Hogwarts Legacy turned out to be one of the biggest games of 2023, with Warner Bros. boasting it was the "best-selling game of the year in the entire industry worldwide." The expectation was that the game wouldn't receive an expansion or DLC but, with over 22 million sales, it looks like the thinking may have changed at the publisher.
A new report by Bloomberg tells the story of the chaotic development of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Developer Rocksteady Studios, owned by Warner Bros., moved from the singleplayer Arkham games into developing a multiplayer live service title, and the transition was a bumpy one that's ended up with the publisher taking an astonishing $200 million loss on that game.
At the end of the report, however, it is mentioned in passing that while Rocksteady doesn't have a next main project to focus on, Warner Bros. is keeping it busy in the wizarding world:
"Many of the studio’s employees are now helping to develop a new 'director’s cut' version of Hogwarts Legacy. At the same time, according to people familiar, the studio leaders are looking to pitch a new single-player game, which would return Rocksteady to its roots."
First of all, yes, you could interpret the latter sentence with Bat-goggles on. But this is the first time a director's cut of Hogwarts Legacy has been mentioned, and from the perspective of Warner Bros. this must have been a no-brainer. The fact Rocksteady's been co-opted to work on the project also, unfortunately for Suicide Squad, implies Warner Bros. is rapidly backpedalling from a game that was only released a few months ago.
There's no further detail on what a Hogwarts Legacy director's cut would look like, though the game's developer WB Avalanche has been cautious not to over-excite fans in the past, characterising its post-launch support thus far as "a small way of us showing appreciation to our players for the amazing reception to the game."
That's because some of the most popular requests for the game include things like a NG+ mode as well as a story expansion, while other players just want Quidditch (Warner Bros. has a standalone Quidditch game in development, so this is the most unlikely addition of all). Some of those dream requests would, however, come within the scope of a director's cut.
The news coincides with Hogwarts Legacy receiving a substantial new update adding, among other things, a photo mode. This includes various Potter-style frames and filters, character poses, and various other set-up tools. Other additions include a respec option, and on PC the addition of a quest and rewards that were previously exclusive to PlayStation, as well as some cosmetic pre-order bonuses and a new pair of "taped-up spectacles".
