Tales of the Shire developers on using The Lord of the Rings lore: "If you can find it in the book, we can get it in the game"

We've just published a preview of Wētā Workshop's Tales of the Shire, a delightful life-sim experience based on Hobbits living in the Shire. Our preview was based on a short hands-on session at Summer Game Fest, where we also had the chance to speak with game designer Catherine Booth to learn more about the hurdles (or lack thereof) the developer had to jump through when using The Lord of the Rings lore in the game.

When asked about the setting and time period of Tales of the Shire, Booth told us: "Yeah sure, so Tales of the Shire is set between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, so that gave us a bit of freedom to create a story that was our own and also bring in, like, just jam-pack as much lore as we can into it. So, 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. We have a really cool writer, Darren Ormandy, he's our Tolkien scholar. Yeah, 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."

Booth continued a little later talking about working with Middle-earth Enterprises and using J.R.R. Tolkein's source material in the game.

"I mean, as far as I know, I haven't personally been a part of any of the meetings, but even working with Darren, we have specific licences with the books, so whenever I've come up with something and said, hey, can we do this? He's like, if you can find it in the book, we can get it in the game, and that's kind of the baseline rule."

Talking a little further about the setting and the lore of LoTR, Booth also explained what makes this version of the Shire special and what she particularly enjoyed seeing represented in the game.

"This is set in Bywater, which is within the Shire, separate from Hobbiton, so most people are like, oh Hobbiton, that's where Frodo and Bilbo lived. We're in Bywater, so that's a little bit further away, and we have, again, worked really closely within the existing, all of the maps that Tolkien designed, we've lifted that directly and tried to put it into the game world and make it playable, so that you can imagine things like the Battle of Bywater taking place in this area. We've made sure that it all still fits, so that Bywater area you can explore and really sort of get lost in, while still seeing some cool key locations like the Green Dragon, that was loads of fun for the team to put together. So yeah, we've had a lot of fun building this world, and we're really excited for everyone to have a go at it."

Check out the interview below to hear why Wētā Workshop decided to make Tales of the Shire in the first place, and more.