Caleb Purdom

I know about the controversy regarding buying this game, I bought it anyway. Curiosity, nostalgia, and an intensive ad campaign got the better of me. It really isn't good. Don't get me wrong it's absolutely beautiful, no loading screens, amazing graphics, truly a technological marvel. The fun stops there. Characters are painfully flat to the point that I ended up on an internal journey thinking back on whether the original source material actually contained these same problems. It's all very reductive, every spell an ex machina, every puzzle is merely just a task and a round of applause. Poachers are bad, because they are evil. You taking animals out of their habitat to put in your own zoo is good, because you are good. Purchasing a house elf is fine, because you will reward her with freedom she does not want. The main plot line is an evil goblin uprising, they are tired of living under the laws of wizards that discriminate against them and want to be treated as equals. Soooo evil. Honestly, I don't even think they were trying to go for the sympathetic villain story because all the moral philosophy presented seems to be the most kindergarten thoughts. Bad Guys do bad things, good guys do good things. Therefore, when a good guy does a thing it IS good. The concept of consent is not well grasped, by heros or villains. Also money, this game feels unintentionally classist. Was Harry Potter a capitalist love letter? Because some of the tasks are 'buy a thing'. Teachers regularly tell you, the way to obtain ingredients and class materials is to just go purchase them, and to look for them in the wild only if you must. There's a constant background drum beat that's like, out of touch, about money. A student gets a howler from an angry mother chiding him for being so flippant with money and saying he's being cut off from their finances for it. His friends laugh at him. I don't even know how to describe it, it's just like a disconnect. Somehow they didn't capture an accurate picture of other classes? They got upper classes and how (I guess?) the rich think middle and lower behave. But it really feels fake. I don't know what I thought I was getting into, but somehow it helped me close a very important chapter of my childhood. For better or worse I'm ready to move on from the Wizarding world, in seek of better thought through fantasy content.