Apparently Hogwart's Legacy is going to be a TV show now!

 Something's wrong, I can feel it...

See now this is what I was talking about! I have been keeping up with the Last of Us as it's ticked along in episodes, I and several million others if those generous viewing figures are anything to go by, and as good as the show is (if slightly rushed in events) I've always found myself disquiet about the precedent it's success will set upon the 'marketplace of ideas' that is modern Hollywood. And yes, I do use 'Hollywood' as a shorthand for all modern day media, even though I know that is factually a bit spotty; if only I cared enough to stop. Because the modern media machine is like a shark swimming around in the deep blue, all it needs is to catch the slightest whiff of chum from half an ocean away and that predator launches all over it's the prey like rats on a carcass. And The Last of Us has been no small success. If numbers are to be trusted, that show has to be one of the biggest hits of this year and last year too. All while being one of the most faithful video game adaptations we've ever had; copycats were an inevitability.

That being said, I do find myself of two minds upon learning that the Hogwarts Legacy team are in talks to produce their own TV show based on the world they constructed. On the one hand that sounds like yet another one of those hair-trigger adaptations shoot out from the barrel directly after the world's honeymoon phase with the game, whilst the bedsheet are still warm. Yes, Hogwarts Legacy has done gangbuster numbers, but that doesn't mean it's the greatest thing since sliced bread! And it's narrative isn't a touch on The Last of Us' story, in the slightest! On the otherhand, I can see the connection in name and setting as more of a case of happenstance, because at the end of the day there's not really any reason why a Hogwarts Legacy TV show would be an adaptation of the game; it would really just be a Harry Potter TV Show.

Surely the Warner Bros team have been thinking of making one for a while now. Ever since it became clear that J.K. Rowling would not step back from writing bad scripts for the Fantastic Beasts movies, it was clear that the Harry Potter franchise needed a new avenue if it wanted to relight itself for the new age. 'The Cursed Child' is rumoured to be getting an adaptation featuring the returned cast from the movies, but considering the general consensus around the actual quality of that story, such a promise sounds more like a threat. (I just hope that an adaptation will give us a full blow animated rendition of the supposed story where Astoria Greengrass jumps back in time to 'do the dirty' with no-nose. I need that insanity visualised.) Further rumours of a general Harry Potter reboot are met with universal retching noises from the supposed target demographic. And after the box office performance of 'Secrets of Dumbledore', or lack thereof, it's clear that the story of Newt Scamander will end as unfinished as it... actually, his story really wrapped itself up at the end of the first movie. He's been pretty much sleeping his way through the rest of the 'Fantastic Beasts' movies anyway.

Hogwarts Legacy in setting presents something of a fresh start and clean break away from all that happened in the 1990's. (The time period of Harry Potter.) The basic ties of familiarity are there, but the 1800's are full of their own concerns, with poachers hunting magical beasts, Goblins waging war against Wizards and Ancient Magic dripping off of every curtain. For the first time since 'Philosophers Stone', a new TV show set in this time would present a totally fresh opportunity for newcomers to jump into the franchise of Harry Potter, which would be the mounting point for newly minted millennial parents to introduce their bratty kids to the world they used to read about in school. (Look at me, I'm talking like a marketing stooge now. These courses are really starting to get the better of how I think, aren't they?)

The actual narrative of Hogwarts Legacy is surprisingly light and doesn't carry all that many personable characters behind it's script when it comes to the protagonist or their school friends, which makes it more than likely that any TV show set in this time would, by share necessity, have to construct it's own guiding narrative. Which suits me just fine because the game I played left more than enough room for any such story to slide on in around the events of that game without causing any ruckus whatsoever. In many ways, the only point of this game was to conjure a world for the Harry Potter mythos that could exist without the glasses kid or his painfully extended lore, and everything else the game delivered was just a bonus ribbon on the package. A TV show could happily exist within that newly minted world, doubling down on it's affirmation by bringing actual characters and complex narratives into the framework, which is the one thing holding back the game from being truly legendary in my eyes. There could actually be a world were both the TV show and this game series exist without treading on each other's shoes at all.

Being put to TV, Hogwarts Legacy could benefit from telling a wider story that covers a wider breadth of the wizarding world. For example, and keeping to the narrative of the game, we could follow a bevy of characters from across the wizarding world that all have conflicting perspectives on the Goblin rebellion, with supporters and dissenters all being given their breadth of humanity and purpose to pack some extra layer of nuance behind the somewhat important movement at the heart of the world's story. Maybe we could have one character be a Goblin who is outspoken about improving the lot of his folk but whom doesn't resort to crude tactics of his more brutish brethren at the beginning of the series. Then we might witnesses as throughout the series that Goblin is subjected to injustice after injustice, a beating here to a protest turning into a massacre there, until by the end of the series his taking to arms against the wizarding kind feels almost just and necessary, at least given his situation. That's the kind of muti-layered characters that can't be built in a fixed-perspective world like the one Hogwarts Legacy presents in it's game form.

Of course, I refer to any future with a Hogwarts TV series as a package deal with an upcoming game sequel, because at this point it's pretty much a done deal that we're getting more Legacy games. Although nothing has been written in the stones as of yet, Hogwarts Legacy made around 850 million within the space of two weeks and the team didn't have any DLC plans ready to capitalize on that flurry of fans. So making a sequel is just basic business sense. Plus, Warner Bros. have been needing a win for the Harry Potter franchise for a while now, so investing into more games in this series seems like a no brainer. Plus, there's plenty of wanting features that the Legacy team are coyly teasing might worm their way into a sequel, proving the idea is definitely buzzing around the studio. (Such as playable Quidditch!) We could feasibly have a climate where the future Hogwarts Legacy 2 releases alongside a future series of this supposed TV show for some of that sweet cross promotional marketing all the kids are raving about these days.

As far as news could go for upcoming video game to TV adaptations; this is by far the worst idea I've ever heard of. In fact, I'm almost happy to welcome any expanded Harry Potter media that doesn't have Ezra Miller in it, because that actor's entire deal just makes my stomach churn. I just hope that whatever happens the key-most rules of adaptation are adhered to- don't try to overwrite the legitimacy of the game's narrative with a new one unless the new narrative is objectively better, don't overwrite the custom character of the game (thus robbing fans of their place in the universe) and don't mention Zootopia porn. Because after Resident Evil, you just never know what these rapid show executives are going to come up with next.

Hogwarts Legacy Review

Just because you can exterminate darkness, that doesn't mean that you should.

I am a millennial. That is my charge and my punishment. And being that most cursed of generations, just below or above Gen Z depending on who's doing the judging, it is pretty much a given that I have sat down and consumed the conglomerate mega-titan that is Harry Potter within my lifetime. Either by reading the books or watching the movies, everyone of my age bracket found themselves hopelessly bewitched by the tales of J.K. Rowling to such a degree that I know for a fact many of my contemporaries (and myself) found themselves severely upset when they reached the age of 11 and their Owl did not arrive. I was a reader, consuming the entire book series through at least twice, but I was enough of a Potter addict to watch most of the movies as well. (Still haven't seen Deathly Hallows Part 2) As well as play all of the move tie-in games that I could get my grubby little mitts on, of course.

But even with all the might of the media conglomerate machine that was the Harry Potter empire in it's prime, there was always this ever present longing wrought in my flesh wanting to be closer to the world of Potter. To climb into the pages of the book and live the world of attending 'Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry'. As with any good fiction, those urges transcended the realm of imagination and clung like a fever throughout the years. Games are typically the medium to feed and relieve such stresses- but Harry Potter games did have an unfortunate tendency to be... move tie-ins. To be fair, the Potter games were better than your typical tie-in trash that other movie franchises subjected the industry to- but I wouldn't call any one Harry Potter video game itself exceptional. The first two are classics, no doubt; but more for the nostalgic connotations than the strengths of their fibre.

