Electronic Arts will provide the ultimate immersive experience for Harry Potter fans when they play the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince videogame, available in the UK on the 3rd July 09.

For the first time in a Harry Potter videogame, it’s possible to read the emotion in characters’ faces as they talk, thanks to the advanced facial animation system that was used during development. Many of the film’s actors provided their voices for the game, and the development team at EA had access to photos and body scans of all the characters, so every raised eyebrow and fluttering cloak is accurately portrayed in the game. Although you will play as Harry for nearly all of the game, the other characters in the game are just as detailed and full of emotion.

Not only do the characters look and sound like the actors in the film, the EA development team went to great lengths to ensure that the characters even move accurately. To capture the moves that Harry makes playing Quidditch on his broomstick, it wasn’t enough to just film a stuntman. One of the developers also built a complete broomstick rig in his kitchen at home and brought it in so the animators could “fly” a broom themselves and experiment with every possible move.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince arrives on UK shop shelves within the next fortnight, and Electronic Theatre will deliver you all the latest details on the multi-format release.

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