Hogwarts Legacy Is Letting You Get Rid Of One Terrifying Creature
Hogwarts Legacy recently updated the game to be less scary to people with arachnophobia.
Hogwarts Legacy’s latest update allows players to make some of the game’s terrifying creatures less intimidating for players with arachnophobia. We mentioned this in our previous discussion about how the game made more money than Ant-Man 3, but we haven’t really discussed the feature itself. And while the game is still missing a key Harry Potter element, there’s one element some gamers could live without—spiders, giant, hairy spiders.
According to Kotaku, the latest Hogwarts Legacy update also added the arachnophobia mode. For those unaware, arachnophobia refers to a fear of spiders, something that’s very prominent in the Harry Potter universe, especially in the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Still, their presence is somewhat unnerving for some players, and Avalanche Software decided to add a gaming mode that basically alleviates the fear of these creepy crawlers. They’re still present in the game, but they’re not quite as big, hairy, or disgusting.
Given the spiders’ prominence in the Harry Potter universe, it only made sense that they’d make an appearance in Hogwarts Legacy. However, their presence also made the game uncomfortable for some, and since the developers couldn’t remove them from the game, they gave spiders makeovers. It’s actually a throwback to the scene in which Ron Weasley’s boggart turns into a spider. However, per instruction of Professor Lupin, Ron gives his boggart spider roller shoes, and the eight-legged creature lands on its stomach.
Now, the team behind Hogwarts Legacy has done the same. With the arachnophobia mode enabled, the spiders in the game will no longer screech and skitter, and their models will be swapped for something a bit more Riddikulus (pun fully intended). Their bodies appear as if they’re made of balloons, and there are roller shoes at the end of their legs. All the dead spiders and the majority of the cobwebs that previously engulfed a certain part of the map are now simply invisible, and the entire gaming mode makes spiders in the game a lot less scary.
With that said, the Hogwarts Legacy development team has issued a small warning for spider-fearing gamers, stating that while the spiders in the game might not be as scary with the mode enabled, the static images of spiders in the field guide pages remained untouched. So, if you’re one of those players who find spiders more terrifying than unpleasant, you might want to tread carefully. And now, for the main part—how to enable this mode for more pleasant gaming?
Well, it’s safe to say that God of War made significant strides in accessibility options, and the game development industry, at least the majority of it, decided to follow. The new Arachnophobia Mode can be toggled in Hogwarts Legacy’s accessibility options. A good place to test this mode out would be the Forbidden Forest, which is teeming with nasty critters. In other Hogwarts Legacy-related news, the game will have no DLC, but WB did announce a tie-in multiplayer Quidditch game.
Hogwarts Legacy is currently available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. The Nintendo Switch version of the game is currently in development.
