Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts 1 & 2

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts 1 & 2

Format: XBox 360, Playstation 3, Wii and PC
Metacritic: Between 38 - 49 across various formats

"Step into the roles of your favourite heroes in the epic finale of the entertainment event of the decade. Playing as Harry and other key characters in the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 videogame, you are on a dangerous and urgent quest to locate and destroy the remaining Horcruxes, and with them, Voldemort."

My first design role was working for EA Brightlight as a junior designer.  As part of a team of designers I worked on both Deathly Hallows video games, released simultaneously with the films.  The games were designed to follow the action of the films, with third person cover shooter gameplay themed around the harry potter universe.  

Originally the studios intention was to create a cover shooter for the HD consoles of the time (the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC), and to create a different version of the game for the Wii that is more tailored to the consoles pointer and motion controls.  When I joined the studio I was responsible for designing and implementing levels for the Wii version of the game.

Played from a top down view point similar to those found in the lego games, with a focus on exploration and multiplayer co-operative gameplay. players would explore locations featured in the films (and books) with puzzles to solve and magical creatures to overcome.  The game was aimed at a younger audience than the HD version, and focused more on exploring and using magic to overcome obstacles.  

The players use magic spells they have learned to find the way forward.  In this shot the players must find the parts of a broken bridge and use reparo to create a crossing

I was given responsibility over a number of levels and tasked with researching the locations and themes of each of my levels based on the source material (using photographs and video from the set of the film), then designing and implementing levels that challenge the player and introduce new game elements based on the overall game design.  I greatly enjoyed working with other designers and my lead to develop game mechanics, which in turn created new and improved tools for us to design levels with.  Receiving regular feedback from my design lead, and from other designers, greatly helped me improve myself as a designer and learn important design fundamentals.  I was pleased that my previous experience creating art work proved useful for creating low poly level prototypes, and allowed me to implement and iterate on my level designs early on.

Players can use a freeze spell to create a temporary path over water, or use it to slow down their friend and grab all the best goodies

Ultimately it was decided that marketing two seperate Harry Potter titles based on the same IP simultaneously would be confusing for consumers.  Design work and assets from the Wii version were converted in to an SD port of the HD game, which went on to be released.  I remain very proud of the game we created to this day, and enjoyed comparing the work I produced in the months before the project was ended to that from when I first arrived.

While Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 was being completed in HD the team that had been working on the Wii version, including myself, went on to develop Create, which is detailed in the post above.  I worked on Create until the end of my first contract with EA in October 2010.

In January 2011 I returned to brightlight to work on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. For the second instalment of the Deathly Hallows games the studio decided on a HD sequel to the previous cover shooter based Part 1 game.  Building on the previous games engine, but with a shorter development time, I worked to set up and implement scenes and levels based on the overall design.   

Harry takes cover from attacking snatchers

In the short time I had to work on the second instalment, I was pleased to be able to see how my technical abilities had developed.  Brightlight (as with all the studios I have worked on) uses their own proprietary editor for creating games content.  I enjoyed the opportunity to measure and develop my technical abilities and knowledge of this toolset, with an opportunity to work with tools developers in order to improve the overall functionality. 

Although The Harry Potter games may not be remembered as some of the greatest games of all time, they represented an interesting challenge to me and were a hugely useful learning experience.  I believe as a team we produced a lot of thoughtful, quality content, and delivered a game that bears up well in the face of time and technical restraints.