Tales of the Shire will allow players and Middle-earth fans to live that cozy hobbit life they’ve always dreamed of.
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Tales of the Shire: a LOTR game where you live your best hobbit life
If you’re the type of Middle-Earth fan who prefers cozying up at home instead of going out and slaying the minions of Sauron, I’ve got good news for you. Tales of the Shire is a Lord of the Rings farm life sim where you play as a hobbit living their best life.
A trailer for the game explains that you’re a resident of Bywater located in the Shire. Bywater isn’t considered a village and that’s where the player comes in; the game’s website says they’ll need to “bring the community together to achieve village status in Bywater.” This will be accomplished by joining clubs and completing missions given to players, alongside completing daily activities.
Gameplay
LOTR fans will be able to create a custom hobbit and do the usual farm life sim activities: fishing, growing crops, making friends and trading with your fellow hobbits, changing the decor of your hobbit home, gathering herbs, etc. Different seasons will result in seasonal crops and flowers being available for that period and meals can be prepared and shared with other hobbits to develop friendships with them.
As to be expected, player will also get to explore Bywater, as well as find treasures and lost glades. They will also interact with well-known LOTR characters such as Gandalf the Grey (hopefully he’ll provide plenty of fireworks like in The Fellowship of the Ring) and upgrades to hobbit skills, clothes, home, and more can be obtained by trading with said characters. In-game festivals and events like parties can be hosted/participated in.
Private Division will be the publisher, while Wētā Workshop is the developer for this game and this isn’t their first rodeo in Middle-earth. They’re also a prop and special effects company that worked on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy as well as Jackson’s Hobbit film trilogy and Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power TV series, as well as plenty of other non-Middle-earth films and shows.
Tales from the Shire will be released in the second half of 2024 and the PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch are the platforms that it’s coming to. Hopefully, we won’t see neither hair nor hide of Smeagol, the hobbit that eventually turned to Gollum because of The One Ring. I don’t want to be reminded of his titular game that was released last year and was received extremely poorly by gamers in general.
