I've just finished exploring the first four chapters of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on Pottermore. The next set of chapters will be opening within the next few weeks, and tomorrow everybody will be able to buy their second year school books in Diagon Alley.
The first thing I'd like to mention is a slightly changed art style. In Chamber of Secrets, the art style seems to vary from chapter to chapter, unless it's just going a bit crazy (that has been known to happen!). Correct me if I'm wrong, but some (not very many) of the moments seem to lack a certain sharpness or level of detail that moments in the first book had. There are many exceptions to this- Borgin and Burkes, for example, is on par with the detail of the first book. But other moments fall a bit short of detail- don't get me wrong, they still look amazing and don't take away from the experience- I'm merely being a critic. For example, if we look at"The Egg in the Fire" from Philospher's Stone, and then we look at "Floo Powder" from Chamber of Secrets, the loss of detail is definitely noticeable. But if we look at "The Magic Word" from Chamber of Secrets, the level of detail has been greatly increased from the similar scene in Philosopher's Stone. I really like how in this scene, you can go through the front door. It may be simple, but it really adds to how normal and ordinary the Dursley's want to be seen as. Overall, however, I liked the higher level of detail that was put into Philosopher's Stone, which made the experience more fun to explore. That said, there seems to be many more hidden items in the Chamber of Secrets Moments.
The sound for Pottermore deserves it's own little paragraph here. Although Pottermore added sound to book 1, that happened after I went through it for the first time. Going through Chamber of Secrets (or the first four chapters, at least) with sound made the experience much more enjoyable, and I'm sure it would be very interesting to read along to the sound! The sound has been done very well and makes each moment much more dynamic.
Throughout the wait for book 2 to open on Pottermore, I have been very excited to see The Burrow. Many of my favorite chapters throughout the series take place at The Burrow. The Weasley residence is always full of interesting magic and it's always the place where we see the story happen without all of the drama and darkness of the rest of the wizarding world. Thus, I was very disappointed when I went though the three moments of Chapter 3, "The Burrow". The first moment was interesting, seeing Hedwig was cool, and Vernon's animation and sound effects made me laugh. The second moment, however, was a letdown (for me at least). Seeing the flying car is neat, but I would have loved to see a more in depth look at the Weasley home, because it only gets a very blurry spot in the moment. Hopefully my wish will come true sometime in Pottermore history. the third moment isn't really a moment, but more of a mini game for De-gnoming the Weasley garden. While I think minigames are better off in their own section, apart from the Pottermore storyline, I don't think Pottermore will listen to me. They really should, because I would much rather have an interesting moment to look at than a mini game. I started playing it, and found it to be tricky and slightly addicting. It's sort of buggy and could be redesigned to be more fun, but overall it wasn't that bad. However, it doesn't actually count towards any house points or anything, which makes it sort of useless in my opinion. There could have at least been some sort of leaderboard to see how you rank against your friends, but there isn't. Once again, I would much rather have 3 interesting moments than 2 moments and a relatively boring minigame.
Come on Pottermore, I want to experience the magic of The Burrow!
I'm not going to discuss the content, because you can experience it for yourself (and you have probably already done so), but I really like the content thus far. It's lengthy and interesting. The best thing would be if there were content on each and every moment, because we know tons of content exists that JKR hasn't shared with us, but it seems that we only ever get content on a few select topics for each book. I wish that wasn't the case, but the fact is that when content is shown from JKR, it's really, really interesting content.
One thing worth mentioning is that I really liked the moment with Dobby in Harry's bedroom. That was probably one of the more interesting moments in the book, just for the art alone!
Come on Pottermore, I want more info about The Burrow, the Weasley's, house elves, and Borgin and Burkes!
While I may have some negative things to say, I'm still a great fan of Chamber of Secrets, and I really like it a lot, especially since we've only seen 4 of the 18 chapters, which we're all very excited to see. I'm also fan of releasing the book in sections, so we don't all complete the whole book in a few hours.
If I were running Pottermore, I would do some things very differently, but overall, I give the first four chapters of Chamber of Secrets my approval!
Please post your thoughts and comments below. Am I being too harsh or do you agree with some of things I've mentioned?
Agreed, I would rather have a moment to look around Molly Weasley's kitchen than to de-gnome the garden.
ReplyDeleteI hated that minigame :x
Definitely! I think if they really want interactivity, it should be mixed into the moment, not made as a minigame. For example, they could have made a moment looking at the outside of the burrow, with gnomes walking around the garden that you can pick up and swing around just for fun. Especially since the minigame doesn't have a leaderboard anyway. Another example is the floo powder, which is interactive but isn't a minigame. Then again, the floo powder moment was pretty boring besides dragging the floo powder, because it wasn't a full moment.
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