When Hogwarts Legacy was announced, first as a rumoured MMO than later as a single player RPG, all the words seemed to fit perfectly into place to describe the sort of game every Potter fan wanted, even if they didn't realise it. Free open world exploration of Hogwarts? Putting my own character in the game and experiencing the process of learning magic? Progressing along several lines of deep RPG levelling systems to create a wizard or witch unique to us? Why, that's something the Harry Potter games, by definition as adaptations, could never have offered us! To say that expectations surrounding the delivery of this game were high seems like a gross underestimation- perhaps it would be more apt to label them Everest-ian. As in- only the absolute best of the best could so much as dream of reaching the peaks necessary to pay off the promise of that pitch.

And yet for whatever twisted reason it would appear that I had faith in the team at Avalanche Software from the word go. That's the only way I can explain why I decided to pre-order the game from the moment I saw it hit store fronts, an action I never do unless I'm sure of the quality of the product. With Hogwarts Legacy however, I was disquiet. I wanted to believe in the hype train the community was riding, but at the same time I kept hearing disappointing blows to the image of the 'full immersion Hogwarts experience' that I dreamed of. It would only be focusing on a Fifth Year instead of running the gambit from First to Seventh, there would be no playable Quidditch, lessons would be events rather than obligations, there would be no house points system, and for perhaps the first time in the entire franchise- chocolate frogs wouldn't be collectibles! (The horror!) When the date finally arrived, I'll admit I did my best to temper my excitements with the realities fed to us.

Today not only is the game out, but I have played it from start to finish- completing enough of the game to have experienced every activity the game offers and actually coming a few shy hairs of 100%-ing the whole thing: which I don't typically do. With that level of experience I can properly introduce Hogwarts Legacy as an open world game mechanically in the same vain as those checklist Ubisoft open worlds that have become the bane of the industry, and yet this specimen comes doused with some curious splashes of personality to such a degree that the material is elevated above it's station. Until I reached the literal final few hours of play I never felt the chore aspect of being waylaid from a mission objective in order to solve a Merlin Puzzle, or hunt after a Field Guide Page that I heard tinkle on the edge of my Revelio cast; I enjoyed the chase, even more so than the rewards. 

I think the key to why exploration works is a key point to focus on when it comes to Hogwarts Legacy, because when I strip the package away to it's core most USP: (Unique Selling Point) I land on the prospect of exploring one of the most legendary fictitious locations in cinema and modern literature. That alone cannot really be understated because, obvious though it might seem to say, before this game Hogwarts never really existed. I mean of course it existed within our minds, built from the power of wordcraft and the magic of movie sets, but between neither of them was a coherent and cohesive layout of a place ever established. It almost seems adversarial to the castle itself to try and limit it's dimensions to any sort of comprehensive degree. Almost as though if I could rationalise the place, it's many halls, indecisive staircases and endless dozens of secrets, the magic of imagination that bought the place to life would fade from the stones. Like the anti-Tinkerbell, believing in the place felt like it would be the death of it. Overcoming that feeling took a very special ingredient which I think this game packs in droves: personality.

Creating a vast fictional Scottish castle sitting atop a lake is one thing, but imbuing the layout, colours, residents and furniture with the personality of Hogwarts would take nothing less than a team possessed by the demanding demon of exacting detail. It would take the mechanical excellence to visualise the work of the movie and slot it together in a way that made sense and was intuitive to play through. The bravery not to scale down on the task, but to commit to cramming the castle's every nook and cranny somewhere into the explorable game world. And of course the creativity and initiative to design a plethora of random encounters between rabble-rousing students, duelling attic ghosts, one banister-sliding poltergeist and a now-famous pair of sentient suits of armour- in order to breathe a degree of life into those halls.

I can happily report that the achievement of Hogwarts alone is every bit the wonder I hoped it to be, and that when I bought the game expecting the worst I had convinced myself the price of admission would be worth it for the virtual tour of Hogwarts alone and I still stand true to that assessment. I understand it's another symptom of irrational nostalgia to get all fuzzy-hearted when walking out into that courtyard where Professor Umbridge would one day aggressively eject Trelawney from the castle, just before walking out across that famous crooked bridge atop which Ron would one day turn around and say "Who are you and what did you do to Hermione Granger?" I have these memories close to that pale diseased throbbing thing I keep locked behind my lungs, and their warmth responds to seeing these locations faithfully brought to digital life with a fluttering whimsy probably unique to others like myself. I understand if that doesn't quite translate to the older generation who approach this game, nor the newer, but I can recognise that twinkle in the eye of another around my age who spots that one special moment they remember so well because in that moment they, like me, get it.

Of course, for whatever reason this digital tour game had an RPG attached to the package, so I might as well get around to reviewing that as well, eh? Right away the first thing the game places in front of the player... is actually the accessibility options screen. (They just shove those options right in your noggin, it's quite the jumpscare.) But after that we get to character creation and as far as finally realising my dream of being my own Wizard in the Harry Potter mythos- the customizer if fine. Nothing great, but better than Destiny. The character models themselves all look exceptionally high quality, which is good considering the player character's mug is slapped centre screen for the majority of the run time, but I was very surprised about the apparent lack of body size options. (My dreams of roleplaying as Gandalf Cartman have been shattered!)

However as far as 'Role Playing' goes, character customisation- which extends to wand choice, picking your house and later playing fashionista, seems to be the extent to which the developers wanted to explore that genre. (Outside of the levelling tree.) If you're hoping to mould the personality of your unique Witch or Wizard through branches of meaningful choices that have rippling consequences throughout the runtime- you're going to be caught very dry. What few choices the game provides are largely inconsequential or simply just mission reward extortion choices that also don't appear to have any consequences. Nearer the end you do get a few choices, some that actually would have an impact if this game had any sort of epilogue showing them off, but I suppose that empty space is being left open for the sequel that Warner Bros. seems very enthused to embark on already.

From the outset of the narrative you are introduced as a late-inductee fifth year to Hogwarts, and just like your character the game very much expects you to catch up to the pace of the plot without much prior explaining. You would have thought that the writers would use the excuse of a new kid haphazardly thrust into the world of Wizards and Witches to deftly introduce them, and the players, to the state of the wizarding world in the 1800's. (A setting totally alien to all Potter fans before this game) But instead we get a rather hasty "Follow me and figure it out" style introduction. It was about five hours into the game before I accepted a side quest in which a goblin character was kind enough to lay out who this villainous Ranrok even was and his whole deal. Which seems a bit like a misstep for the storytellers. Shouldn't I know the most basic details of the main villain- what is this, Dark Souls? (These references are getting out of hand. I'm going to have to get a 'Miyazaki' jar in my room if this keeps up.) 

Exploring the world and trying to piece together the basic lore are only two pillars of the Hogwarts Legacy package: Combat is the third. Hogwarts Legacy uses a vaguely Arkham inspired system of attack and response with basic casting, blocking and rolling: It's a deceptively simple set-up that can quickly spiral into chaos when surrounded by 15 goblins all chucking arrows and slashing for your throat! Where the systems blossom out a bit is with the specific named spells that you can learn throughout the game by attending school quests and completing cleverly designed 'school assignments' that nudge the player to try out newly introduced systems in combat or open world exploration tasks. These spells are pretty much the lifeblood pumping through the combat system which makes fighting an army of wizards feel so alive and dynamic.

