2022 looks set to release a handful of games that do the very same thing, opting to put their characters in the school setting. Hogwarts Legacy is far from the only one, though it is likely the most obvious. From Two Point Campus to Goodbye Volcano High, the year will bring players more stories centered on student protagonists and school halls. Though it may not seem like an appealing setting to many, it presents so much potential for careful character development, and interesting narratives to flourish.
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Class Has Been in Session For Years
Two Point Campus, Hogwarts Legacy, and Goodbye Volcano High, which should please fans of the Life is Strange series, are carrying the banner for school-based games in 2022. However, the setting isn’t anything new; from the aforementioned Life is Strange’s Blackwell Academy in Arcadia Bay, to Persona 4’s Yasogami High in the understated Japanese town of Inaba.
The locker-lined halls, or jock-crowded sports fields are a popular location, as they often wield a litany of interesting characters, cliques, and hierarchies that can be used to create a compelling video game story. 2006’s Bully is defined, not by its thuggish protagonist that could be mistaken for any Grand Theft Auto character, but by Bullworth Academy, and the strange but amusing students that Jimmy Hopkins interacts with on a daily basis.
In a building simulator like Two Point Campus, characters aren’t as important as the setting itself, so the diversity of the location takes center stage. Thankfully, classrooms, halls, and teacher’s lounges offer unique quirks that ensure the opportunity for players to craft their own campus remains an exciting prospect. Each component of a school setting can make for interesting gameplay sections, and decisions, that are made all the better by the nostalgia that can come with it.
The Lessons That Schools Can Teach
The school surroundings do well to capture characters at their most transformative. Being in a room with numerous other students at a time when people are changing the most brings a heightened sense of identity to each one, which has huge fictional potential.
It’s important for games to end with the protagonist different from the way they were when the adventure began, and setting the narrative in a place of learning ultimately forces the story to have that impact. For all its amazing, palace-centered dungeon crawling, one calendar year at Shujin Academy offers the chance for players to meet, understand, and grow with the Phantom Thieves, which is at the heart of the game’s charm throughout the ~100 hours it takes to finish.
Hogwarts Legacy’s open-ended level design will likely utilize the explorative aspects of the RPG genre, so its emphasis on narrative will surely be less than Goodbye Volcano High, which promises branching paths throughout. This doesn’t mean, that the presentation or storytelling will suffer, as players will have the opportunity to get up to their own mischief in the open world, something that so regularly comes with school territory. Being a student at the famous school of Witchcraft and Wizardry will be a dream for many, and developer Avalanche Software has the Harry Potter legacy to protect as it attempts to craft the experience so many have wanted for so long.
Be it the eerie atmosphere of Danganronpa, the lengthy quest of Persona, or the somewhat rigid and utterly terrifying Doki Doki Literature Club!, the setting of modern high schools grant developers the ability to conjure a wide range of characters and tell an engaging tale. Those characters can explore diverse locations that can offer a myriad of interesting activities, and fit into an overall tone that drastically differs to most other games, yet is all too familiar to so many people. In 2022, a handful of developers are taking advantage of the potential the setting brings, and all signs point to them wielding something special.
Hogwarts Legacy releases holiday 2022 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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