much to WB for these awesome photos and video!
