Hogwarts Legacy - Not as good as Dog Kid University

[Graham S]

38 minutes ago, MK-1601 said:

Isn't his wife a massive TERF?

According to Glinner, she was one of the first people to make him realise there was a problem.

[fat flatulent git]

This game topped the download list on PSN in both EU and US/Canada markets in February.

 

https://www.installbaseforum.com/forums/threads/playstation-store-february-2023’s-top-downloads.1439/

[Lovelyman]

The Brian Cox that made Tony Blair real?

[Rudi von Starnberg]

That's the actor Brian Cox being quoted there not the popular science twerp Brian Cox, who is the one with the dedicated transphobic wife

[Gabe]

Because of that comma, I'm still not sure which has the transphobic wife!

[fragglerock]

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yvqxzy/paris-lees-terf-war-twitter-radical-feminists-088  (2014)

 

Quote

Behind this facade of valid discussion hides a bunch of overgrown school bullies pointing at people who are different and demanding they explain that difference. Asking someone why they are trans is no better than asking them, "Why are you so fat?" Gia Milinovich is the girl in the playground shouting, "You're not pretty like us!" but who never gets into trouble because she's banging the head of science, Mr Cox. She'll tell you what being trans is all about. Me, teacher! Call on me! I know the answer! I've read the next chapter!

 

Tho I suppose it could be both...

[Don Rosco]

Sorry for the delay with this, but i've been pretty busy. Just wanted to publicly state that @Personal Attack Dog is NOT a spainkiller alt. We've confirmed the technicals behind the scenes and we're 100% sure. 

 

Apologies to @Personal Attack Dog - this thread has been a tricky one to judge how to mod, and you got caught in the crossfire. 

 

I'm gonna tag in a few users that were involved in the thread at the time, no judgement, just so they're clued in that it's not spainkiller:

 

@dreamylittledream @Unofficial Who @HarryBizzle @Festoon @Bobby Digihill @The Grand Pursuivant @Graham S

 

 

also while i'm here, I would like to contribute to the thread: Trans women are women, JKR can fuck off

[Lying Cat]

What if @Personal Attack Dog somehow becomes Spainkiller in the future due to a paradox, teleporter accident or Committee based resonance cascade?

 

Is double jeopardy in effect? Does that even mean what I think it means? 

[Don Rosco]

I’ll just delete my post and pretend nothing ever happened. 

[Unofficial Who]

2 hours ago, Don Rosco said:

I'm gonna tag in a few users that were involved in the thread at the time, no judgement, just so they're clued in that it's not spainkiller:

 

My apologies to @Personal Attack Dog for jumping to conclusions and not taking your question in good faith.

[Festoon]

7 hours ago, Don Rosco said:

Sorry for the delay with this, but i've been pretty busy. Just wanted to publicly state that @Personal Attack Dog is NOT a spainkiller alt. We've confirmed the technicals behind the scenes and we're 100% sure. 

 

Apologies to @Personal Attack Dog - this thread has been a tricky one to judge how to mod, and you got caught in the crossfire. 

 

I'm gonna tag in a few users that were involved in the thread at the time, no judgement, just so they're clued in that it's not spainkiller:

 

@dreamylittledream @Unofficial Who @HarryBizzle @Festoon @Bobby Digihill @The Grand Pursuivant @Graham S

 

 

also while i'm here, I would like to contribute to the thread: Trans women are women, JKR can fuck off

 

Hey, my apologies to @Personal Attack Dog Still daft questions though.

 

In other news, Rowling got around to why she's a transphobe on the podcast. Basically, she just is. She thought very deeply about it and she has to protect women from the evil trans rapists and children from being 'transed'. And she can't be 'argued out of it'.

 

So that's that, I suppose.

[Unofficial Who]

3 hours ago, Festoon said:

 

Hey, my apologies to @Personal Attack Dog Still daft questions though.

 

In other news, Rowling got around to why she's a transphobe on the podcast. Basically, she just is. She thought very deeply about it and she has to protect women from the evil trans rapists and children from being 'transed'. And she can't be 'argued out of it'.