Spells are freely mapped to a four-piece quick select (with further quick select options unlocked in the RPG tree) and operate on a cool-down timer; to compensate, these spells all have thematically appropriate unique effects on opponents in battle. Accio summons enemies to float helplessly before you, Depulso does the exact opposite- sending those same enemies flying, Arresto Momentum pauses them in a brief stasis, Diffindo shoots violent slices through the air; all these spells operate in a unique fashion. Now at first the only purpose of these spells is really to break through specific magical 'Protego' variants on enemies, which are handily colour coded with the 'category' of spell needed to shatter them. But as you become more powerful and unlock more talents some of these spells become specifically useful to certain situations requiring an almost intrinsic knowledge of which spell is mapped to which slot in which set of quick spells.

For example, Descendo is used to pick up enemies and slam them roughly into the ground, however you can also use it on a giant spider at the moment it rears up its head for an unblockable attack in order to take advantage of it's momentum and bury it's head in the ground, rendering it completely stunned for a flurry of free hits. The giant toads can be caught in the middle of their jabbing tongue attack with a quickly timed 'Levioso' which suspends them by that appendage, and if you follow that up with a cruelly timed Diffindo you'll slice right through that suspended tongue pretty much instantly killing them. These dynamic combat opportunities don't readily present themselves with handy button prompts or scripted action sequences, but are rather encouraged with dynamically spawning combat challenges and left up for the player to discover and exploit; conferring a sense of real intuitive ingenuity when you pull them off.

Of course, like all games with a combat style of it's ilk, Hogwarts Legacy does feature it's own 'press to do cool thing' meter; and this time around it's called the 'Ancient Magic' skill. Ancient Magic is essentially a finisher move built up by securing a combo in the tens and then collecting the glowing particles that shoot out of the enemy as a result. (which is a little bit of a clunky way to fill a special meter in my opinion, I shouldn't have to break my combat flow to work up towards a finisher.) The reward is a flashy and exciting burst of 'Ancient Magic' which can do anything from summon a bolt of lightning on the enemies heads to permanently polymorphing them into poultry, to just straight blasting them off into the middle distance. All mostly horrifically lethal ways for a school child to handle their battles, but as long as there's no blood (and there isn't) we can just brush by the brutality of it all. (Although some of the post combat flavour text does imply that we are knowing and happily killing these goblins and dark wizards. There's no Yakuza-level "As long as I don't acknowledge they're definitely dead, then maybe they're not!" No, these fools are buried.) 

Now one of my favourite aspects of the Hogwarts Legacy package is the fact that the very same diversity in combat I boasted about thanks to the variety of spells, is present in exploration thanks to these same, versatile, spells. The checklist open world of Hogwarts Legacy is littered with puzzles and challenges that all require understanding and manipulation of your spell list to conquer, and most of the time whenever you're up against these challenges the game has enough faith in it's systems and how it has introduced them to the player for it to just leave us without any hints or overly telegraphed solutions. Some of these puzzles, between the Merlin Trials and the Magic hot spots, and even just some randomly dotted caves, feature really free-form puzzles to test your understanding of your magical toolkit, from figuring out where to levitate certain objects to become floating platforms, to working out what statues should be blasted apart and which should be repaired, to figuring out shadow-based locks and fire-urn patterns. (This world has a lot more puzzle variety than any Elder Scrolls game has boasted so far.) As a card-carrying Hitman lover, I simply adore that level of mutually shared player-developer trust. This is how open world games should handle puzzles.

Unfortunately, the rewards for a lot of these puzzles, or at least the puzzles not specifically tied to a Field Guide challenge to increase Ancient Magic slots or Inventory spots, tie into what I consider to be this game's weakest aspect: it's loot. Yes, Hogwarts Legacy features a looting system borrowed right out of Destiny or any number of those 'gear power level' styles of games with their endless pointless rarity systems and level-locked stat increases and bonus effects and more development effort then was really required to a system that adds nothing to the core experience. Hogwarts Legacy has mechanics for improving gear and slotting enchantments and all that 'Live Service' guff, but it's all functionally meaningless in action because the combat is already neatly balanced. You do appropriate damage to creatures your level and most every overworld enemy scales to your exact level anyway; rendering skill scores largely redundant. Occasionally you'll meet an open world boss who's scaled higher than you, but in those situations your little buff to your legendary school robes doesn't do much of anything- should you choose to engage in that fight, (And I suspect that the main campaign alone requires you to fight a few enemies far above your level) you're just in for a slog fest against a sponge-tank whether you like it or not.

The one aspect of loot which is worth collecting, however, is the fashion aspect of it. All loot is formed as clothing- (except for gold, some potions and some enchantments) and that clothing can be utilised to fashion your Hogwarts student however you wish. Lending itself appropriately to the theme, Hogwarts Legacy features a totally free 'Transmog' system so you can change the appearance of any piece of gear to look like any clothing item you've acquired in the past; and with dozens of some decently high quality and varied options to choose between, Legacy actually offers a surprisingly varied pool of customisation options, making the fashion aspect of loot more interesting than the gear stats. Some quests in the game seem to acknowledge how much more significant visual appeal is, with the recovery of some legendary piece of clothing rewarding the player with the Transmog option for that clothing rather than some quickly out-levelled hunk of gear itself. (The only annoying aspect of Transmog is that it doesn't transfer when you put on a new piece of gear which is a bit of a headache in a game that expects you to gear swap as often as this one.)

Whilst we're on the topic of 'weak points', I'd like to highlight one of the most annoying openworld elements being the 'Demiguise' collectibles and how 'Alohomora' works. The unlocking spell is frustratingly tied to the recovery of dozens of these tiny Demiguise statues that are scattered across the world inside and out of Hogwarts and can only be collected at night. I've scoured locations said to contain them, but because of how small they are even the Revelio charm seems to have trouble highlighting the things for collection, making them already a hassle to collect. Then when you get your reward, the ability to open locked doors, you'll be disappointed to learn that Alohomora is simply a gateway to a lockpicking minigame! The minigame itself isn't hard, but it's just a unnecessary roadblock to the progression of your spell-crafting process. Isn't the spell supposed to be doing the lock-picking for me? Why slow down exploration for the benefit of no one? 

At least the team made up for that with the freedom of traversal options, particularly that of the broom. The first time you get on the broom and zoom around Hogwarts with the swell of the orchestra, it really does hit on all the right notes to be a truly magical moment. That spectacle may not last, but the acute beauty of this game world from the skies does warrant an appreciative pause and nod even at that game's twilight hours. Truly, giving the players freedom to whip out that broomstick and take to the clouds at nearly any moment was the right decision. I only wish that some of the outdoor walkways at Hogwarts had more take-off and land options; its' annoying having to search for a courtyard to go sky surfing. As for the other modes of transport, flying mounts and ground mounts- pretty unremarkable, honestly. They're too slow to be worth it and the creatures don't display the level of personality that, say, Red Dead animals do- so I'm not as attached to my summonable Thestral as I am to my old-school broom.

But the creatures of this world do have a purpose other than riding thanks to the extensive 'Room of Requirement' metagame built alongside the rest of Hogwarts Legacy. This space for base building and potion crafting acts as more of a base of operations than the player's house common room does. (The common room is actually surprisingly underutilised throughout the whole game.) You can build spells to buff or heal you in combat, grow plants to whip out as consumable combat accessories or, yes, rescue magical creatures from poachers and store them in your 'Fantastic Beasts' inspired Vivarium. I do think the range of potions and plants available to the player is a little meagre, but combat already had enough going on I suppose, keeping potions and plants simple was probably a mindful exercise in restraint.

