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The Playstation UK Blog posted an interview with Jonathan Smith of Traveller’s Tales, the company behind the upcoming LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 video game. Smith is the Head of Production for Traveller’s Tales, and is calling the LEGO Harry Potter game “a new kind of LEGO gameplay” with characters learning/advancing over a long period of time (4 years in-game).

Hogwarts is going to be fully modeled in the virual LEGO universe, and in a different way from other LEGO or Harry Potter games (including a new way of building):

The new layer of physics makes the world more realistic and enable us to build with Lego using magic in a way you’ve never been able to do before. And taking advantage of this wonderful setting of Hogwarts and the magical characters within it, we can use magic to create a new kind of lego gameplay as well

So what’s radically and completely new in Lego Harry Potter from what we’ve done before is the effect that having Hogwarts as a massive explorable environment has on the game progression and the game structure. When you first start as a new student in Hogwarts, finding your way to your first lesson you’ll be pretty well directed by the teaches and the design of the environment to find your way, but as you play and progress further through the story, with each new spell you’ll gain access to new areas and trigger new story events that move on through the plot. So you’ll find more and more of Hogwarts accessible to you as a player, switching between different characters, until it becomes a really huge, immersive, explorable, open environment — to which you’ll return between story events to discover more secrets and learn more things.

Additional images:
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Everybody knew it already, and just a few days ago it was made official by Warner Brothers and LEGO in a joint press release:

Warner Bros. Consumer Products (WBCP) announced today an extension of its successful partnership with leading toy manufacturer, The LEGO Group, to bring the magical world of Harry Potter to fans everywhere. Under the agreement, The LEGO Group is creatively tapping into the Harry Potter magic to develop spell-binding construction sets and a board game inspired by the property in anticipation of the November 19 theatrical release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I, as well as the upcoming release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 in 2011.

“We have enjoyed a longstanding, successful partnership with The LEGO Group around Harry Potter and we are delighted to continue this relationship as we approach the release of the seventh film,” said Karen McTier, executive vice president, domestic licensing and worldwide marketing, Warner Bros. Consumer Products. “Fans of the franchise will be excited to discover the wonderfully original LEGO products inspired by the beloved stories and characters.”

“The world of Harry Potter has inspired some of our most successful products and we are thrilled to continue creating imaginative play opportunities for fans everywhere,” said Jill Wilfert, vice president, global licensing for LEGO Group. “The magical stories brought to life in the films give us the potential for an incredible array of offerings, the best of which are represented in our upcoming lines.”

Full press release

We now have photos of the sets that were shown at Toy Fair 2010 in New York from Figures.com. I had expected they would have shown up officially at the London Toy Fair. Huw at Brickset who saw some of those sets in London had predicted that they would be well received and I believe they will be as well, if the pictures are a good indication.

The sets shown:
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Last weekend, Kris Abel from CTV News visited the Canadian Toy & Hobby Fair and got a good look at upcoming LEGO sets from the LEGO Canada display. He posted a lot of pictures (would have loved more from some of the Atlantis sets) and a lot of them I was surprised at. They were some of the first good photos I’ve seen of some of the unreleased sets scheduled for later in the year.

A few highlights:

8077 Atlantis Exploration HQ

8078 Portal Of Atlantis

My observation on the Atlantis sets:
* The 8077 Atlantis Exploration HQ looks to be shaping up well. The first blurry shots I saw a while back made it look closer to the 7775 Aqua Raiders Aquabase Invasion. It looks to be a square-ish/self-contained structure which makes sense. I’m assuming the vehicles will dock on top.
* The 8078 Portal of Atlantis (the infamous Shark Temple or Shark Castle) is bigger than I thought and looks to have a lot of really cool and unique parts. It’s hard to get a sense of the minifigs since they were mixed together with other sets. There looks to be some parts in colors that we haven’t seen before. The box shows 898 pieces but that’s obviously subject to change since it’s a prototype. I’m not sure on new minifigs – there is a skeleton with some diving gear on that has a trident symbol on their head. You can barely make out what looks to be the “turtle warrior” on top of the Portal, that’s been discussed in the past.
* Kris mentioned when discussing the Space Police sets that Atlantis was the focus this year, hence the lack of a lot of new Space Police sets.

As Kris notes, a lot of the upcoming sets are prototypes/mock-ups and details are not yet finalized. Nothing from Harry Potter and nothing new from the Toy Story line that’s not already out. I’m not quite as interested in the World Racers line or the Hero Factory line, but it looks like both could give us some new parts or older parts in new colors. Looking at the boxes for the World Racers, I think they’ll probably sell very well to the target audience.

Some of the other sets shown (besides 8077/8078) include quite a few sets that are currently available and some that are limited right now or unavailable (depending on area), such as:
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