LEGO Potter isn't turning into a Metroidvania, however. Most of the story levels will still work a little bit like instances - we're shown a bustling Diagon Alley complete with Gringott's Bank and The Leaky Cauldron, while the village of Hogsmeade is mentioned as a later location - but Hogwarts is intricately tied in with another of the game's new ideas: character progression.

Far more than a simple interactive menu, the school is the place where Harry and friends will attend lessons, learning new kinds of spells, which will in turn open up more of the story. Starting the game - which, as the title suggests, charts the narratives of the first four books - with no knowledge of magic whatsoever, by the end of the adventure, Harry will have filled up a reassuringly spacious selection wheel of powers.

We're shown a handful of the early spells. A lightning bolt attack works much like Star Wars' blasters do, sending out a puff of energy that knocks LEGO to pieces, possibly with slightly sharper auto-targeting than series veterans might be used to. Wingardium Leviosa works much like the Force powers, too, allowing the player to interact with objects, turning those flapping piles of bricks into quirky pieces of LEGO machinery, or even letting you fling irritating NPCs out of the way.

Finally, we're shown flight, handled in a typically no-nonsense manner, with the left stick controlling horizontal movement, while the jump button takes care of height. Like magical building, your broomstick use will be fairly strictly rationed, but with nice large arenas and plenty of clever touches - switching characters between Harry and Hermione will see your skills seriously impeded as you're placed in the hands of a weaker flier - it's a lot more interesting than another trip on a reskinned Snowspeeder.