The Vivarium collection of creatures is really one of the larger side activities that Hogwarts Legacy has to offer, with the wider open world just covered in animal dens and poacher camps and questlines that touch on some of rarest magical creatures around. There's not so much depth that the player is ever at danger of being lost in these systems, and not quite enough rare and hidden magical monster for my tastes, but being able to care for and breed the creatures available is enough to feel appropriately involved in this aspect of the Wizarding world. Plus, interacting with a variety of cute beasts is fun in any game under any circumstance, which is probably why this game also features a 'pet' button for the many cats scattered across the world. (No dogs from what I saw. Guess the preference war landed with the felines this time around.) There is certainly room to expand upon this feature in a sequel, perhaps with greater creature variety or valid habitat preference, but what's there is entirely serviceable.

In narrative, Hogwarts Legacy attempts to pay homage to the source material with a largely mystery-based story revolving around just how special the player character is for some reason they don't quite understand. It's quite formulaic and lacks in surprise, and the villains have very pond-deep levels of depth about them- but neither really detracts from the true wonder: living out the life of Hogwarts. You'll meet and interact with a variety of students and teachers and come to really care about a few of your closet friends through questlines that are extensive and decently interesting. I found Natty's backstory to be quite heartfelt and charged and I think Sebastian's story is actually more interestingly written and executed than the main campaign itself! However the lack of a meaningfully defined main character for these well written characters to bounce off does make this emotional outpours feel a little one-sided a lot of the time. There's only so many times I can hear my character perform the "That's awful" platitude voice before it starts to grate at me. I also wish some of the teachers were better explored with their own questlines and backstories, as most don't really have any interactions with the player beyond their class. Of course, I also know there's a certain sector of the community who further wishes we got the chance to explore Professor Garlick a bit closer, if you catch my meaning.

In spectacle I think the main narrative does a fine job cementing itself in the moments it wants to, the extended puzzle dungeons were a little dry but the 'Deathly Hallows' storybook scene totally scrubbed the floor with the typical 'dream sequence' Ubisoft moment that every open world is beholden to since Far Cry 3. However the core questline stretches itself to last over the school year and many times the only excuse for putting the main story on the back burner is literally "I have an appointment in London so please put your destiny on hold until I get back" or "Give me a couple of months to research that painfully vague clue you were just given." Some of the companion side questlines borrow this formula too, and whilst format-wise I appreciate the way this approach relieves pressure on the player and permits them to go exploring, it feels like a lazy crutch for halting momentum and tension.

There are boss encounters in the game, but a lot of them are reused and lack any really creative element to them beyond animation sets; which seems almost criminal considering the amount of spells on hand in combat. Why not have a boss in an impenetrable metal encasing that can only be hurt once the metal is heated up, or a dive-bombing winged boss who needs to be forcibly dragged down to the ground atop their own payload in order to damage them? There is incredible potential for boss creativity that just goes utterly wasted and I'm genuinely shocked the team didn't bother go down this route even once. At least the final boss is memorable for mere spectacle alone- if the rest of the bosses had a bit more going on with them, I would have been largely happy with that as the finale anyway.

Now a topic I don't usually cover in these reviews is the technical issues, and that's because my computer is a relic from the Antebellum age and any issues I encounter are typically not representative of the general audience. That being said, I happen to know I'm not the only one who had to sit through a prolonged 'Shader Compiling' sequence whenever I launched the game. I know there's already a mod that skips it, but it's amazing to me that the shaders aren't locked in after the initial launch- and that we still get shader stutters in game! (Although the stutters might just be a me problem) The game also has some basic progression bugs in some of the questlines too, usually the ones that require a cell switch. Most of them can be worked around, the 'abandon quest' function is helpful for restarting after a sequence gets broken which I had to use once or twice; (Specifically with Sebastian refusing to spawn in the Undercroft on certain occasions.) but I wouldn't call such sporadic roadblocks 'endemic'.

Summary

Hogwarts Legacy is in many ways the game that we dreamt about playing in the highs of the Harry Potter age and yet in some other ways it still falls just that bit short of the perfect image we all imagined. What makes me so passionate about summarising it is simply that with everything the game commits to, in it's exploration, combat and side activities, the developers at Avalanche excelled in creating robust mechanics that feel fun to interact with and learn from. Playing through Hogwarts Legacy leaves me with the feeling that all the correct tools are in the toy box to create that legendary game, but the team literally just ran out of time to put it all together; which is a prospect that makes me ever so excited for the sequel that has all but been announced thanks to the runaway success of Hogwarts Legacy commercially. The game I played was genuinely great, but with a more daring narrative, greater choice and consequence, deeper side activities and more creative enemy design- I genuinely believe this series could reach sheer excellence on it's next go around. As it stands, the game I played will sing to people nostalgic of the source material, whilst probably falling just short of it's potential for those without those rose tinted spectacles equipped. Potter lovers have to buy this game, it's simply a must- but others should temper their expectation for an above-average open world title with some great ideas in some places and a few wanting ideas in others. Ultimately this makes for a difficult title to appropriately rate, which is why I would have to revert to the classic cheap-out of double scoring. Potter fans should treat this game with all the respect that an -A Grade demands, whilst others are probably looking at more of a B Grade game on my arbitrary and increasingly esoteric rating system. Hogwarts Legacy is one of those games I never dreamed would ever be made back in the day, so it feels almost callous to want for more still but I know the muddy bones of a potential masterpiece are buried in this solid game. Still, now I feel empowered to vie for the realisation of some of my other dream projects: fighting game that crossovers every single fictional pop-culture character in existence with appropriate power levels and embracing how broken that would be, when?

Harry Potter the Yakuza film

 Potter finally did it- he became a true Gokudo!

Insanity time! You know all of those AI image videos that depict various pop culture entertainment products reimagined in the style of various 80's films? "Dark Souls as an 80's Dark Fantasy Movie", "Cyberpunk 2077 in the style of Bladerunner", etc? Quite fun content and perhaps the only AI image generation that isn't embroiled in several undulating piles of controversial waste currently, give it a couple more weeks before the 'collective for the conservation of original 80's movie concept art' comes out swinging with Twitlonger. It was within the midst of all this endless computer created art mixed with the brutal tidal wave of creative instability that is the broiling minds of lower rung Youtube creators, that I discovered a video which created such a combination I wouldn't have even thought to conceptualise. 'Harry Potter as an 80's Yakuza film'.

It was another smash hit from Midjourney, of course; creating a sloth of Japanese cinema tinted screenshots of what looked like three or four Asian actors cosplaying as the entire wider Harry Potter cast because that system has a problem with creating distinct facial structures between pictures. But even then it absolute nailed the most important aspects of videos like this, inspiring the mind through it's range of pictures that started with Yakuza Hagrid meeting young huge-haired Harry Potter screaming through such classics as Crackhead Dobby and tatted-up Voldemort (who somehow looks almost more like Ralph Finnes than the movie Voldemort does, even with the Asian imaginary recasting) and of course, Adult Harry wielding his authentic period wand, a handgun, towards the screen. Before finishing on a reflective and ponderous flash-back image of Asian Hagrid and Asian Harry, standing in the middle of a beat-down back-alley market which I can only assume is 'Horizont Alley', the completely distinct universe version of the original Diagon Alley! (Huh? Horizont Alley actually exists in the lore thanks to Tencent's Wizard's Awakened? Dammit, J.K. you and your team took all the stupidest ideas already, didn't ya!)

