LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1 - 4 design team discuss what makes this game different

The official Playstation blog has a new interview online with Jonathan Smith, who is one person working on LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1 - 4. In the interview, he talks about what we can expect from the game overall: Jem: How has game progression in particular changed in this LEGO game? Jonathan: So what’s radically and completely new in LEGO Harry Potter from what we’ve done before is the effect that having Hogwarts as a massive explorable environment has on the game progression and the game structure. When you first start as a new student in Hogwarts, finding your way to your first lesson you’ll be pretty well directed by the teaches and the design of the environment to find your way, but as you play and progress further through the story, with each new spell you’ll gain access to new areas and trigger new story events that move on through the plot. So you’ll find more and more of Hogwarts accessible to you as a player, switching between different characters, until it becomes a really huge, immersive, explorable, open environment — to which you’ll return between story events to discover more secrets and learn more things. LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1 - 4 is set to hit stores in June. Thanks to Soragon for the tip!