New reports have sprung up about Hogwarts: Legacy, specifically about how it’ll allow you to customize your in-game avatar. According to Bloomberg, the character creator in the game will allow you to create a transgender witch or wizard with whom to explore Hogwarts.
In Hogwarts: Legacy, you play a student of the aforementioned school of magic sometime in the late 19th century. Bloomberg’s report alleges that you will be able to customize your voice as being masculine or feminine, and you will be able to select your gender separate from what kind of voice you select. Genders are specified as “witch” and “wizard,” which determines which dormitory you end up in.
This isn’t new for character creators — you can do the same thing in Cyberpunk 2077, for example. But it’s notable for which franchise this game is a part of. Put simply, the legacy of Harry Potter has been colored by certain values author J.K. Rowling has expressed with regards to the matter of gender. This has cast a pall on the release of Hogwarts: Legacy, as many who don’t share her views on the matter have rejected the Harry Potter series out of a desire to not support Rowling.
One wonders whether this is an addition intended to counterbalance this controversy. Warner Bros distanced itself slightly from Rowling when it pointed out in an FAQ that she was not directly involved with the project, but it also specified that her work was the “foundation” of Legacy’s story. The sources of Bloomberg’s report spoke under condition of anonymity, and reportedly there was some resistance from the management towards the idea at first. We’ll just have to wait until the game’s release — set for some time next year — to see if this character creator survives in the finished version of the game.
Source: Bloomberg
