'Potter' world reimagined in new EA Games title

via hpana

Electronic Arts (EA), the company behind the Harry Potter video games, set up a "Fan Council" last year to get feedback on what people would most like to see in the upcoming Order of the Phoenix game. The first meeting of the council was in August 2006 and last Thursday the group was invited back to see what had been achieved in the intervening eight months.

Charlotte, HPANA's correspondent in the UK, made the trip and filed the following report.

Our day started at 10 a.m. with all the fansite representatives gathering at EA's new studios in Guildford for breakfast. There were many familiar faces among the EA team but unfortunately no Matt Birch (the extremely enthusiastic game producer was missed by several of us who met him last time).

We were officially welcomed to the studios by Harvey Elliott, the game's executive producer, who emphasized how important the feedback they've received through the Fan Council has been. The team checks the forums on the various fansites regularly and they've been really pleased to see your reactions to the screencaps, interviews and videos as they've been released. Harvey also showed us the opening sequence for the OotP game: A camera follows Hedwig through the courtyard, into the entrance hall and around Hogwarts, before coming to rest on Harry's arm in the Gryffindor Common Room (GCR). When we visited in August, only the GCR had been completed in any detail, so to see that the rest of Hogwarts was now completed to the same high standard was fantastic.

Producer Justin Manning and designer Chris Roberts then told us about what the team had been working on in the last eight months. They have:

Built 70+ Hogwarts locations, Little Whinging, Grimmauld Place and the Ministry of Magic from movie blueprints and set photographs.
Designed and implemented 60 missions (examples include finding a book on healing balms in the Library after a detention with Prof. Umbridge, and playing games such as exploding snap, gobstones and wizarding chess).
Created 90+ characters to meet and interact with. Over 9,600 lines of dialogue have been recorded and 22 actors from the movies are voicing their characters. The dialogue includes a mixture of lines from the book, the movie and some new material written by a professional scriptwriter (which they've tried to ensure is in character).
Made the game on eight platforms in 23 languages.
They also talked about what they've learned from you, the fans:

You want to play more of the story
You want to meet the characters you love from the fiction
Characters should be like they are in fiction
You want Hogwarts to look and sound like it does in the movie
You want to explore Hogwarts and use magic
You want to see the ghosts and talk to the portraits
You want to go to classes
You want to play wizard games
You want elements that the film leaves out
To respond to these concerns the number of characters has been dramatically increased since Goblet of Fire. There are students from various houses, both male and female; and there are ghosts (including Moaning Myrtle who looks after the "Room of Rewards") and portraits to interact with. Dialogue from the book is there including Hermione's famous remark that Ron has the "emotional depth of a teaspoon", and music from the movie soundtrack is ever-present as the rights to Hedwig's Theme were licensed.

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