Harry Potter Video Games

Good to see that this is becoming more normalized. Just, hopefully they put some genuine polish into it. Love Cyberpunk 2077 and I think they tried to do it but... yeah, felt like they just disconnected voice and body from each other and called it a day. Needs just some finer details to make it feel a bit better.

Now that it seems to be catching on, I hope this becomes a standard feature for all future RP Gs.

As for the value of the game itself and where money goes... I feel mixed. One hand, J.K. Rowling would get money and she won't be seen as quite as toxic to the franchise (though, tbh, the films would be a bigger blow). On the other... I now worry that the game failing would then mean some exec will point to this game on why we shouldn't have gender diversity options in games.

Yes, the logic on said CEO's part doesn't make much sense, but we should all be on the same page that a lot of execs like simple answers for why something didn't work and will point to either things they personally didn't like or things that were controversial, regardless of the actual product quality.

I'm getting into streaming games and my position currently is Imma pass for now, but if a friend gifts it to me (since quite a few friends still do associate me with Harry Potter), I'd probably play it and do a charity stream and donate money. Not that suddenly EVERYONE should do exactly that, but it's my personal plan in my head should that happen.

At least, nobody should pre-order this game or anything. Wait for the actual reviews to come out to see if this game is actually any good and handles the representation with some tact.

I didn't take advantage of the disconnect in Cyberpunk, so how does that work? Do they refer to you as female if you have a female voice and male voice? Vice versa? Do they actually stop using gendered nouns and pronouns on you?

But yeah, while I support anyone's personal choice to boycott this game or anything else, you need to understand that it simply will not affect Rowling in any way, shape, or form. Even if enough people boycott to turn the game into a serious failure, she wouldn't even notice the hit. Best case scenario would be that there would be no more Harry Potter games (which, again, would not affect Rowling), but it's also quite likely that, as Ink said, they'd blame everything you like about the game as the problem and they'd become more rare in all future games, not just Harry Potter.

Edited by Discar on Mar 2nd 2021 at 8:23:01 AM

I hope so. It's been a stupidly long time since we've had a Harry Potter game.

This is what I fully expect will not happen because of the setting and time period, leading to even less effective representation than 2077 had.

Edited by RainehDaze on Mar 2nd 2021 at 4:28:45 PM

But there's merit to it just being the principal of the thing (i.e. 'I don't want to support the franchise at all anymore') and that's fine. I also know people who recognize that, while Rowling wouldn't take the hit at all, trying to make the exception now opens the door for making other exceptions to other works and they don't want to do that. And I get that. I think everyone should make their own personal decisions and let's not majorly shame anyone for what they want to do about it.

As for Cyberpunk, basically, they disconnected body type, voice set, and, because this was a game with full nudity, genitals. So you could have a male presenting body type with a vagina and the Female!V voice lines.

And on paper, I think that's mostly fine. I think there's questions about 'male voice' vs. 'pronouns' and other things and I get that conversation. The problem is more in the execution. Namely, the player doesn't have a defined sexuality and there are four love interests, but the love interests all are either straight or gay and... it's extremely questionable how that was implemented in determining that in regards to the player and it gets kinda confusing very quickly. Like, River, a male love interest, is straight. and he goes for female V... but that's determined by your body type NOT your voice set and genitals.

It opens up A LOT more questions about what these character's sexualities are that I don't think the developers or the game are quite ready to dig into. Questions that wouldn't have occurred if we had just gone the route of 'It's 2077, literally no one cares about sexuality much anymore and pretty much everyone is a little bit pan'. Questions I don't even think some of larger communities are quite ready to have.

There are also some finer details that feel like they could have been fleshed out. Namely, if you do design yourself as a trans character, dialogue will never reflect that. There are other trans characters in the game, but you never can bring up your own transness. I think there's also a level of, while just switching the voices seems fine on paper, there ARE some lines and conversations that are actually different between male and female V that can feel... out of place if the voice set doesn't actually reflect your gender.

