Hogwarts Legacy: Gameplay Reveal

March 18, 2022 by 2 Comments

Released yesterday, the ‘Gameplay Reveal’ above is something of a trailer for the computer game, ‘Hogwarts Legacy.’ If, like me, you are totally clueless about this game, here is the Wikipedia summary of key details:

Hogwarts Legacy is an upcoming action role-playingvideo game developed by Avalanche Software and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment under its Portkey Games label. It’s set in the Wizarding World universe which is based on the Harry Potter franchise. The game is set to be released in late 2022 for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

Hogwarts Legacy will be set in the late 1800s, following a student at Hogwarts.The player will be allowed to choose their Hogwarts House and attend classes at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and explore an open world consisting of locations including the Forbidden Forest and Hogsmeade Village. In the game, the player character will learn to cast various magical spells, brew potions, tame magical beasts, and master other combat abilities. A morality system will play a role in the game.Players will also be able to customize their character’s voice, body type, wand type and whether they are a witch or wizard.

This looks very professionally done, though I am no judge of such games, and, given the prevalence of such games in people’s lives and the investment made here by Avalanche and Warner Brothers in development and promotion respectively, I think it fair to assume it may very well occupy as much head space among Potter fans as the movie adaptations. 

Which is to say, unfortunately, that this ‘interactive’ game will be one more profit taking exercise that, while bringing some new readers to the series, changes — and I’ll say it, diminishes — the imaginative reading experience of those books. Supplanting imagined ideas of Hogwarts with these professionally crafted electronic scenes means the magic of the books, what Rowling has called their “real magic,” the meeting of her mind’s images and the readers,’ is in significant part lost, as we have seen with the film adaptations.

Please let me know what you think of this trailer for the new ‘Hogwarts Legacy’ computer game. Hat-tip to Chris Calderon for cluing me in to what millions of Harry Potter fans have already checked out online though it only appeared yesterday!

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Rowling 2007 Interview: Blast From Past

March 17, 2022 by Leave a Comment

I have no idea who Jonathan Ross is or was but he scores an interview with The Presence before the release of the Order of The Phoenix adaptation and the publication of Deathly Hallows in 2007. Rowling seems at ease if a little star-struck and he is clearly delighted to be in her company.

My three favorite moments?

(1) Her talking about the people who claim to have inspired the Harry Potter character in the context of Harry, Ron, and Hermione all being aspects of her own personality. Soul triptych, anyone?

(2) When asked about her relationship with the three child actors who play the Terrible Trio in the film adaptation she admits that it is a special, perhaps unique friendship: part maternal on her end but they share a bond because they are inhabiting characters that sprang from her imagination.

(3) Their hilarious exchange about her breakdown while writing the ‘Into the Forest’ chapter of Deathly Hallows. 

Well, I thought it was funny. Let me know what you think!

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Rowling-Fry Talk about Fantastic Beasts: An Annotated Transcript of Her Remarks

March 16, 2022 by 2 Comments

Last month, a conversation J. K. Rowling had with Stephen Fry about Fantastic Beasts was aired on the BBC. Our good friends at The Rowling Library posted those parts of the program in which Rowling shared her thoughts about two mythological creatures, about two of her own imaginative inventions, and to say repeatedly that this subject is important to her because, in it, one can learn “why we write stories,” even “what it means to be human.”

It is easy to overlook this conversation and its importance for grasping Rowling’s beliefs about writing and about the essence of “being human;” I certainly did when I first watched the video above and posted it here without comment as something of a filler. Today I have written out the transcript (and please check whether it is accurate; does she say the Lethifolds scare the “bejeebers” out of her or the “bejeesus”?) and shared three thoughts after the jump as annotations. Enjoy!

I think about this a lot — that we’re story-telling creatures — because to our knowledge we are the only animal that does this. And obviously it was an attempt, certainly with respect to myth and folklore, it was an attempt to explain the natural world, things that people didn’t understand.

I am very interested in story, inevitably. I am not just interested in writing stories but I am interested in why we write stories.

I’m even more fascinated by the fact that discreet cultures that had never met created such similar archetypes and such similar creatures. So we see the fire-bird, the Phoenix as I called it, but you see the version of a fire-bird throughout different cultures.

