Hogwarts Legacy, an upcoming role-playing game set in the Harry Potter universe, will reportedly feature a character creation process allowing for transgender witches and wizards, an anonymous source connected to the game reportedly told Bloomberg.
The open-world RPG will feature players creating their own Hogwarts students, who will attend the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry over one hundred years before Harry and his friends. According to the source, players will be able to select a character’s voice and body separately. Additionally, they can choose whether their character is referred to as a “witch” or a “wizard” regardless of body or voice type chosen.
If true, this could represent an improvement over the heavily criticized character creation system in titles such as Cyberpunk 2077, which claimed that trans characters were allowed but tied characters’ in-game gender to the chosen voice and body. However, it would still not allow for the creation of non-binary characters, which fans have also criticized.
This announcement has also sparked interest from Harry Potter fans who are wary about playing or purchasing the game due to original author J. K. Rowling’s vehemently anti-trans comments made on Twitter and in interviews. If this rumor is true, it could indicate that Rowling had a much smaller role in the development of the game than previously theorized, or possibly might not have been included at all.
The anonymous source indicated that the game’s development team had fought throughout the process for such an inclusive character creation system, as they did not support Rowling’s views and wished trans Harry Potter fans to be able to enjoy the game.
However, at this time, no official statement has been made regarding whether or not this rumor is true. In the past, publisher WB Games has remained noticeably quiet on the issue of whether they supported Rowling’s bigoted views, and whether or not she would receive royalties from the project.
Hogwarts Legacy was originally scheduled to release in 2021, but was delayed to 2022 due to difficulties associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