It feels like everything was written, voiced, and coded with male/female in mind and then later it was decided to attempt disconnecting everything.

A LOT of people call the game transphobic because of that and I feel like that's slightly disingenuous. People are free to feel as they do, especially since this is going to be personal for everyone. You're allow to not like something. But I can name the number of AAA Games that have acknowledges trans people exist on one hand and Cyberpunk at least tried to do something we've been asking a major release to do for awhile. Inquisition was hardly free from issues in how it executed Krem as a character, but it was certainly a massive leap forward. I think we in the LGBT community can be a bit quick to harsh judgement of something that does try to represent us and fails, especially if it's from an LGBT creator, than we are with works of media that don't even try or never acknowledge we exist, like our Call of Dutys or Mass Effects. Especially when I *do* think this was a genuine good faith attempt if just not very well thought out or executed. I think the first attempt at these options in a video game were never going to be great, but it provides us a baseline to work from of what worked, what didn't, and opens the door for this to become a normalized aspect of RPG character customization in the future.

If Cyberpunk 2077 had to fail in this regard so Hogwarts Legacy can walk and Dragon Age 4 can run, so be it?

Edited by InkDagger on Mar 3rd 2021 at 2:33:43 AM

Troy Leavitt quit due to backlash against him.

And nothing of value was lost.

Good.

Oh boy he’ll gonna post a video on You Tube about it. I’m sure he’ll be blaming the radical left for cancelling him of whatever bullshit.

Edited by theLibrarian on Mar 5th 2021 at 7:14:23 AM

Something something Meaningful Name?

I've created a Sandbox page for the HP Puzzle Game Harry Potter: Puzzles and Spells, and would appreciate input from anyone that plays it on any fixes that need to be made to what's here before I actually create the page. Thanks in advance!

Sandbox.Harry Potter Puzzles And Spells

Does it really need a page?

Far as I'm aware, it's a cash grab match-three app game and a shitty one at that. I don't think it has anything unique about it that wouldn't be on any of the main franchise pages.

There Is No Such Thing As Notability.

Edited by Kayeka on Dec 23rd 2021 at 5:08:27 AM

The latest gameplay trailer for Hogwarts Legacy has dropped:

Edited by XMenMutant22 on Mar 17th 2022 at 9:42:52 AM

It looks good, although it might fall into repetitiveness easily.

The kid can see Thestrals. That'll be fun.

The developers confirmed no microtransactions. Thank god for that.

I have to chuckle because, IIRC, Flipendo was just a charm they invented for the video games and was never used in the books or films.

And now it's back.

Makes me nostalgic.

Yeah, it was used in adaptations of the early books where the main characters weren't really "combatants" and thus the games had to invent a "basic attack" spell because the books hadn't yet.

Ah yes, the good old Knockback Jinx.

Apparently people are already throwing fits on Twitter over the story though because goblins are the villains and trying to destroy wizard society. They're siding with the goblins btw.

As has been discussed to death in many places on this forum Goblins have pretty darn good reasons to want to up-end things.

Edited by Kayeka on Mar 17th 2022 at 6:05:42 PM

Considering J.K's track record of dealing with racism in her stories plus Goblins here have certain anti-Semite imagery and connotations, this is going to be a clusterfuck.

I'll reserve judgement on the Goblin front (and seriously it's not a spoiler people, the trailer outright makes it front and centre as the premise for the plot). Rowling may be trash, but she's not involved with the writing for this game and another writer could work wonders.

Something that is frustrating me when I look at people online bash on people who'd be interested in playing the game, they all talk about Rowling's TERF-ness (which to be clear is always something that should be brought up when talking about JKR) and ignore how the developers added in the option to play as a trans-man or woman seemingly as a rejection of Rowling's views. Like, that's a serious flex that should be getting mentioned more.

Dang really?

Serious respect devs in charge of that decision.

Okay, that's pretty freaking awesome, NGL.