And obviously this hasn't been something that I can just forget about and move on from. You don't just move past an event in your life that has totally changed your outlook on what it is to be human. There is no singular me anymore; just the person before they saw this video, and the thing that remains afterwards. I have to ruminate on what I've seen, digest it, and theorize a manner in which such a incredible imagination could be coherently brought to life instead of the actual reboot of the franchise that Warner Bros is apparently considering within the next couple of years. Hey, it's either this or desperately trying to ragebait by picking some random beloved game like Persona 4 Golden and accusing it of being misogynistic through some of the most eye-watering 'seeing just what I want to see' logical fallacies possible because I'm too creatively bankrupt to make anything original or of value. Huh, where did that come from? I don't know, try asking the headcases over at Eurogamer.

So this Harry Potter Yakuza concept I saw posed some interesting approaches to the narrative. Firstly, it focused on none of the specific events or characters of a single book and instead picked through a slew of favourites throughout the entire franchise. Voldemort, Dobby, Sirius, Bellatrix; all whilst showing the transition of Harry from thick-lensed child to what looks like a gun-wielding officer for some sort of special police task force. I've chosen to take this on the chin and come up with the basic outline of a Yakuza themed Harry Potter which can feature every one of these characters inside of a single movie, whilst providing the typical beats you'd expect from this style of cinema. As informed not by my wide knowledge of Japanese cinema, unfortunately, but my heavily familiarity with the Yakuza games which themselves, lo and behold, take many cues from such films and even riff on a few now and then.

Firstly, we have Harry coming under the protection of Hagrid. Now I think we can conflate the dual murders of Harry's Parents into his sudden adoption as one event. Instead of being a baby, Harry will be a young boy who witnesses the Yakuza Captain called Voldemort come to squeeze money out of the Potter parents only to have James try and stand up to him. Voldemort will kill them both, yadda yadda, and Harry will witness it from afar, establishing the singular motivation that will colour and pollute all of his actions from then onwards. We can have Hagrid be a friend of the family or someone with that sort of connection that finds Harry the next day and accepts him under his wing recognising the boy has nowhere left to go in life. This is the first major format change from Harry Potter, as I fail to see a apt replacement for the concept of a Wizarding school within this crime drama universe, so I've decided to axe it entirely in place for an odd-couple set-up with gruff and personally troubled Hagrid raising the traumatised and quiet Harry Potter.

With this more terrestrial take on the Harry Potter mythos, the process of Harry Potter growing up through the years and meeting the various Yakuza-fied personalities of the world could be rather deftly switched in with your Yakuza typical learning to grow on the mean streets montage. You have the increadibly bizarre looking ginger Asian Ron as the best friend who exists to largely be a humanising plot point when his life is thrown into danger in the third act, you've got Asian Dumbledore who has such 'dojo master' energy seeping off of him I couldn't possible deprive the man of a role there- but aside from that everyone else would fit into their natural roles. Malfoy is the schoolyard bully who teaches Harry about everyday cruelty and serves as an example of representative justice when Harry learns martial arts and brutalises Malfoy only to be chastised for not enacting his vengeance on those who truly deserve it. And Hermione would either be the love interest who tragically dies at the end or the love interest of Ron who runs away with him at the end. Those are the two possible roles for her character in this genre, I'm sorry that's just the way it goes.

Where it'll get interesting will be leading into the later half of the movie wherein Harry, grown old enough to experience the rights and wrongs of the world and fiercely devoted to the ideals of justice, though skewered by his lens of vengeance, joins the Police force for the opportunity to directly strike out at the Yakuza which cost him his family. (Against the insistence of his new adoptive father Hagrid, of course.) Harry would distinguish himself in his pursuit of petty Yakuza operations as he works his way up to the bosses, but of course the stalemate preferred between Yakuza and the Police means that Harry rapidly gains far more enemies than friends. Even his childhood friends, all of whom have settled into more calm civilian professions, can't understand why he can't move on and keeps kicking the hornet's nest. Strapped for friends and feeling alone, Harry ends up coming into contact with an old friend of his Father's that he has never met before. Sirius, his father's closet friend and confidant, and the only person who seems to happily feed Harry's vengeful desires, even reaching out with his own underworld contacts to help Harry reach deeper into the Yakuza operations.

Together Harry and Sirius manage to ruffle the Yakuza clan such to the point where the Legendary Serpent himself is stirred, Voldemort. Not recognising which Cop is going rogue on his organisation, the curiosity of this doom-driven crusader intrigues the Yakuza enough to reach out to his cop contracts to look into Harry. This is when the stakes really ramp up. The Yakuza hit out, striking out at Harry's personal friends- kidnapping those he loves and brutally killing his adoptive father Hagrid to send a message. Enraged, yet more alone then ever, Harry stumbled into Voldemort's trap and finds himself face to face with the Snake king himself. What ensues would be a humiliation- Harry is battered and broken in front of his friends and those corrupt in the department who fed him the information that opened up this trap to begin with. And then the bombshell- in his investigations Voldemort discovered exactly who Harry was, and what's more- he knows what vengeance he wants. He finds it strange, however, that Harry hunts him so feverously, what when the man who sold out his Father and led Voldemort to his home that faithful day was no one than Sirius Black! (Cue the stereotypical twist moment!)

Harry is left to stew in this ponderous revelation, which he pulls before Sirius himself the next day. Sirius breaks down and reveals the source behind his many contacts. Turns out that Sirius, and James were once members of the Chinese Mafia (They love a bit of Chinese Mafia in these Yakuza movies) sent to infiltrate and muscle in to the Japanese mainland. Sirius was inelegant with his plans to seize control of the Japanese underworld, and despite his friend James' insistence he started leaning on contacts of the local Yakuza clans. The retaliation came swifter than Sirius expected, and not upon the head of the culprit at fault. Due to his hastiness, the overly eager and incautious Sirius unwittingly cost his best friend everything out of some selfish pursuit of personal glory- trying to prove something to himself regardless of how it effects others, snapping back to hurt him. Still, that shock had festered into a bitter rage. Sirius is ashamed, but not remorseful for the fact that he harnessed Harry's tragedy to use him as a weapon against the people he had hunted for so long, to do what he could not.

Such a revelation has a profound effect on Harry. Hadn't his own quest for vengeance led him somewhere similar? With the death of his foster father and the ongoing abduction of his friends? What was it that he really wanted out of all this, after all these years searching? Because the way he was going, it would end up being vengeance at the cost of everything and everyone. His few friends in the world. Was that something he could live with, was he prepared to carry that burden on his shoulders perhaps forever? Soul searching and personal confrontations leads Harry to realise the way he's been missing the forest for the trees. Gunning for his vengeance and ignoring the mess of the world around him, mess he was dutybound to manage, just as his foster father had taught him to do.

In this, the final act, Harry shifts his gears. Instead of pursuing the Yakuza, Harry turns his sight inwards towards the police, the very institution who had sold him out. Weeding out of the corruption he had blindly ignored for so very long and partnering properly with those that remain to go after Voldemort's many enterprises, the right way. Though he can't get his one on one with the man to take a life for the one that was stolen, he can hurt his enemy in a much longer lasting fashion- financially by targeting his fronts and shutting them down one by one using the information extracted from the department's corrupt. A clamping down that gets the Yakuza Captain feeling backed into a corner, and thus more inclined to do something stupid. And as it turns out, something stupid turns up sooner than anyone could have expected.

Feeling the clamps tighten around him, Voldemort knows he has to do something drastic to regain control of the city, and so he makes the boldest move that someone in his position can do- he employs his clan to attack the police station. His clan, afterall, is several tens of thousands of soldiers large, and there ain't but a couple thousand police men in the city. (Can you dig it?) What we have is a brutal procession where Voldemort's forces charge and overwhelm the city in a move where the Snake King believes himself to have crossed the line that no other Yakuza has done before, taking over an entire city. Harry and a small contingent of forces manage to barricade themselves away, but Voldemort's men are already kicking down their door to get to the one who spearheaded their anger. It's beginning to look like despite his best efforts, Harry's devotion to metering some sort of justice to his sworn enemy will lead him to his end. But just then, something miraculous happens.

