What do Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and the PS2 version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone have in common? Well, the obvious answer would be absolutely nothing at all, but you’d have to guess again on that one.
Now, the original Harry Potter video game adaptations were, as licensed games go, not too bad at all. They were nothing particularly stellar for the most part either, but franchise fans have a lot of fond, nostalgia-laden memories of collecting those Every Flavor Beans and exploring Hogwarts Castle. Then there was PS1 Hagrid’s delightfully pixelated and meme-tastic face, which is now available across a range of unofficial merchandise.
Compared to the sort of treatment that some big franchises get when they make the transition to video games, Harry Potter fared admirably well here. The games weren’t exactly on the level of adaptations like the Arkham series (which was fantastic, beyond minor issues like the lack of NPCs on the streets), but they were solid enough.
Even with all of this in mind, times have certainly changed since Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone hit… just about every gaming system known to humankind back in 2001. The PS2 version arrived two years later, and like the rest of the Harry Potter games of the era, feels rather dated today.
Still, as Bon Jovi once sang, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Incredibly, it’s been discovered that one aspect of the PS2 edition has been reused in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla of all games.
In the much-anticipated Valhalla, players will be able to roam a vast world, pet a vast cat (and it really is vast), and battle vast bears. While engaging said bears, you’ll notice that they’ll make fearsome growling sounds as they attack, but Reddit’s Rau_1 noticed more than just that. The sound effect, they report, is the same as the one used by the trolls in The Sorcerer’s Stone on PS2!
Take a look at Exhibit A, from The Sorcerer’s Stone (which isn’t from the PS2 itself, as can be seen from the button format in the UI):
Then here’s Exhibit B, from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla:
As Rau_1 rightly points out, stock sound effects are reused and recognized all the time. The exact same sounds, such as thunder strikes and creaking machinery, are used in a wide variety of titles. Nevertheless, it’s just priceless to see this comparison between a much anticipated and super ambitious brand-new title like Valhalla and a creaky, nostalgic classic that’s approaching 20 years old, which is based on bears and trolls of all things.