Hogwarts Legacy gets great reviews

[fromorbit]

The Hogwarts Legacy reviews have dropped from major game review sites before release tomorrow and they are great:

Review ratings :
• PSU - 9.5
• IGN - 9
• JVCOM - 9
• Xbox Era - 9
• Power Up - 9
• Press Start - 9
• Well Played - 9
• Pushsquare - 8
• Gamerant - 4.5/5
• Screen Rant - 4.5/5
• VGC - 4/5
• Metacritic - 87

Typical review below is an example it has some of the usual anti JKR performative nonsense, but otherwise the review shows how good the game is and how close it ties into the magic of the books. :
metro.co.uk/2023/02/06/hogwarts-legacy-review-the-best-harry-potter-video-game-ever-made-18230040/

The massive failure of the campaign against Hogwarts Legacy is another example of TRA self sabotage. The game itself is good and is going to do more massive sales now it is out, and the controversy helped give it great name recognition. Better than that it demonstrates that "transphobia" is a meaningless term which people increasingly ignore. It means that the gender fanatics attempt to control how people think is collapsing more and more.

Their latest TRA ploy is to call for a boycott of Twitch because it is showing Hogwarts Legacy adverts which again is going to fail and will further alienate people:
www.thegamer.com/hogwarts-legacy-twitch-ads-boycott/

What makes this all more sweet is JKR is benefitting massively from this because TRAs are so bigoted and can't tolerate dissent. This is nothing to do with helping anyone "trans" this is just about "moral" purity. It is even more blatant now it has been revealed there is a "trans" charater in the game as well as there being no rules about whether you are a witch or wizard. Yes turns out a JKR based game doesn't care whether people call themselves witches or wizards or how they dress exactly as JKR states:
"Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like."

Hogwarts Legacy "Trans" Character details
www.gamerevolution.com/news/934065-hogwarts-legacy-trans-character-transgender-sirona-ryan

Yes Hogwarts Legacy is more supportive of having an avatar which can gender non conform than most other games. Which makes sense because JKR doesn't care about that and the game reflects the universe she created.

The TRAs would never challenge the Call Of Duty franchise beloved by right wingers and where Activision the company behind it who have paid directly into Republican party coffers. No they only go after the game where a woman gets some of the profits, a woman who actively opposes the right and tried to stop Trump being elected in 2016.

If the TRAs hated the popularity of Hogwarts Legacy before it launched, they are really really going to hate how big it is going to be. They also can look forward Hogwarts {Rowling] Legacy 2 which their nonsense has helped make inevitable.

Crikey, what a racist JK is! Giving the wizarding world a black Prime Minister - she must really hate black people, eh? 🙃

That is transphobic. Like blatantly transphobic. You lack a disturbing amount of self awareness. I used to think you were just a very devout liberal minded trans rights activist. But if you don’t apologize for this comment then I will started questioning if you are actually a troll or just very very clueless for lack of a better word!

People are apparently hellbent on preventing antisemitism from being taken seriously by putting out theories that are reminiscent of the “everything’s Indian” sketches from Goodness Gracious Me. Here, however, everything about the goblins is Jewish; & indeed even the wider game context is antisemitic - clearly the goblin rebellion being in 1612 is a coded reference to a German pogrom in 1614. And the goblin horn that is clearly of the brass instrument variety (just look at the mouthpiece) & looks like neither of the shofars it supposedly looks EXACTLY like… 🤦‍♀️

As for goblin kidnapping of a child = blood libel… more = typical of folk & fairytales.

Holding Rowling responsible not simply for a game she wasn’t involved in but for, er, centuries of folk tale, fairy tale & other literary & artistic depictions of goblins is beyond ridiculous. As stated very clearly by multiple British Jewish groups & antisemitism campaigners in this Times of Israel article. This article breaks down the myth of the Potter goblins meaning Rowling’s antisemitic even further. Jon Stewart said his own suggestion they were antisemitic was a joke & that he wouldn’t expect Rowling to dignify it with a response.

Strange that the people so outraged by alleged antisemitic content in a computer game actively support the antisemitism of preventing Orthodox Jewish women from using the Hampstead Heath bathing ponds. Indeed they’re all for the antisemitism of utterly circumscribing Orthodox Jewish women’s participation in public life; & they cheerlead Orthodox Jewish women not seeking &/or receiving necessary healthcare because the NHS thinks validating gender identities is more important than the commitment they made to providing single-sex care. It’s almost as if they are simply determined to monster JK Rowling & prove she is a bigot 🤷‍♀️ I suppose it makes a change from accusing her of being a Tory & only donating to charity for the tax breaks. (Honestly, it’s just embarrassing that people continue to assert both those things as fact. And get genuinely affronted if corrected - how could they possibly have KNOWN that the world doesn’t work as they assume?!)

