Tales of the Shire Will Let Players Live a Cozy Hobbit Life in 2024

Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of The Rings Game doesn’t hit consoles and PC until later this year, but Restart had the chance to go hands-on with an early build of the title at Summer Game Fest.

Set between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Tales of the Shire is a narrative life simulation game that will allow players to become a custom hobbit character who moves into the lovely town of Bywater in the Shire. Players will help Bywater earn “official village status” by throwing the best Bywater Festival possible.

At Summer Game Fest, Restart experienced two different moments from the game’s story in separate demos.

First, we saw what it’s like to be a new Bywater resident, introduced to a run-down house that needs some sprucing up.

Areas like the side garden and secondary rooms in our home were blocked off, though they can be unlocked over time. For now, we were introduced to features like receiving mail and befriending Bywater’s locals (the mail system will allow players to keep up with what’s going on around town).

Even this early on in the game’s story, cooking was already featured as a major gameplay component (after all, hobbits love to eat). Players will be able to forage and trade for ingredients, and then take those items into the kitchen to prepare a wide assortment of meals.

A female hobbit uses a sauté pan to cook an ingredient — ©Weta Workshop / Private Division

The cooking activity starts simply, but will become more involved as players learn to make more complex meals. In part, this will involve the introduction of new cooking tools, like a mortar and pestle and pickling jar. Ingredients will also have their own characteristics, such as being sweet or salty, which will affect the flavor of the final dish they’re used in.

Preparing a meal is a step-by-step process, asking players to complete actions like chopping or sautéing ingredients. During each step, players may have a limited amount of time to reach a certain “sweet spot” that will result in the highest quality meal possible. For instance, when chopping a vegetable, players can continually press a button to chop the vegetable finer and finer, and they’ll need to decide when to stop to create a high quality dish. But don’t worry, even if players miss the sweet spot, there’s no way to create a bad meal in Tales of the Shire.

Once we finished preparing a dish, we were able to invite one of our new neighbors to a shared meal around our dining table. Players can invite up to four hobbits to a single meal at their home or various locations around town (like the Green Dragon pub), and each character will have their own food tastes and preferences. Eating with other hobbits will improve the player’s relationship with each one.

A female hobbit holds a cutting board near a kitchen counter — New cooking tools are unlocked over time
©Weta Workshop / Private Division

The second demo jumped ahead in the game’s story, when players have access to gardening and additional kitchen tools. Here, we received a letter from Marigold, who needed help with a problem at the Ivy Bush. At this point, players would already be familiar with Bywater’s layout, but in our case, we were introduced to the in-game map that will let players track their desired character and even show the schedules for different residents so players will always know where they are.

Once we set out to talk to Marigold, we were introduced to some of the game’s most clever and charming features. For instance, rather than having a waypoint marker near the top of the screen, or even a trail of sparkles to follow on the path, Tales of the Shire will guide players using friendly birds that will land on objects around the environment, directing players to their desired destination.

Then there are the butterflies. When players come across these colorful insects, they’ll be encouraged to follow them to be led to a forageable ingredient they can use later in the kitchen. We were even shown the game’s version of running, a delightful frolicking or skipping animation that fits perfectly with the title’s peaceful aesthetic.

The player's hobbit talks to a Hobbit named Marigold Potts — ©Weta Workshop / Private Division

After talking to Marigold, we headed back home, and along the way, discovered some of the additional new features players will have unlocked by this point, including fishing, chickens, and gardening beds full of crops that can be watered and harvested to use in dishes.

We were also introduced to an in-depth Decorate Mode, which will allow players to customize the look of their home and outdoor areas by placing and moving around furniture. Items aren’t locked to a grid, but there is a snapping option for those who want some help arranging items. Plus, the game will allow players to move items individually or in groups, for instance, if they’ve already created the perfect display of items on a table and later decide the entire table needs to be moved.

Finally, while we didn’t have the chance to customize or name our character for either demo, we were assured players can create a hobbit of their own design, and will have the chance to either enter a custom name for their character or use the hobbit name generator.

The Ivy Bush in the Tales of the Shire video game — The Ivy Bush
©Weta Workshop / Private Division

Even though The Lord of the Rings universe is often full of violence and despair, players won’t need to worry about the One Ring or Saruman in Tales of the Shire. The game will make passing references to Bilbo and things like “scary red dragons,” but combat will stay far away, allowing players to live out a peaceful life in Bywater.

Kurt Adams, senior 3D artist at Weta Workshop, told Restart: “There’s been a lot of approaches to Lord of the Rings games. And Weta tries to do innovative things, or make the impossible possible. So we were like, ”what would happen if a game was just based in the Shire?” And that feeling, that cozy feeling. This is the result of it.”

In order to ensure Tales of the Shire fits the established lore of Middle Earth, Weta Workshop is working with Middle Earth Enterprises, which manages the Tolkein estate. All of the game’s text and any decisions made go through Middle Earth Enterprises for approval and tweaking, if necessary. With such care and attention being evident even in the game’s demos, Tales of the Shire looks to offer a wonderful, lighthearted take on The Lord of the Rings universe, and we can’t wait to try the game in full later this year.