Noise of scuffles start erupting from outside the station, the hundreds of men that Voldemort stormed the station with seem to be beset by someone. Confused, Voldemort has his men prepare for whoever would be foolish enough to attack a Yakuza captain, only to be stunned solid when in walks the Patriarch of his clan, Asian Grindlewald. (Yep, I'm roping in the prequels!) Like the rest of the clan, Grindlewald received Voldemort's call to action to storm this police station, only he found the absolute hubris of the order absolutely laughable. The balance of Yakuza and law enforcement, opposite facing pillars that together hold up society, is a sacred foundation of the Gokudo. Spitting in the face of that is the ultimate insult to the honour of the Yakuza, and a clear presentation that Voldemort's ambition has exceeded his capacity for discretion and respect. Attacking the police flies in the face of the clan, and of him, and an insult like that demands only one resolution. Grindlewald thus demands that Voldemort takes responsibility.

Recognising the trap he has been led into, set by Harry's careful campaign, the Yakuza captain has nowhere to turn to. All of his strength and influence was built into his role as a Yakuza boss, and now the only person higher than him has stripped him of all that authority, publicly. Recognising his destruction, Voldemort falls to his knees, just as one of Grindlewald's men rushes forward with the Tanto and cutting board, waiting for the fallen Captain to remove his own finger. Taking the blade in hand and catching the glint of his own shattered self in it's light, Voldemort sighs as he realises his only real option ahead of him. Thus, in a mad burst, Voldemort charges forth and plunges the Tanto into the heart of Grindlewald, instantly killing the clan Patriarch in front of everyone.

Everyone is stunned. On one hand they know they should rush to take down the man who attacked their beloved Patriarch, on the otherhand the undeniable power of the Snake King seemed to distort into an unstoppable, monstrous being even in the eyes of his former faithful. Recognising that even the wrath of his own group's walls can't hold him, Harry climbs out from his barricade to face the newly born Demon Snake. This time he doesn't face the man in the name of impassioned and brutal vengeance but of unshakable duty and burning heart for Justice. Not just the justice of the law, but also the Yakuza justice he just saw be trampled on by the disgraceful Captain. As much of a surprise to him though it is, Harry Potter now fights for the honour of the Yakuza as well as the police department.

What follows is a heartfelt and tense final confrontation between the two, wherein Harry's childhood of hardship and physical refinement fuel the passion of his martial form and resolve. Voldemort is stronger and more experienced then him, but he's also savage and attacks with the rage and abandon of a bloodied animal. Harry is calmer headed and swifter, relying on taught skill and reliable tactics. The same tactic he already manages to ensnare Voldemort with before. He weaves and ducks and teases at the Snake King's blows, frustrating and enraging the swinging Captain more and more whilst increasing the flurry of his blows. As Voldemort becomes more violent, he becomes sloppier. He doesn't even notice the glaring holes in his own guard before the first retaliation blow strikes him square across the mouth. And then another, and then the next. The Snake King can hardly comprehend what's happening as the relative boy has turned the tables on him and the Yakuza captain, who had wasted all his energy swinging at air, can merely sit and take it as he is pummelled to his knees, then off his feet, then to the ground in a pile.

Voldemort lies before Harry, broken and bloodied, his life at the end of Harry's bruised and purple first. All it would take is another sharp strike to finish the Snake King off, just as the watching crowds of Yakuza and even his fellow battered Police colleagues probably desire. Harry raises his fist, and in his mind he calls the images of his murdered parents for which he embarked on this revenge journey. But then the memory of Hagrid flashes before him, who wanted him to put away this vengeance which has consumed. Then of Dumbledore, who preached the responsibility of the martial artist for moderation and composure. And even of Sirius, who tried to manipulate Harry into this very position. In many ways Voldemort had ruined the trajectory of his life, killing his parents. But everything that had come of that made Harry who he was. Becoming a champion of the weak, wearing his proud police badge, standing up for the honour of his faithful and the criminals. What a height for a simple son of a mob member to rise. And what a distance it would be to fall if he threw it all away murdering his sworn enemy, now little more than a broken dog, beneath him. It wouldn't make sense. It wouldn't be right.

Harry lets his fist drop, but to his side. He replaces what would have been a killing blow with a metal cuff and before the gathered masses of cops and criminals reads the Snake King his rights and responsibilities as an arrestee. For the final scene, the trail of Voldemort plays on the station TV, with the still bruised and recovering police force all gathered around it. They celebrate as the former Yakuza Captain is sentenced, knowing his clan have forsaken him and the Snake will rot in his cell. Harry however, is the only member of the police not interested in the trial, sat at his desk. He already released his attachment to the case and his players the day he decided to spare Voldemort, and now he was free to commit his dedications elsewhere, such as to the framed photo he holds in hand, of himself and Hagrid back on the run-down market street in Horizont-Alley.

Which concludes my shotgun summary of my very own style Yakuza-style Harry Potter reimaging, informed as much by my own spur-of-the-moment ideas about what would make a good story as it was by the clichés that inform this style of cinema. With such a pitch, suddenly I find the rumour of an upcoming Harry Potter reboot not so ugly and insulting in the knowledge that it could turn out something like this. I mean it absolutely wouldn't, but it should. And I know there's so many characters I didn't include, but I was strapped for inspiration and pulled off what I could. If I were to try and make something more fully formed and including every major series character then my creative writing compulsions would force me to turn it into an actual book and this blog would have taken several months to write. Still, I hope this tease of Yakuza Potter scintillated some out there who dared to dream, like I did, what J.K.Rowling could be capable of is she wasn't such a grumpy and boring old witch.

The mechanisms of the boycott

 The Moon is out looking for trouble.

Ah, the humble 'Boycott'; the singular line of defence that the consumer has against the grubby hungry companies that feed upon them like carrion pigeons. Morality, empathy and even legality are mere suggestions to the ears of the money makers and shakers who rule this capitalistic world, thus as lowly buyers we can't expect laws, guidelines or even basic human decency to protect us from the claws of the preying wolves that own the things we love. Instead, if ever there comes a time when the consumer needs to bite back, we have to get dirty with our stratagems and sink to the sorts of levels that our enemies wouldn't even consider. We need to attack the only thing that these people hold dear. No, not their families, the real only thing that they love in this cold dark world of ours. Their wallets. Precious, protected, pristine. You slap a executive in their face, they'll laugh it off- slap them in their wallets, and they'll be wheezing for days. Hence, the boycott.

These days the very concept of a Boycott is not quite as ambitious or socially bold as it once was in it's inception, but as with everything else these days the concept has been diluted, digested and spat out as a 'solve all' for practically any consumer to management dispute. Unless you live in America, of course, in which case you're looking as lawsuits and class actions. But can you really blame the modern consumer for trivialising and factory reproducing what was once a supremely drastic measure? We may not be backing the plight of Rosa Parks to bravely drive a wedge inside the archaic institution of normalised segregation, but we are- nope... nothing I say is going to sound worthy or even remotely relevant in the face of the Rosa Parks thing, is it? I should have just kept her name out my mouth, how the heck am I going to raise a point now?

My point is; boycotts have become something a kneejerk reaction to pretty much anything. And to be fair, they do seem to actually work. Companies are often painfully deferential to the public anytime a single misprint makes it onto one of their store menus, or a bad translations leads to a food product being labelled a German phrase that means 'Donkey Poo', or a Waffle House Worker deflects a chair flung at her by a rowdy visitor with one arm. (Justice for her, by the way.) Because they are all just absolutely scared stiff of the little upwards angled line of their graph teetering into the dreaded flat horizontal line or, god forbid, start trending the other way downwards. They would defenestrate their own grandmothers and perform the Black Sacrament with their fresh corpse if it meant they never had to see a bad financial quarter. And that's a terror that it almost feels like the moral duty of consumers to exploit in order to get their way.

