The Hogwarts Legacy HUD was spotted in early trailers for the Harry Potter RPG game, and for many fans its design left a lot to be desired. With comments suggesting that it was a simple placeholder, a new teaser trailer may imply that the HUD we’ve seen is the one we’ll be getting.
Fans have deduced this from the ominous trailer for the Imperio spell, one of the wizarding world’s three unforgivable curses. The icon for the ability features a white male side profile on a black diamond background, inside of which is a puppeteer’s hand controlling the target’s thoughts.
It’s the diamond shape of the icon that has caught attention, though, as it perfectly slots into an earlier version of the HUD that players found in one of the game’s trailers.
At the moment, the ability HUD looks to be a large diamond shape made up of four smaller diamonds, each of which represents different Hogwarts Legacy spells. As one fan noted on the game’s Reddit, the Imperio icon fits into the current iteration of the HUD, potentially scuppering initial thoughts that the trailer’s version may be a placeholder.
“I may be grasping at straws here but based on how the icon for Imperio was presented in the recent Twitter post, could this possibly mean the HUD has stayed the same since it was discovered?” they ask. “Either way, I love the icon for Imperio, it looks very clean. I wouldn’t mind the HUD being the same, but from the few frames we saw, it looked very ‘testy’ and gimmicky.”
One budding wizard writes “based on this, (and nothing is certain) I’d suggest at least the basic style is staying. They may update some of the icons but I think we see the style pretty clearly.”
“That’s a really good catch!” comments another fan. “Although, unless some s**t happens behind the scenes, it only makes sense that the rough idea for the HUD would stay the same after a couple of months.” A final response notes “hopefully they improve it for the final version of the game.”
While some aren’t a fan of the current spellcasting diamond, I personally quite like it. Everything is legible, looks like it can be easily keybound, and some of the icons look absolutely awesome – Imperio included. Don’t try and lock me up in Azkaban, it just looks cool okay?
We’ll only know whether or not this is the finalised HUD when we reach the highly anticipated Hogwarts Legacy release date or perhaps by getting a sneak peek during the Hogwarts Legacy early access period. While we wait for that exciting day, we have the answer to the age-old question is Harry Potter in Hogwarts Legacy – no spoilers here, don’t worry.
The creator of the Harry Potter series, JK Rowling, has made a number of transphobic remarks on social media in recent years. While WB Games says “JK Rowling is not directly involved in the creation of the game”, it is based on her work and it’s still unclear if she will receive royalties from its sales. If you’d like to learn more about transgender equality or lend your support, here are two important charities we encourage you to check out: the National Center for Transgender Equality in the US, and Mermaids in the UK.