Tales of the Shire promises to be packed with plenty of activities, from growing a garden to befriending other hobbits to hosting shared meals with the entire neighborhood. One of the many activities available in Tales of the Shire is home decoration, in which players can customize each room of their hobbit hole, as well as their outdoor garden space, using a variety of themed decor sets. When designing the furniture, lighting, accessories, and other items available for players, Weta Workshop chose to hew closely to the original Hobbit and Lord of the Rings books as well as author J. R. R. Tolkien’s own life experience.
Game designer Catherine Booth gave Game Rant a deep dive into Tales of the Shire‘s home decoration feature, including the team’s research process and how they decided on what aesthetics to include. She explained that, while a lot of the team visited the real-life Hobbiton in New Zealand, they chose to stay away from the look of the films and create a visual style similar to what Tolkien would have seen when he was first designing the hobbits’ peaceful settlement.
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Tales of the Shire’s Aesthetic is True to Tolkien’s Experiences
J. R. R. Tolkien describes Hobbiton, hobbit-holes, parties, and farms quite lavishly in his novels. In the very first paragraph of The Hobbit, he summed up the aesthetic of a hobbit’s dwelling place succinctly: “it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”
But Weta Workshop didn’t stop at simply reading Tolkien’s books. They researched the author’s life and the time period in which he lived and wrote his books to create a look that matched the world he would have seen around him when putting pen to paper. Booth explained the team’s design philosophy:
“We’re very much inspired by the aesthetic of the time that he grew up in, even prior to the age he was when he wrote the books. What he would have had around him growing up—because we know that was really a huge inspiration for him when he was writing about the Shire. It was about his childhood, it was about his upbringing, it was about being in nature.”
Tales of the Shire’s Design Aesthetic is Cozy, Colorful, and Lore-Accurate
The resulting design aesthetic is rustic and cozy, including lots of rich woods, bright colors, and earth tones. A heavy emphasis is placed on natural decorations, with candles to light the hobbit-hole’s rooms, paintings of plants and nature scenes, and handmade wood or clay accessories. Booth revealed that the team also drew on their own New Zealand heritage; for example, one of the items players can find in the game is a Temuka pot made in the traditional New Zealand style.
Weta Workshop also made sure that the items and characters in the game were accurate to Tales of the Shire‘s place in the timeline. The game takes place after The Hobbit but before The Lord of the Rings, so Bilbo Baggins has returned from his journey but it is quite a while until Frodo sets out on his. As a result, Booth revealed that the team had to be careful about including or excluding key items from the series:
“Because the events of
Lord of the Rings
haven’t taken place yet, we didn’t want to make any references to the One Ring. We’ve really made sure that there are no plot holes or weird inconsistencies going on, that it works for the time.”
- Released
- 2024
- Developer(s)
- Wētā Workshop