Although I do wonder if it's lost its meaning in all the kerfuffle. If the public attempt to enforce morality and order in a lawless system has instead introduced an aspect of cronyism-fuelled chaos to an already broken system. But of course, I'm getting dangerous close to approaching the fire-bed topic of 'armchair activism' with this train of thought, so I better go and correct myself before we start crossing lines we can't take back. What I'm trying to lay the groundworks for here, is to talk about two very recent, very relevant, boycotts for issues that are real to some people out there, but who's target feels like it misses the mark. A boycott for the sake of boycotting just so that someone out there can feel like they're actually effecting something, making a difference, without actually having to commit personally to the work of actually changing anything. They don't even have to actually do anything at all, just not spend money. What a sacrifice! (Uh oh, I'm talking about arm-chair activism anyway! Someone hide me before the Twitter vultures catch wind!)

First off is the topic I'm spoken about before- the Harry Potter Hogwarts Mysteries 'Boycott'. Now this is more the spirit of a boycott than an actual movement, as proven by the absolute deluge of pre-orders that the game has celebrated, but even in that spirit I find this proposed 'activist move' to be asinine at best. An attempt to aim at celebrity J.K. Rowling for her conservative views on trans rights, certain former Harry Potter fans and simple LGBTQ members and supporters looking for a fight have decided they are now supremely interested in the internet ramblings of a senile writer. Enough that they want the property she created to be burnt to the ground so that she can longer make money of it and then- presumably go destitute and die on the street? I can only assume that's the end goal. None of these people seem interested in trying to teach her and change her mind, they just want everything she's ever worked on to crumble around her. Which is... fair, I guess; let your vindictivness fly, I suppose.

But as I'm mentioned before, turning Hogwarts Legacy into the keystone of that battle against old woman Rowling is a bit like trying to shoot down the moon in order to devalue your neighbour's beach front property- at the end of the day there's more people who would harmed than just Rowling. And even beyond that argument which such 'activists' have brushed away with the cultist mentality of 'Sacrifices must be made', (again, totally reasonable people here) this wouldn't even directly effect Rowling anyway because she's already been paid for the licence. She's not working on the game, everyone who is has denounced her to varying degrees, and as a show of solidarity the team even threw in transgender options into the character creator menu. But some people still want to boycott the game because, why not? It gives them something to do, doesn't it?

Even more recently there is the Wizards of the Coast dilemma against various forms of content creators which has led to two major boycotts I've heard about. The first is the boycott of DnD Beyond, fuelled by the inside leak that all Wizards management cares about is DnD Beyond subscription numbers, meaning that mass cancellations are a direct attack against their parameters for success. And the other is a proposed boycott of Baldur's Gate 3. Wait, so to protest Wizards making it harder for 3rd party content creators to make products off the DnD game, they want to boycott the game of a 3rd part content creator which they based off the DnD game? Okay, I'm being intentionally facetious there, obviously the relationship between Wizards and Larian goes far deeper than what the OGL is attacking. Baldur's Gate 3 is licenced, and therein lies the tricky conundrum.

From one perspective, Baldur's Gate 3 is a paid for directed representation of the DnD brand which projects the characters and world of DnD's most popular setting, further propelling the very centralised eco-system that Wizards of the Coast are trying to create for DnD. On the otherhand, it's an almost totally unrelated video game made by a team that has absolutely no part in any of this drama and no blame. I would raise the issue of 'collateral damage', but we've already established that internet activists never cared about 'Danger close'. I suppose such an issue would really fall down to where you mark down your priorities and moralities, and who you're willing to try and hurt in order to get at someone that you don't like. Which is really at the heart of all Boycotts, is it not? The balance of the necessary to reach the worthy in which the ends must justify the means. A question for philosophers to bludgeon each other's face in over, no doubt. I'll be sure to wake up Darwin and tell him about it, he's always up for a scrap or two!

Hogwarts Legacy and the crimes of the Mother

 Friendly fire

We are hardly a few weeks away from the much anticipated launch of the single most ambitious Harry Potter game ever conceived; the brain child of life long fans of the Harry Potter franchise that grew up crossing their fingers hoping for a owl in the mail. This open world RPG dive into the magical wizarding world where somehow the English School is the greatest in the world (knowing our education system, that seems debatable. Then again, I guess it is a private school, isn't it? How did Hermione afford to go there? How much is tuition? It can't be Government subsidized. Am I getting too much into it again?) should be the absolute belle of the ball for people my age, and indeed the vast majority of pot-heads are extremely excited to experience a game that simulates some of their deepest held fantasies. Others, however, have chosen this game to be a battlefield in their online war against the forces of prejudice and transphobia, which brings up something of a curious dilemma: is this even the appropriate place to raise such a confrontation?

The reason for the derision rolls on back to J.K Rowling, because of course it does. As the author and head of the Harry Potter universe, the ideals and whims of Rowling used to have something of a weight amongst the Harry Potter community. But somewhere between the explosion of social media and the decent of the public ideals which compelled people to share every errant toilet thought with the world; it became more and more obvious the J.K Rowling was a bit of a airhead when it came to spearheading her creation outside of the pages of the book. Slapping any old idea in her head about the wider Wizarding universe on the Internet and declaring it immediate cannon; including, but in no way limited to, the idea that Wizards and Witches of the past used to actually defecate themselves and then vanish it away with magic. (Which goes against one of the core principle laws of magic that she wrote! Things can't just disappear, they have to go somewhere!) It was long after all of this when she decided to make her thoughts know about how she doesn't quite agree with the trans-movement and people who identify that way- again, long after her words and opinion stopped holding any sway or weight over the Potter community.

Still, she is the head of the Harry Potter train. People who took umbrage (get it?) with her statements found themselves locked in Twitter spats with an author so sad that she wrote herself into one of her newer books as a beleaguered victim of an LGBT hate mob. (I'm not joking, she literally fell for the lowest common denominator in fan fiction writing; it's just embarrassing at this point.) But the hate crowd aren't just happy shouting at her. They want to expand their vision to everything she touches and cut off the 'hateful woman' to the many sources she has supplying her with the unimaginable wealth that J.K boasts. They campaign against the books she publishes, the studios she works with and, pertinently, the video games based off of the Harry Potter franchise she birthed. So at it's heart this is a conflict between people who are fighting on behalf of the trans community and a grumpy old woman on the Internet who is prejudiced. Hogwarts Legacy is just caught in the middle of it all.

Where the mob starts to draw legitimate blood is in the meta details. The franchise that Hogwarts Legacy belongs to the woman of the hour and she was obviously paid for the royalties to use it. Therefore the purchase of this product would be telling companies that it's okay to pay her to use her franchise licence again, but then that is how intellectual property works, isn't it? What would be the solution in the minds of these people- to sink the Harry Potter franchise because they don't agree with the creator's opinions? Are they so incapable of separating the artist from their work that they believe the taint of J.K Rowling needs to be burnt out from the ends, instead of targeting the woman herself? Aside from the fact I don't personally particularly care what J.K. Rowling's opinion on literally anything is, I fail to see how destroying Harry Potter by making it totally unprofitable to work with is the 'good ending' to affairs.