And what is that telling us about what it means to be human,  what lives in the back of our minds in our subconscious? We often see this, magical beasts, that magical beasts have been imagined by, after all, people who are living among different real animals. We’re talking about cultures across different continents That fascinates me because that’s telling us clearly about ourselves …

Mermaids… it’s very interesting because where did that myth come from? Even in Africa, these inland countries of course have great rivers, there is a form of mermaid, the jengu, so again this is something that has been created across these different cultures. Why were British sailors imagining fish-tailed women when people in Africa were imagining fish-tailed women? It’s just extraordinary….

I think it would be exceptionally difficult [to create a fantastic beast without any model in nature]. I created a creature in the original Fantastic Beasts, the Lethifold, Now that was my worst nightmare. There I went for something that would scare the bejeesus out of me. Although I was taking the idea from a cloak, when I stood back and looked at what I’d invented, well, that’s just a manta ray. [Fry: ‘Manta’ means ‘cloak’…] Exactly, so I’ve invented the manta ray who doesn’t live in water….

The Niffler is a bit of a favorite of mine. It’s a treasure seeker, likes everything that glitters, so it can locate treasure for you. So, for those of you who don’t know, the Niffler is a curious creature who is, I don’t know, a cross between a magpie in nature and a duck-billed platypus in appearance – and a mole, exactly. They used a platypus to get the snout-like appearance in the movie which I adore, I mean, they ran these things past me and I just loved it, It gave it such an endearing appearance…

So it’s exceptional difficult to invent something and often nature got there far better. Because you look at some of nature’s extraordinary creations and you think “CGI will never match this.”…

I was thinking about the creatures because I knew we were going to sit down and talk about this. And I realized that half those books [the Harry Potter novels] fold without those magical creatures. They’re so important. Hedwig the owl, and then we move through the Thestrals and dragons. They’re key plot points and obviously thematically they work in terms of life and death and power, struggle and treasure, but I realized when I focused on those creatures just how important they were. And that shows that we have a deep need to be connected to the animal world.

I share my three thoughts about the meaning of this conversation after the jump. See you there!

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Fantastic Beasts, Hog Pro Notes

Rowling Response to Ukraine Invasion

March 15, 2022 by

The Russian Federation invaded Ukraine last month and the war there continues. I am no Russo-phile, but it is clear that there are no saints leading either country (or the greater powers that use these nations’ leaders as sock-puppets). What to do?

Jo Rowling Murray pulled out her check-book and challenged others to do the same to help “some of the most vulnerable children in Ukraine,” those in orphanages. She didn’t say anything about the injustice or Realpolitik of the invasion, she didn’t browbeat the decision makers in the UK and abroad about their action or inaction, she didn’t make sardonic comments about the vicious way of the world, in which, as Thucydides noted, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

Not right away at least; she has since re-tweeted messages about the invasion and its attendant horrors. See here, here, here, and here for a sample of those. Her stand, though, what she has chosen to do when confronted by this tragedy, is in essence apolitical, just as her posting The Ickabog for children and families in Covid hysteria lockdowns for free on the internet (and donating all her income from the book sales to charities helping those most hurt by the lockdowns) was all positive and generous. Here Rowling is a challenging example of action in service to a cause without exacerbating or creating antagonisms. I could definitely take some notes here for my own reflection.

I post below re-tweets and responses she made that are about her offer to match all money contributed to Lumos, not to mention paying all their expenses so contributions do not go to charity overhead, to encourage all of us to help.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes, Twitter

Rowling Library: Birthday Misconception

February 26, 2022 by 3 Comments

The latest issue of The Rowling Library is out and the cover story, ‘The Birthday Misconception,’ is a delight. You can download the issue here and the ‘Birthday’ piece is on pages 16 to 21. The article does not list an author in a byline which it does with the four contributors listed on the homepage so I’m going to assume it was written by Patricio Tarantino, TRL founder and editor-in-chief as well as a friend of HogwartsProfessor.com.

I wrote that the article “is a delight” because I happened to share the misconception the piece explodes, namely, that Hogwarts acceptance letters arrive on the magical person’s eleventh birthday. Harry gets his letter on his eleventh birthday in a Hagrid Special Delivery just after midnight in the House on the Rock, but obviously Hogwarts owls had been coming to the Dursleys’ house and various points for days before that. In discussion with the HogwartsProfessor staff about this story, Beatrice Groves noted the prevalence of this misconception “is another example of the way in which the books are shaped around Harry’s experience, something we’re so deeply embedded in that we don’t even notice the anomaly.” 

After the jump, I will review the article’s various points of evidence about the ‘birthday misconception’ from Harry Potter canon, note some overlooked points, and offer my conclusions on the subject, which differ slightly from the TRL writer’s. See you there! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes