18 years later, No Man’s Sky dev reveals prototype footage of the first Harry Potter open-world game – and explains its unlikely link to an iconic FPS

A No Man’s Sky developer has revealed early development footage of the first open-world Harry Potter game – revealing an unlikely connection between The Boy Who Lived and the Quake series in the process.

Hello Games engine programmer Martin Griffiths recently revealed that before joining the No Man’s Sky and Light No Fire studio, “in a past life […] I worked for eight years on the engine for the Harry Potter games.” He points to 2006’s adaptation of The Order of the Phoenix as “a formative time,” as the game was “the first fully streamed, open world game that we’d made.” He went on to reveal the very first footage of Harry Potter running around a prototype version of that game’s Hogwarts, salvaged from “an old SD card.”