Tales Of The Shire’s Concept Was Inspired By The Chaos Around Covid Lockdown

If the thought of battling Sauron’s legions of Orcs, trolls, and other horrific creatures of darkness all feels too much, how about a nice chilled life as a hobbit? This is where the Tales of the Shire’s developers, Wētā Workshop, hope to encapsulate players by offering them a side of The Lord of the Rings world that hasn’t been experienced before. With its rolling hills and happy-go-lucky hobbits skipping about the meadows, the Middle-Earth cozy game screams relaxation.

In a gaming world filled with action, combat, and a million tasks to complete, Tales of the Shire’s developers want to offer players a place to get away from the chaos of the world which was inspired by the stressful events surrounding the COVID lockdown period.

In an interview with GameReactor during the Summer Games Fest, Weta Workshop’s game designer Catherine Booth spoke with the site’s Ben Lyons about how the pandemic period played a huge part in the creation of Tales of the Shire and how they implemented J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous Lord of the Rings source material into the game. Set between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Booth expressed how much creativity they were able to dive into, as this particular period hasn’t been explored.

“All of the characters that you run into, we’ve drawn them directly out of all of the appendices and different resources that we have,” Booth said. “We have a really cool writer, Darren Ormandy, he’s our Tolkien scholar. He’s the boss, so we get everything put through him, and we’ve worked really closely with Middle-earth Enterprises as well to make sure that everything fits into the lore perfectly.”

When it comes to wanting to create a Lord of the Rings game, staying as close as possible to Tolkien’s material is a must. Booth explained that as long as they stuck to the literature, getting any lore into the game was a simple feat. “Whenever I’ve come up with something and said, hey, can we do this? He’s (Darren Ormandy) like, if you can find it in the book, we can get it in the game, and that’s kind of the baseline rule.“

Leaning into the relaxing and non-combat side of the game, Booth discussed why they decided to go down this route instead of the many other avenues they could have taken a hobbit game. “The idea of the game came from that sort of COVID lockdown period. We really wanted something that was cozy, something that was relaxing and restful, and I think that the Shire is the perfect setting for that”, stated Booth before finishing up with that she really just wanted people to be able to unwind and find a place of relaxation in a familiar fantasy world.

Tales of the Shire doesn’t have a release date just yet, but it is slated to launch in the latter half of 2024 for the PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.

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