MargaritaPie is just another person who wants to give JKR more money by saying weird stuff about a liberal children's book series which is about how being prejudiced is bad. Retconning a book series every liberal person loved before 2020 is an absurd reach. I remember right wingers moaning that HP turned millennials into liberal lefties and to be honest they were not wrong, there was a reason that JKR was a massive hero during the rise of Trump and Brexit.

The most popular children's book series on the PLANET isn't racist. That would require a lot of people of different skin colours to be remarkably stupid. Remember the fuss over casting of Hermione in the play as black and how JKR was all for it.
edition.cnn.com/2015/12/21/africa/harry-potter-noma-dumezwenito-hermione/index.html

The reason this debate is so vicious is because it is in the UK at least a war between different factions of liberal left leaning people. Though obviously we dislike the right the left ultimately is way more into policing our own side at the end of day and then weirdly insisting the person we are policing is actually right wing. We love our purity drives. I mean Gender Crits are great, but it is no coincidence that we have our own vicious infighting.

This trend tends to backfire a LOT. The boycott i.e "publicity drive" for Hogwarts Legacy is an example of that. The game is fairly good, by all accounts, but the fact it is doing better on Twitch than the biggest gaming franchises ever and other huge media franchise games i.e Star Wars owes everything to the failed boycott.

The boycott drama told people the game exists and as soon as they heard they wanted to play to check it out. The game is fun enough to get people raving. So even more sales. You did what you wanted to avoid gave JKR more money.

More to the point if even 5% of the game players check out what JKR actually said as opposed to what people claim she said we will have gained thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people to our side. It also made Trans Activists look discredited especially as it showed how much they love bullying people.

"More to the point if even 5% of the game players check out what JKR actually said"

Especially if they find out what is happening in Scotland right now.

They will discover the horrific fact that JKR wants to keep rapists out of women's jails.

BBC this morning going with the "game is controversial because of JK Rowling" without providing any evidence of what she actually said, just a link to an actor complaining.

Sirona doesn't sound at all masculine to me.

BBC news story
www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64572328.amp

I love the fact that for all this hot air, JKR has said nothing, she is such a class act.

Nope. Let's continue to talk about your blatant transphobia.

The actress who played Cho was racially abused, not because of the character’s name (I gather that Cho is not a Chinese first name but rather a Korean family name and JKR could have done some better research), but because she is Scottish-Chinese.

I remember this happening. A bunch of insane and racist Harry Potter shippers got extremely butthurt about the casting of a Scottish-Chinese actress in the role because in their headcannon Cho was actually really a white girl who had been adopted by a Chinese family. They got assmad at a non white actress getting to kiss Daniel Radcliffe and decided to be absolutely revolting to her.

Did JKR give this particular character name? Yeah, she did. Was that why Katie Leung was harassed by racists? No, it was because toxic arseholes were over invested in the fictional teen relationships in a children’s book.

Here's a positive review of the game:

www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-11733133/I-never-want-leave-Hogwarts-Im-not-Potter-fan-PETER-HOSKIN-reviews-Hogwarts.html

Fucking BBC framing it as trans rights...

I remember this happening. A bunch of insane and racist Harry Potter shippers got extremely butthurt about the casting of a Scottish-Chinese actress in the role because in their headcannon Cho was actually really a white girl who had been adopted by a Chinese family. They got assmad at a non white actress getting to kiss Daniel Radcliffe and decided to be absolutely revolting to her.

The threads on The Escapist were utterly insane. It's not just Cho, either. I've seen people claiming that Lee Jordan and Angelina Johnson were made black "for the films". They're both physically described when they first appear in the books! It turns out that writers have to practically put "this character is x/y/z" in order to avoid some readers imagining a white character. Any ambiguity in the text over race, and the character will be seen as white!

I think its fair to say that Cho is a very unnusual chinese first name if not unheard of. So nothing like the other wizarding names - Albus, Luna, Severus, Minerva, Rubeus, Nymphadora etc etc. Oh wait...

I know a number of gamers who are pretty oblivious to what's been going on (probably because they are male)

Thanks to the all the "JKR is transphobe and if you play this game you are transphobe" they've become aware. Some have even gone off and read JKR's essay. The general reaction has been "huh?" and dismissal of people who they now view as slightly unhinged.

