The four Hogwarts Houses are essential to Harry Potter lore, so it was logical to find them in Niantic's latest mobile game.
Also, you can put an end to your anxiety — no, the Sorting Hat is not present in the game to impose which house you will belong to. You don't have to be a Slytherin!
Seriously though, the choice of House is yours. Just go to the Ministry ID menu (wizard icon in the bottom left) > House > then select your badge under the House section!
Some details on your choice of the House:
- Your choice of house is not final. You can freely change your coat of arms whenever you want.
- Your House choice influences the color of your avatar in play (blue for Ravenclaw, red for Gryffindor, green for Slytherin and yellow for Hufflepuff).
- For the purists among us, know that it is possible to act as if you were submitting to the Sorting Hat, by clicking on the intersecting arrows at the top left of the badge selection screen. A random House will then be given to you.
Finally, we will allow ourselves a little moment of reflection here — it's possible that a free choice of House risks creating an imbalance between the teams.
Where in Pokémon GO the choice of team color naturally splits the player base into three roughly equal parts, it is highly unlikely to see the same thing happening in HPWU. In our humble opinion, we will likely see an avalanche of witches and wizards in Gryffindor....
Certainly, for the moment, HPWU doesn't intend to make Houses compete with each other, nor even to organize Wizard duels. But if Niantic decides later to introduce competition between the Houses, it will be necessary to give full powers to the Sorting Hat!