“Fetch Hermione” – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

[As with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, I have donated the total I’ve paid for Prisoner of Azkaban media including this game to a British charity supporting trans people, as some kind of offset to this post increasing the reach, by however little, of a series by a leading campaigner against trans people’s human rights.]

**Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban** (EA, PlayStation 2, 2004)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban has a reputation as the best book and film of the series for good reason. It was the moment when it seemed like the world and the stories it told could expand into wider and darker territory, a moment of potential when the series was not yet the unstoppable, uneditable phenomenon it was about to become (68,000 copies sold in the UK in three days puts Prisoner of Azkaban the book on par with the average #1 single of the time or a somewhat-above-average game at this stage of this project). Prisoner of Azkaban’s plot threads came together thrillingly, despite some of the clumsiest decisions, and it was the one time when Harry Potter’s frequent “that time, 15 years ago…” elements actually added something worthwhile.

Things which make for a better book (or film) don’t necessarily translate to a better game, of course. However, one of the key plot drivers in the book, and part of its ties between time periods, was the Marauder’s Map: a magical map which showed the grounds of Hogwarts school and the movements of everyone within it. That’s such an obviously video game-friendly concept (see: Hitman) that basing a game around it should have been a slam dunk. EA UK showed signs of recognising that fact but, with deadlines looming, fell into a game that does much less with its potential than even the Philosopher’s Stone game.

The game opens with ink on parchment and the Map’s opening command “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good” spoken by narrator Stephen Fry (the only well-known actor involved in the game, and reader of the audiobooks even to this day). It plays in a similar Zelda-lite style to Philosopher’s Stone, though with little of the same sense of place as you walk up and down one staircase with different locations marked on different floors. One of the very first missions consists of the long, drawn-out process of reaching the Map and getting hold of it. Surely visions and secrets of Hogwarts await.

Then, when you eventually get it… it gives you a bog-standard video game map which only shows your immediate vicinity, with unnamed enemies marked. It’s a thoroughly deflating moment. Thought at least it avoids the element of the books where the Map magically gives people’s true names which they were born with and can never change, allowing it to unmask devious villains hiding in plain sight. JK Rowling’s obsession with fixing rigid systems of identity in place is clear once again.

The Map is also only available when you control a specific character. This is significant because the game gives you the chance to switch between Harry Potter and his best friends throughout, something introduced by having you control Ron Weasley as he drags Harry to safety away from creepy prison guard dementors on a train. Controlling Harry, Ron and Hermione gives you some typical ‘puzzles’ like moving things that can only be lifted by all three of them at once.

To try to take things to another level, the obvious thing is to give each of the characters different abilities. And so, hero Harry gets the Map and is the only one who can jump over gaps and climb up ropes. Ron is able to detect secret magical doors for some reason. And Hermione can… get into small spaces. The slow and uninspired puzzles that result are less insulting than the concept. EA took a character written as intelligent, insightful, normal-sized and, in this story, wearing a portable time machine, and decided that her decisive distinguishing characteristic should be that she is small. You don’t have to think that these are particularly well-written characters to see that the game’s vision for them is pathetic.

That problem is mostly on the game, but some other parts feel more like magnifying existing issues. When you go to a class with Professor Lupin, he sends your three characters off on another Zelda-dungeon quest for a spellbook. You return with it, he says well done, and then immediately ends the lesson and dismisses the class. What happened while the team were away? Perhaps, with disruptive elements removed, he was getting on with teaching the rest of the class. Or perhaps, more likely, that sparsely-populated class were staring slack-jawed at a wall the whole time, or in suspended animation, suspended existence, their whole purpose nothing but backdrop to our heroes. JK Rowling wrote in an entire sport designed to work on that basis, after all. And a chosen one getting special treatment is an ongoing theme. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is not a good game, and fails to pick up on obvious opportunities to be a better game. But a lazy minimal version of source material can still illuminate that source material.