I was getting annoyed with the eight o'clock news on radio four,but the last bit of actually stating JKR states she's pro trans rights but just believes in women's spaces felt more balanced than in the past in BBC: especially in the light of Scottish developments,felt slightly hopeful that it's giving people the chance to think and see the obvious problems,and to let them know it's ok to enforce them l.

Bit lazily copying this from a post I made in a thread we had [shortly] before the game was released:

The most common criticism of Cho Chang’s name is “might as well have called her a racist phrase not used in the UK”. It’s probably not a great name, really - but wizarding families apparently make some, er, interesting choices name-wise (Ronald Bilious Weasley, anyone?). It’s also possible she is of mixed heritage, hence the either Japanese or Korean first name (in the former it means butterfly, in the latter beautiful). Or she was named after someone. Or her parents were anticipating a move & wanted her to have a name that didn’t risk any confusion. But a back story to explain what I can understand might look like “it’s all Asian, good enough” would help.

To be quite clear, I’m sure JKR didn’t think, when choosing Cho’s name “Chinese, Japanese, Korean - all basically the same thing, what does it matter?” (or something along those lines). If, now, she were to produce her original notes for the character & show they provide a detailed backstory people would still reject them as:
• forged
• inadequate
• too late
• any combination of the above, with or without random completely personal grievance to top it off.

As @HorribleNecktie says, people were racist to Katie Leung because the weird interpretation in their heads wasn’t followed. Racist people were racists; just as they were when Cursed Child made the casting decision that Hermione would be played by a black woman. In that case, of course, JKR saying she hadn’t written Hermione was white wasn’t her best move because of course 2 seconds later people were providing examples from the series of white!Hermione 🤦‍♀️

It’s amazing isn’t it that so many “super fans” of the novels completely failed to pick up on one of the central themes of the books i.e don’t be a big fucking racist.

I watched quite a few videos of Rebecca Root last night and I don’t know how game development works but however they do it, they did a great job of capturing Root’s mannerisms and facial expressions.

Bit sad that some so-called trans allies are so desperate to smear JK as a transphobe that they’ve stooped to denigrating the voice and appearance of an actual trans person.

Hope Rebecca is managing to ignore all the insults aimed at Sirona.

Just goes to probmve that a lot of the so-called TRAs don't actually give a shit about trans people, it's just a means to an end to display their misogyny.

Yep, it’s just an excuse for women-bashing.

Pie demonstrated that perfectly last night.

From the very start the developers and WB stated that JKR wasn't involved with the game.

Much publicity was generated over an apparent trans inclusive character creator and how the developers were rebelling against JKR. Further publicity was generated over another rebellion with the inclusion of a new trans character, showing how woke the developers were.

Now TRAs have spent ages trying to work out how to claim that this character is transphobic and so can blame JKR (who was not involved) for it.

The TRAs are so eager to ascribe malice and evil intent where none exists.

I don’t think for a second that the developers put Sirona in the game for tokenism, nor do I think the character’s look, voice or name were intended as a slight on trans people in general. I know someone who worked on the game and he was very pro trans and was eager to talk about the fact the game was trans inclusive (the player character can be trans if the player wishes, for example).

The developers are not stupid people. They know Harry Potter is hugely popular around the world and across many demographics. People have been waiting years for a chance to play a game where you can be a Hogwarts student and experience the wizarding world. This is why the game, despite being set hundreds of years ago in Scotland, is very diverse. It’s not tokenism, it’s an attempt to make fans from across the world feel included. This includes trans people, and they made sure their representation was realistic by casting a trans actor to provide the voice and likeness.

But it seems the devs would have been damned anyway. If they hadn’t included any visibly trans characters, they’d have been accused of transphobia. If they’d cast a biologically female actor in the part of Sirona, they’d have been accused of transphobia. They used a trans actor… and they’re accused of transphobia.

I am curious as to what kind of trans representation is actually acceptable to the vocal TRAs that inhabit Reddit and Twitter. I seem to recall a bunch of ragey opinions about the trans character in Cyberpunk 2077 as well (again, played by a trans actor).

Bit sad that some so-called trans allies are so desperate to smear JK as a transphobe that they’ve stooped to denigrating the voice and appearance of an actual trans person

hypocritical and transphobic…..pie would have been all over the report button if someone on here has said it

and i agree with you, I hope Rebecca isn’t taking any of this seriously. If you are reading this Rebbecca (highly unlikely) let me assure you that no one takes pie seriously