 

So that's that, I suppose.

 

I think there's a little more to it than that. She's come to those conclusions due to her own past experiences, a lot of reading and...a lot of discourse on social media.

 

I think again it's a cautionary tale about spending too much time on social media. I have no doubt that the trans rights activists she's talked to online or those who've contacted her have not been particularly great (and let's assume that everyone that sent her awful abuse were such activists and not trolls just looking to have a laugh.) I'm not sure why all trans men and women have to deal with the fallout of that as a group.

 

However, as always, as before, none of this had anything to do with Hogwarts Legacy (besides the podcast pointing out that boycotts had a near zero effect on her with loss of support more than made up for by increased support and a selection of the absolute most inept soundbites representing those who made the case for boycotting who sounded like complete idiots.)

[Festoon]

52 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

 

I think there's a little more to it than that. She's come to those conclusions due to her own past experiences, a lot of reading and...a lot of discourse on social media.

 

I think again it's a cautionary tale about spending too much time on social media. I have no doubt that the trans rights activists she's talked to online or those who've contacted her have not been particularly great (and let's assume that everyone that sent her awful abuse were such activists and not trolls just looking to have a laugh.) I'm not sure why all trans men and women have to deal with the fallout of that as a group.

 

However, as always, as before, none of this had anything to do with Hogwarts Legacy (besides the podcast pointing out that boycotts had a near zero effect on her with loss of support more than made up for by increased support and a selection of the absolute most inept soundbites representing those who made the case for boycotting who sounded like complete idiots.)

 

I don't think there's more to it really. She's had a run in with people and I'm sure many of them were angry, but then again, she has equated anyone looking for trans rights as basically fundamentally evil, characterised them as the Death Eaters from her novels, done the whole 'they're brainwashing children to trans them' thing, implied that any trans woman is basically a man out to hurt women. Of course she's going to get serious pushback, as her views are basically somewhere between Mary Whitehouse moral panics and far-right ideology. And what's more, she has already said that her mind can't be changed on it. And she has been 100% guilty of trolling herself, with her anti-gay buddies, her anti Nicola Sturgeon T-short and her "Merry TERFmas". She's just a horrible gammon who deserves no benefit of the doubt.

 

All trans men and women have to deal with it because she fundamentally doesn't believe they are trans and holds them all in suspicion.

 

Dogged, abstruse, and just abusive and rotten. She's just a self-satisfied smug prick.

 

Why no-one asks the likes of Rowling how they feel about being 100% in agreement on transgender people with the likes of Trump, Stormfront, etc. is beyond me.

[Unofficial Who]

22 minutes ago, Festoon said:

Why no-one asks the likes of Rowling how they feel about being 100% in agreement on transgender people with the likes of Trump, Stormfront, etc. is beyond me.

 

Especially in that podcast where they had as context the story of Trump being impeached and an actual clip from him about how it was "the worst witch hunt in modern history."

 

But I digress. Every week I go in looking for something and it plays out like Charlie, Lucy and that football every time.

[Rex Grossman]

16 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

 

Especially in that podcast where they had as context the story of Trump being impeached and an actual clip from him about how it was "the worst witch hunt in modern history."

 

But I digress. Every week I go in looking for something and it plays out like Charlie, Lucy and that football every time.

 

It's a very well produced podcast that will do nothing to challenge anyone's beliefs but for anyone on the fence who listens they're probably going to side with JKR.

 

I've found the coverage of the podcast interesting. Very few reviews of it from major media outlets despite many of them running stories about it ahead of time. Like, it's important we tell you thing exists but also not important enough for us to analyse it or give our opinions. 

 

Obviously it's a lightning rod because a lot of Very Online People are going to go batshit crazy no matter what the review says. I've seen a small handful of reviews/opinion pieces along the lines of 'I hated JKR before this and I hate her even more now'. But not come across anyone saying 'I don't know much about this topic but here's what I think now.' That's personally what I'd be interested in reading.

 

And I'm talking about actual reviews not lazy recaps.

