Harry Potter: Leaked RPG Footage Looks Incredible

In the world of licensed video games, no fans may be more tortured than those of the Harry Potter series. But salvation may soon be coming, as leaked footage of a still-unannounced Harry Potter title has made its way online. And dare we say: it actually looks pretty good.

The leak comes courtesy of a Reddit user who revealed in now-deleted comments that he was approached to take part in some market research at a nearby mall. That research reportedly included some footage of the Harry Potter game along with a brief description of its setting: the Wizarding World of the 19th century. Also notable in the leaked footage: shots of a character creation screen, as well as a few magic-fueled action scenes featuring destructible environments.

The original leak has since been deleted from YouTube, and multiple re-uploads of that footage have also been scrubbed from the video sharing site. The footage can be viewed on Twitter for the time being, but it's uncertain how long that upload will remain online.

But the video takedowns themselves have helped lend credence to this being a full-fledged Harry Potter game. Copyright strikes for those early video uploads name Warner Bros. as the complaining party. Warner Bros. just happens to have distributed all of the Harry Potter films, and also published some of the more recent Harry Potter games.

And that's not all. Back in early 2017, Warner Bros. resurrected a defunct Disney development studio called Avalanche Software. In that same year, Avalanche started hiring for a new RPG, seeking out writers with "a deep understanding of British culture and grammatical presentation." That certainly fits the bill for a Harry Potter game, doesn't it?

If the studio behind this title is indeed Avalanche Software, you can expect to see a lot of Harry Potter fan service. Avalanche is probably most famous for developing the Disney Infinity titles, but the team has quite a bit of experience with other TV and film licenses, such as Dragon Ball Z, Meet the Robinsons, Toy Story, Bolt, and Cars. The studio's been fairly quiet since the release of 2017's Cars 3: Driven to Win, which means it's not out of the question that Avalanche is now focused solely on Harry Potter.

For what it's worth, Harry Potter fans seem excited about the potential for new game in the franchise. One Reddit poster remarked on the wait between games, stating, "Wow is this an actual high budget Harry Potter game that looks good? Took long enough." Others, however, are approaching the hype with caution. "I'm interested how the developers are going to handle coding the spells," another Redditor said. "Because many Harry Potter spells will require as much coding as entire indie games."

In terms of video games, the Harry Potter franchise has seen its fair share of bumps in the road. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is often viewed as what a Harry Potter game should be, with it receiving the most critical acclaim of any title by far. But there have been countless other Harry Potter games over the years that have missed the mark — enough, at the least, to leave fans feeling burned. This leaked footage has many Harry Potter fans excited for the moment. But they'll undoubtedly want more information at some point, which means the pressure is on for both Warner Bros. and Avalanche to announce the game and get into the finer details. That is, if the game really, truly exists.

So why is a new Harry Potter video game such a big deal? Because the franchise as a whole is a cash cow, both in the literary world and in film. It was estimated in early 2018 that over 500 million Harry Potter books have been sold worldwide, which means the audience is clearly there for a solid video game experience. And the films haven't done half bad, either. Prior to the release of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in 2016, the box office profit for the Harry Potter movies had exceeded $6.5 billion.

In fact, before Disney started creating new Star Wars sequels, the Harry Potter series was the highest-grossing film franchise of all time.