Is the “Hogwarts Legacy” Game Going to Be Racist?

Let me start by saying in no uncertain terms that I don’t know the answer to this question. I certainly hope not. But some things in the state-of-play video that came out a few days ago have me a bit concerned.

What do we learn from the video?

One of the main antagonistic forces in the game are goblins rebelling against the wizards. This… is certainly a choice. Let’s not kid ourselves here, wizards in the Wizarding World basically represent white westerners. All other races are in one way or another enslaved, subjugated or discriminated against by them. While this was never necessarily presented as okay in the original “Harry Potter” novels, and while the 19th century setting of the game makes such attitudes being rampant within the universe even more plausible… do I really want to play a character who seems to be forced by the plot to support them? I hasten to say that it does look from the video like you will encounter friendly goblins as well and you are supposed to be able to make important choices in the game which will affect the world. But even if that is the case, I think this plot is walking a dangerous line and we have something to discuss. I’m not particularly keen on participating in a White Saviour type of narrative either.

Are goblins Jews?

Let’s mention the elephant in the room - the similarity between Harry Potter goblins and malignant depictions of Jewish people has been pointed out many times. While I don’t think there’s any real evidence that’s where J.K. Rowling was coming from and I’m not 100% convinced that the existence of these goblins in the book is automatically problematic by itself, the fact is that we don’t live in a vacuum. The books are the books and they have already been written and read but this game is a new piece of media. A piece of media created at a time when this controversy was well-known. I myself am not overly politically sensitive but even I have to raise an eyebrow at the decision to make a goblin rebellion that your human character has to fight against the central plot of the game.

“Harry Potter” has always had an issue with nuance...

“Harry Potter”, while, again, I don’t think it was written with malicious intent, has always lacked nuance and balance. This isn’t news, I could see that from the first time I read the novels as a child. It doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the story and find value in it but you do have to read critically. It’s a rather black-and-white world, and while that is sometimes acknowledged, it is very rarely rectified, let alone in a satisfactory fashion. Frankly, I think Rowling thought she was being nuanced while in reality her attempts at it were sometimes pretty pitiful.

There are, in essence, no truly good Slytherins. There is one house elf who actually wants freedom and he is a bit of an idiot who still genuflects to a wizard the entire time. (But, see, he does it voluntarily, so it’s okay, I guess?) And even when Hermione wants to help the house elves at Hogwarts, the way she approaches it is utterly moronic and disrespectful - by trying to trick them into wearing clothes. Hermione is by far the most progressive character in the series and she fails at actually being progressive so many times and in so many ways that it’s really saying something. Werewolves are supposedly misunderstood but they do, nearly without exception, decide to fight on the wrong side and the only werewolf we see apart from Lupin is Fenrir Greyback who is a serial child killer. I am not going to get into the lycanthropy = AIDS debacle, it is clear to me at least that when Rowling said that she meant one particular aspect of the condition and how it is viewed so I don’t think there’s any conspiracy here to present HIV-positive people as monsters but, much like with the goblins, there doesn’t need to be for me to raise an eyebrow. Surely most of the werewolves didn’t side with Voldemort, that doesn’t even make any logical sense! It would be akin to the entire gay population of Germany deciding to support Hitler.

Then there’s even the muggles. Muggles are continuously seen as inferior and this never changes. That’s reflected even in the way Hermione wipes her parents’ memories and sends them to Australia without their consent, after they’ve played no real part in the story beyond looking confused in one scene in Diagon Alley. I could go on with examples. The point is, many groups of people in Harry Potter are seen as a monolith and they are either antagonistic or inferior to the main characters, needing to be rescued by them. By the end of the series close to nothing has shifted in the status quo. Dark wizard of the day has been defeated but we are mostly back to square one.

So where does that leave the game?

With how vocal the game creators have been about wanting to make their product more inclusive (for example, with their trans-friendly character-creation tool which may or may not have been an attempt to do damage control as Rowling has been progressively losing her marbles on the topic of gender) it is a bit of a surprise that they would be so… tone deaf about the possible implications of the game’s writing. Whether goblins represent Jews here is not even the point. I’m even leaning towards no but that doesn’t help. Even if goblins just represent goblins, this sort of storyline in 2022 is pretty flawed. It’s bad enough if goblins just represent goblins. The vilification of an entire race which is being oppressed by the society it lives in is just extremely, extremely dangerous, it makes no difference if that race is 100% fictional. Especially since we know that many, many years later goblins are still second-rate citizens and still presented as somewhat unpleasant. Is it possible to pull this plot point off in a way that doesn’t send a bad message? Maybe. I am withholding judgement until I play the actual game. I think pre-judging it on the little we’ve seen would be unfair. The creators have said that the game is designed to be morally complex so perhaps it really is and this recent video merely gives us the wrong impression. Until it comes out and we find out for real, all we can do is remain hopeful.