[Unofficial Who]

2 minutes ago, Rex Grossman said:

 

It's a very well produced podcast that will do nothing to challenge anyone's beliefs but for anyone on the fence who listens they're probably going to side with JKR.

 

I've found the coverage of the podcast interesting. Very few reviews of it from major media outlets despite many of them running stories about it ahead of time. Like, it's important we tell you thing exists but also not important enough for us to analyse it or give our opinions. 

 

Obviously it's a lightning rod because a lot of Very Online People are going to go batshit crazy no matter what the review says. I've seen a small handful of reviews/opinion pieces along the lines of 'I hated JKR before this and I hate her even more now'. But not come across anyone saying 'I don't know much about this topic but here's what I think now.' That's personally what I'd be interested in reading.

 

And I'm talking about actual reviews not lazy recaps.

 

I think that is in part due to the clever structure. Every time I think I've got a clear idea as to where the podcast is heading they pull an unanswered question that will be answered next week and I think to myself "I can't really judge it until I've heard at least the next episode." It always feels like there's going to be a twist or a rug pull and the next episode will be "surprise! I've talked to more people and realised that there's more nuance in these arguments and I'm going to re-evaluate things." (Spoiler, every week it is not that.)

[Strafe]

Finished (with) this game.

 

I think I was close to the end of winter (barring a short prologue it’s set across 4 seasons), before PSVR2 arrived and I didn’t go back. By that point I was getting a tad fatigued.

It’s fair to say that the best part of the game, exploring Hogwarts and getting introduced to the characters and world, is front loaded. The first 5-10 hours is exceptional. Soaking up the moving paintings, random events happening in the background and seeing bits from the films recreated in stunning detail all coming to life. 

However, whilst the castle is very impressive, as is Hogsmeade, the forbidden forest and the superb introduction to the room of requirement, the open world is less so. There’s some great architecture and everything looks right but it’s both too big and too small - too big in that there’s long expanses of fields and hills that don’t add much and too small in that even the far away locations are quick to get to by broomstick so it somehow also managed to lose it’s sense of scale (you could say that about a lot of open world games of course).

 

Combat is decent, the writing is mostly excellent but although you have a lot in the way of choice for things to do, there’s little in the way of agency - things play out the same way regardless of house, dungeons (if you could call them that) are basically long funnels with a few hidden rooms and there’s not much you can do to make your own destiny (of course that may change in the tail end of the game which I didn’t hit). It’s also on par with Uncharted for ludo-narrative dissonance. Throughout the game you’re told how bad unforgivable curses are but by this point you have waged a multi-genocidal campaign against spiders, dogs, poachers and goblins (there aren’t many different enemy types, I’m afraid), and the impact of learning a curse that kills someone is very much lost when you’ve been killing so much already.

 

If it turns up on PS plus in a couple of years I might try and clock it but I’ll probably crack long before and read the plot summary on Wikipedia instead.

 

Putting controversy to the side for a moment, I think you could broadly split the potential audience into 3 groups*:

 

1 - People upon which Harry Potter made a big impression on their lives

2 - People who enjoyed the films and books for what they were but aren’t big fans

3 - People who are ambivalent to the franchise or just don’t like it.

 

In which case you’d get a must buy (group 1), give-it-a-go-if-you-like-open-world-fantasy-games (group 2) or avoid (group 3) respectively. I’m in group 2.

 

Once I realised I couldn’t be bothered to go back I traded the game in today so I could experience a real Witches coming of age story!

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

* I do understand that there are those that could be in groups 1 or 2 that have had the franchise tainted forever more since Rowling went off the deep end. So, just in case, when I said putting the controversy aside for a moment it was just in that context whilst describing the games appeal.

 

 

[Personal Attack Dog]

On 15/03/2023 at 01:13, Lying Cat said:

What if @Personal Attack Dog somehow becomes Spainkiller in the future due to a paradox, teleporter accident or Committee based resonance cascade?

 

Is double jeopardy in effect? Does that even mean what I think it means? 

Silence, cat! 

