Players have come to expect that most major video game releases come bundled with a photo mode for taking the perfect screenshots. These often let you put fun filters over your images, adjust the focus, remove characters and NPCs for landscape shots, and (in the best cases) let you pose your character and adjust their facial expression.
Hogwarts Legacy isn’t the most graphically dazzling game around, but it’s still something of a looker. The titular magical school is bristling with detail, the classrooms are intricate, the landscapes sweeping and epic, and the action cinematic and exciting. So, does this game let you be the late-Victorian equivalent of Colin Creevey and snap some pictures?
Put the camera away
Sadly Hogwarts Legacy doesn’t currently have a photo mode, which is more than a little disappointing for fans. If you want clean in-game screenshots your best option is to head into Settings and disable every HUD display option, which will at least let you take shots of gameplay without minimaps and objectives cluttering up the screen.
Even so, this workaround doesn’t provide anywhere near the kind of accuracy and precision that an actual in-game photography mode would offer. Hogwarts Legacy wants to deliver a personalized experience based on your customized student, so it’s sad that we can’t get them to take a (magical) selfie in some of the more scenic areas of Hogwarts.
Hope for the future
It should be mentioned that many games have launched without a photo mode, only to see it arrive later in a patch. God of War: Ragnarok launched without the feature, though it arrived around a month after the game’s launch. Other titles like Death Stranding, Sable, Deathloop, Dying Light 2, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla also launched without photo modes, though they eventually arrived in later updates.
Sadly, while we’re confident Hogwarts Legacy‘s photo mode will eventually arrive, don’t expect it soon after launch. The official WB Games Support channel responded to a question about it and confirmed they “don’t have any official information” about it, but added the Game Team has been informed that players want it.
Fingers crossed it’s on the way. In the meantime, we’ll make do with removing the HUD and taking snapshots that way.
Hogwarts Legacy will be released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X, and PC on Feb. 10, with the PS4 and the Xbox One releases set for April 4, and the Nintendo Switch on July 25.