If you play the whole game, it’s a pretty consistent point that comes up that wizards are essentially…racist. Ranrok’s storyline is about tapping giant stores of magic to take the fight back to the wizarding world. The Harry Potter universe does effectively have slaves in the form of house elves, which is a whole other issue, but here, the goblins are instead more like second-class citizens, banned from using wands by wizards. In fact, the only people we see Ranrok actually kill are other goblins during two specific cutscenes. The game draws a distinct line between Ranrok and his loyalist and other goblins who don’t believe in his philosophies. It may not have been wise to pick goblins as the main foes here as a result, but in practice, the storyline is a bit different than what was assumed from the summaries.

There are issues with the coding of goblins as Jewish stereotypes all throughout fiction, expanding well past Harry Potter, though this series making them the “bankers” was a poor start and didn’t help matters.

There was a narrative before the game released that the game’s use of a goblin as a main enemy was playing into an anti-Semitic storyline and that you were essentially “putting down a slave rebellion” by fighting back against Ranrok and his troops.

Hogwarts legacy narrator