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South hogwarts Ruins
Ancient Magic Hotspot in the South Hogwarts Region
The Context
While working on Hogwarts Legacy, I was part of the Overlands team, fleshing out the optional open world content. As part of this, I was tasked with creating a few different ancient magic hotspots, puzzle locations where the player activates a central hub spot and then must gather three different pickups to expand their ancient magic meter.
The existing location was fairly featureless when I arrived, but I did like the two separate ruins, and wanted to expand on that.
I began researching existing castles in Scotland and other areas of the UK. These areas around Hogwarts had never really been explored in films or other games, so we had a fair amount of freedom, but I wanted it to be grounded in the Scottish countryside.
For this location, I referenced a lot of Dunnotar castle in Scotland, which has a kind of large fortress complex. I wanted to evoke a similar idea with this.
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I also wanted it to have more stepping and a crooked tower that would catch the eye from further away.
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I settled on these structures: a frontal gatehouse, a barracks now infested with spiders, and a tower with attached living quarters.
Stairs would lead up to a circular stone area that functions as the current ancient magic hub, and then the three ancient magic pickups would be scattered in those different structures
We then got some really excellent concept art from Vanessa Palmer to flesh it out.
The whole fortress in game. I really like the dual-bridge design that I ended up going with.
Top down view. Some bandits have taken up residence here and need to be disposed of before the player can explore.
Player's approach, which I designed as a gatehouse for the fortress.
A living quarters or barracks on the left side of the fortress. The door is blocked, but I removed the entire roof, and made sure to show gaps in the building so the player could see the sky through it to encourage the player to fly in on their broom.
When the player enters through the roof, they find spiders, and a locked door
By solving a few puzzles by moving boxes and parkouring, they can find some treasure and a switch to pull to open the door.
The environment artist had the great idea to emphasize the ancient magic spot with this circular tile pattern. The player starts here, and then wispy vfx go out to hint at locations of the 3 pickups required to get the reward. By burning some vines in this doorway, the player can get the first pickup.
On the other side, they can see the broken tower where they will find their next two pickups. They can fly up, or by pulling this lever, they can drop a platform for them to parkour across. The second pickup is bricked up in a fireplace.
The player scales the broken tower to find the third pickup, which requires breaking some crates and fighting a few small spiders inside.
Once inside, the player can levitate a box to reach the wooden platforms.
The artist had the idea to leave this open for natural light. It looks really cool!
When the player leaves the tower, they get an amazing view of Hogwarts.