Muggles and MagiciansAlthough you’ll be playing as Harry for nearly all of the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince videogame - no spoilers about who else you’ll get to play, but if you remember the moment when Harry is out of action in the film you might manage to guess - everyone else in the game is just as detailed and full of character. Many of the actors from the film have provided their voices for the game, and the team have had access to photos and bodyscans of all the characters, so every raised eyebrow and fluttering cloak is accurately portrayed.
For the first time in a Harry Potter game, it’s really possible to read the emotion in characters’ faces as they talk, thanks to the advanced facial animation system that’s been used. And it’s not just that the characters in the game look right and sound right - they moved right, too. EA has made every effort to perfect the animation for all the action in the film. To capture the moves that Harry can make on his broomstick it wasn’t enough to film a stuntman in a studio to get a decent approximation.
Instead, one of the game team built a complete broomstick rig in his kitchen at home, bringing it in so the animators could experiment with every possible move by ‘flying’ one themselves.