I'm only posting this because while I don't know how they could have possibly done it different, the mechanics behind actually unlocking locks once you obtain the ability to do so is extremely frustrating and not at all evident what the hell you are actually supposed to do in order to get it done. Perhaps on PC, like many things, this process is more straight-forward and accomplishable, but for people playing on PS5 - which has likely gone up a lot since the special price in January - it is a very frustrating experience because the instructions on screen are not helpful and there isn't any real indication of what the hell you are actually meant to do to get it done.
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After a few hours of following the main story, you are going to have passed by dozens of locks that are standing in the way of you getting to some chests that are on the other side. So when you do finally get offered the unlock spell by some drunk adult in the castle you probably have a reaction of "hell yeah!" just like I did. That glee will likely quickly turn into the first time you have ever had to get the internet involved as you wildly spin the two areas of the lock puzzle trying to make something happen.
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So every lock that I have encountered looks like this and there are a bunch of moving parts. There are only two things that you really need to concern yourself with out of everything that is moving.
The L stick controls the movement of the inner circle and the R stick controls the outer circle. While it isn't clear when you are first doing it, it doesn't really matter which one of the notches that you put your red or green laser pointer into as each notch does the same rotation no matter where it is.
It also doesn't matter if you turn the circles clockwise or counter-clockwise. So forget all of that. There is only two things that are going to happen when you are messing with this that matter at all and you need to pay attention to these two things.
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At a certain point in the outer ring that is controlled by the R stick, a little light will turn on in the bottom right hand corner and the gears down there in the, I guess you would call it south-east corner of the screen, will start to rotate and a green light will appear if you have the stick held in just the right place. Do NOT continue to rotate it even though this will appear as though it is getting somewhere.
Something similar will happen with the L stick on the inner ring but instead of lighting up the south-east, the gears in the middle will start to spin. Once again, do NOT continue to rotate the stick.
What you need to do is to keep both the L and R sticks held on the spot in the rotation that make these movements happen and hold them there. Some locks are trickier than others but they all function in the same way. If you hold both R and L at the exact point in the rotation that causes the separate movements, they will spin in unison and after a couple of seconds the big lock on the left will rise up, unlocking the lock that you are working on. Do not focus on trying to manually move any other part of the lock because you cannot control them. This is what confused me because I kept thinking that the various grooves in the spinny thing mattered and that I was somehow moving the middle bit with where I positioned my laser. It makes zero difference which of the notches that you initially place the laser pointer in.
So in summary
- Move L stick until center part starts to rotate and hold it in the position that makes that movement happen
- Move R stick until the gears in the South East of the screen start to move and then hold it in the position that makes that movement happen
- After a few seconds of both parts moving in unison the lock will unlock.
- It makes no difference which of the notches you place either of the "lasers" into at the start
I really don't know what they could have done to make this process easier to understand, but I know that I am not alone in finding this particular part of the game difficult to figure out because there are dozens of Reddit posts alone about exactly this topic. Like many issues on consoles, I believe that this confusion originates from the difficulty associated in porting a game from PC to console controllers.
Also, remember that this is not Skyrim. You can unlock a lock right in front of the owner of whatever it is that you are unlocking and nothing will happen to you.