Hogwarts Legacy Player Runs Into Bizarre Ominis Gaunt Glitch

Highlights

Hogwarts Legacy has received critical acclaim for its worldbuilding, combat, and presentation, but has faced criticism for a lack of innovation in the open-world genre and occasional technical problems. Reddit user pastadude shared a clip of a gameplay glitch involving the character Ominis Gaunt. Commenters on Reddit found humor in the glitch and speculated on why Gaunt reacted that way, referencing his character and backstory.

A Hogwarts Legacy player comes across a bizarre glitch while taking Ominis Gaunt out for a swim. Despite its immense polish, Hogwarts Legacy is no stranger to the odd amusing glitch.

Since its release in mid-February 2023, Hogwarts Legacy has become a critically acclaimed financial juggernaut for Avalanche Software, garnering praise for its worldbuilding, combat, and presentation, but some criticism regarding a lack of innovation in the open-world genre, as well as some of its technical problems and its ties to a controversial author. Among the game’s aspects that have been complimented by the community are its faithfulness to the Harry Potter books and the new characters who feel right at home in that universe. Among such characters is the blind Slytherin student, Ominis Gaunt, a descendant of Salazar himself who disagrees with his ancestor on usage of the Dark Arts.

Reddit user pastadude shared a clip of a bizarre gameplay glitch, where they attempted to lead Gaunt into one of the hidden caves underneath Hogwarts, containing a wall painting of Hogwarts Legacy’s rare Giant Squid. Upon turning around, the player sees Gaunt trapped by the cave entrance, flailing around erratically at the water’s surface. His model repeatedly switches poses, sometimes dipping below the water or even launching himself up towards the cave ceiling. Gaunt does eventually reach the ledge with the painting on it, but continues his erratic dance, prompting the player to join in by the end.

Several in the comments pointed out the funny situation, which some of them had encountered themselves with other characters, who cannot die while following the player. One Redditor suggested that Gaunt might not have reacted well to the water given the childhood curses he was subjected to, one of many compelling aspects of his character and backstory. Most of the comments consisted of humorous speculation regarding why Gaunt reacted to the water in the way he did.

Even the best video games ever can contain bugs, some humorous, some game-breaking, and Hogwarts Legacy is no exception, even after multiple huge updates. Only time will tell if more bugs like this one will get patched out later on, or if they’ll be present in the still unreleased Switch port.

Hogwarts Legacy is out on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The Nintendo Switch version is expected to drop on November 14, 2023.