And then there's the further disconnect in the fact that Rowling has literally nothing to do with the game. Warner Bros. worked with her team to make the game fit the rules of the universe; (and not very well, apparently, given how Accio seems to work on humans in the game) but J.K. had no actual involvement in the creative process of making this game at any level. In fact, her presence is so off this project, that the team even went so far as to include the option to play as a Trans character in the game. An option, I should point out, which thematically makes no sense given that this game is set in the 1800's; the only way this would make it into the game, would be as the developer's way of saying that J.K. has no power over what makes it into the game and what doesn't. Attempting to boycott Hogwarts Legacy does not, therefore, effect any of Rowling's work in the slightest.

You know something she did work on? Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. A movie franchise which didn't appear to drum up nearly as much furore despite the fact that Rowling literally wrote for each movie and was integral to deciding the direction of the story. A direction so twisted that it ended up spiralling out of control and sinking that franchise on it's own. She didn't need any boycott to trip her up for those movies, her own incompetence at creating a new story within her universe managed to drum that up all on it's own. And then there's her play sequel to Harry Potter which I heard ragged on for many years until I started reading into it and found out why. (Good lord, fame really did scorch that poor woman's creativity dry, didn't it?) My point is, it's a good thing that new Harry Potter projects are being made without her involvement, and the fact that blind activism is seeking to destroy the only good product of this franchise in the current year is about as sad as the mobs are misguided.

Pre-purchasing Harry Potter Hogwarts legacy is not a subscription to discrimination of the trans community, if anything it's a solidification in the slow extraction of the Harry Potter franchise out of the purview of a woman who's talents have wobbled as she, herself, has displayed symptoms of transphobia. Twitter activists and Resetera warriors are so preoccupied trying to torch a woman antithetical to their values that they are turning pitchforks against a game that has no part whatsoever to their target beyond paying for her licence. It's not like Rowling is actively funding anti-trans movements with the money, else we'd be having a totally different conversation altogether. She's just hording her gains like a dragon on it's hoard as she slowly loses touch with the talents that won her all that money. The situation is so misanthropic it's makes me wonder if Hidetaka Miyazaki wrote the poor woman's lore.

Harry Potter in gaming

 Makea a goodium gameius!

If you're around about the same age as me, there's a good chance you read Harry Potter, or watched the movies, or fell to sleep trying to watch any entry in the prequel franchise. Because for some reason those of my generation are all hopelessly addicted to the franchise of wizards and broomsticks in a manner that no one else can really understand. The older generation doesn't see the appeal, and I personally know at least one older critic who vehemently dislikes the writing style of J.K Rowling specifically, whilst the younger generation scoffs at the idea that one pop culture element could end up infiltrating and defining a whole generation like that, whilst they simultaneously make and share Tik Toks on their algorithmically charged video sharing website. But for us, there is no way of explaining that special magical charm that the world of Witchcraft and Wizardry imparts to us, despite the ravings of the grumpy old hag who sired the series.

As such it only makes sense that our generation, also privy to the explosion of many modern game design innovations, would also be met with a string of Harry Potter games to capitalise on the smash hit phenomena movie franchise. And indeed, we did get ourselves Harry Potter games. A lot in fact. More than there are movies to directly adapt from- in fact, even if we don't include Mobile games, there are more than twice as many games as there are books! And none of those games, as of yet, have based themselves solely off the books so that is quite the strange ratio, wouldn't you say?  What could these games possibly be based on to try and spark that magical hum inside of our souls and make absolutely stupid amounts of EA money? (And later some other studios too.)

The first is actually something of an oddity. Released in 2001 'Lego Creator: Harry Potter', spawned from a sandbox building game, called Lego Creator, which was created to be some sort of updatable substitute for the physical Lego 'toys'. As such, the Harry Potter aspect of this is less of a game and more like 4 build sets based on Harry Potter that can be built inside this computer program, but it was licenced Potter software that would have been sold in the 'games' bargain bin at the local Supermarket; so that means it counts in my book! The first real game would have been 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' which was released in several wildly different versions. The PlayStation and PC games followed the same style as one another, but were different in content. Still, both were action adventure exploration games. The Gameboy Advanced title was more of a top down adventure/puzzle hybrid title, and the Gameboy game was a RPG. Straight up. And I really want to play it. Harry Potter RPG- are you kidding me? That sounds SICK!

From there the games follow a very predictable trajectory, following the movies into the next title with one big update; 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets' had a PlayStation 2 version as well! As you can imagine that meant wildly improved textures, scope and gameplay (if fiddly in the controls) as well as a fully voiced narrative. (the first game had to deal with a lot of text and some occasional voices.) Oh, and there was a Lego Creator update for the second film as well, if that's your thing. 2003 got something interesting, however. Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone- wait what? That's right, EA turned around and created a new version of the first game for the newest generation of consoles using the assets and worlds built in Chamber of Secrets. What resulted was a game that followed the story of the original, looked significantly better but literally ripped entire layouts and gameplay sequences from the Second game. If gamers and children had any actual standards back then, that could have been the first significant controversy of this gaming franchise!

That year also saw the release of one of the last interesting side Harry Potter games the franchise would see for the decade; a game who's lack of follow-up is actually something of a controversy among Harry Potter game circles. Quidditch World Cup. It is insane to me how obvious of an appeal the quidditch game has and yet how under exploited that has been in the world of gaming. The only explanation in my head which justifies this is that Rowling simply put the kibosh on all attempts to make another Quidditch game until she nailed down the specifics of the game in a way that worked for however she wanted to use it in the narrative, which she never got around to doing. (She's a general let-down like that.) Even for the Hogwarts Legacy game that every Pot-head is losing their mind over, Quidditch won't make a playable appearance. It's like the cursed minigame or something.

The proceeding years presented a succession of Harry Potter games bought out as movie tie-ins that all seemed to lose their magic more and more from the Goblet of Fire onwards. I still here Goblet has it's fans, and some people at least mindlessly enjoyed Order of the Phoenix; but then on was just painful. The Half-Blood Price was stuck between trying to be flashy whilst keeping the whimsical charm of the games, ultimately resulting in a final product that pleased no one's tastes; and the Deathly Hallows 1 and 2 felt like they were trying to be the 'Call of Duty' of the Wizarding world. You would be amazed to think that exploration was ever fundamental to this game franchise, just from playing the Deathly Hallows games. Just because the stories were darker that didn't mean the gameplay had to get duller.

However, just in it's darkest moment did the Harry Potter franchise get it's kick in the arm. Because just before the release of the Deathly Hallows games, Lego Harry Potter released. (The real one.) It really was a simply perfect combination of franchises given that both styles of game really resembled one another once upon a time, before Potter grew into his angsty teens. Building blocks substituted for magically manipulating blocks, discovering secret areas of the Hogwarts castle by breaking down walls, just as the castle itself is living and shaping in the lore. The spells, the whimsy, the charm; it really was all there. And although TT made the perplexing choice to split the franchise into 'years 1-4' and 'years 5-7', without ever rectifying that with a complete edition; these games brought some of the magic back into a franchise that felt largely was wrung dry.

And ever since then Harry Potter fans have been left wanting for a console entry follow up. (Nope, I've never heard of Harry Potter Kinect and you should endeavour never to mention it again in my presence.) In all that time, amazingly, never has there been a Harry Potter game that gave the fans the one thing they've really wanted all this time; the chance to become a new comer to Hogwarts and live that life themselves. (I refuse to acknowledge the Kinect game, there's no point bringing it up!) Which is perhaps why, even though I've said before that Hogwarts Legacy isn't quite the game you think it is in your head, even I'm swept by the promise of fulfilling that boyhood fantasy which was never quite lived out. Let's hope that the latent arcane potential of Harry Potter still has some of that ol' kick left come February. (I'd really love not to feel buyer's remorse on this game most of all.)