[Unofficial Who]

An omission from Dog Kid University is being filled although not as DLC as expected.

 

https://www.polygon.com/23687007/new-harry-potter-game-quidditch-champions?

 

Quote

The dedicated sport of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is getting its own (official) video game. On Monday, WB Games and developer Unbroken Studios announced Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions; it’s a fast-paced, competitive multiplayer game built on the preferred pastime of Hogwarts wizards and witches, coming to consoles and PC.

Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions will address a gap in the most recent game based on the franchise, Hogwarts Legacy, which notably did not feature a playable version of Quidditch. And that’s all Quidditch Champions appears to be, based on the game’s FAQ, which describes it as “a complete, standalone Quidditch experience” that “engages players in the sport of Quidditch and other broomstick adventures alongside friends in a competitive multiplayer setting.” Like Hogwarts Legacy, the characters of Quidditch Champions will be player-created.

 

 

Looks like we're going to get a lot of Harry Potter games for the next few years.

 

Quote

Hogwarts Legacy managed to sell above expectations, with more than 12 million copies sold in the first two weeks.

 

[Festoon]

One franchise that's going to be ground through the earth's mantle by WBs eager heels.

[b00dles]

14 minutes ago, Festoon said:

One franchise that's going to be ground through the earth's mantle by EBs eager heels.

Electronics  Boutique really going for it are they?

(obvs I know what you mean, I was just momentarily confused)

[The Bag]

On 10/03/2023 at 10:31, Zael said:

 

She's currently doing a documentary called "The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling".

Natalie’s back to talk about JKR

 

 

[Unofficial Who]

An essential watch.

[Rex Grossman]

18 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

An essential watch.

Speaking of, I’ve seen a lot of people on Twitter saying the new HP TV show for HBO will be a massive flop because unlike the game it can be pirated easily.

 

That does mean a lot of people are still making sure they watch it though.

[Zael]

14 hours ago, The Bag said:

Natalie’s back to talk about JKR

 

 

 

The Krusty gag made me laugh out loud. 

[therearerules]

10 hours ago, Rex Grossman said:

Speaking of, I’ve seen a lot of people on Twitter saying the new HP TV show for HBO will be a massive flop because unlike the game it can be pirated easily.

 

That does mean a lot of people are still making sure they watch it though.

Surely we've learnt the popularity of a boycott on Twitter in no way correlates to efficacy of an actual boycott?

[ryodi]

10 hours ago, Rex Grossman said:

Speaking of, I’ve seen a lot of people on Twitter saying the new HP TV show for HBO will be a massive flop because unlike the game it can be pirated easily.

 

That does mean a lot of people are still making sure they watch it though.

Game of Thrones was the most pirated show when it was on air and it had no affect on its popularity. 

[Rex Grossman]

32 minutes ago, therearerules said:

Surely we've learnt the popularity of a boycott on Twitter in no way correlates to efficacy of an actual boycott?

Sure, but the point is true in that it’s a hell of a lot easier to pirate a TV show then a game.

 

[Rex Grossman]

23 minutes ago, ryodi said:

Game of Thrones was the most pirated show when it was on air and it had no affect on its popularity. 

That was the exact thought I had. People pirating GoT were probably not going to subscribe to HBO/Sky just to watch it anyway. 
 

This new HP TV show will be massive. If we thought the game was big this will blow it out of the water. Plus WB is more than happy to put JKR front and centre. You can bet the contracts the cast have to sign will be very restrictive about what they can say. 

[Strafe]

4 hours ago, ryodi said:

Game of Thrones was the most pirated show when it was on air and it had no affect on its popularity. 

Time Warner CEO went on record saying that pirating helped them because it ultimately led to more subs.

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/04/15/game-of-thrones-sets-piracy-world-record-but-does-hbo-care/?sh=78b0a2254196

 

“Our experience is, it all leads to more penetration, more paying subs, more health for HBO, less reliance on having to do paid advertising… If you go around the world, I think you’re right, Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world. Well, you know, that’s better than an Emmy.”