Tales of the Shire Preview: A completely expected journey

There has been some devastating news in the video game world over the month of September; be it more layoffs, major game cancellations, mad hardware announcements, and perhaps most crushing of all, news from developer Wētā Workshop that it would no longer be hitting its planned 2024 launch for upcoming charming The Lord of the Rings life-simulation game Tales of the Shire. While I'm a firm believer of giving developers the time they need to deliver a top quality project, that announcement hit me like an orc helmet to the toe, shattering my hopes of a relaxing holiday period waddling around the Shire and just generally basking in simple Hobbit life. So, when the opportunity to dive into Tales of the Shire landed in my inbox earlier this week, I snapped at the chance like a hungry Uruk-hai hearing that meat's back on the menu.

My past week has been filled with doing very little. On purpose, might I add. What immediately came to my attention after spending more than 20 minutes with Tales of the Shire, as I did back at Summer Game Fest, was that this game is all about embracing the rudimentary, perfectly respectable, unexpected life as a Hobbit in the rolling fields of the Shire. Wētā Workshop has captured the pure essence of Shire life in this game, and yes, that does mean that it's slowly paced, has little excitement, minimal mechanical depth, absolutely zero danger, but so much charm that you could bottle it and quench the thirst of the armies of Mordor.

Let me paint a picture for you. To kick things off, you design your Hobbit. This is a pretty traditional character creation system where you can flick between genders, body sizes, hairstyles, hair colour, facial features, basic clothing, and then ultimately choose a name. Tales of the Shire provides plenty of fitting options from a scroll wheel if you don't fancy typing a name yourself, something I embraced and went with a very fitting Hobbit name of Bingo Diggle. From here, you are introduced to the world by a certain Wandering Wizard clad in grey, all before finding yourself in a small community making up the blissful Bywater and being given the tour by one of the locals who ultimately takes you to the doorstep of the dilapidated and completely unrespectable hobbit-hole you have inherited.

Tales of the Shire then presents a slate of straightforward and simple quests to help you find your place in the world. These range from learning the basics of planting and tending crops, to foraging for ingredients and items used in the cooking elements that are also one of the game's most important social features. Speaking about this, you're also introduced to many of the locals and even required to invite a few around for a meal that you have to cook and ideally tailor to their taste and interests. Granted, this isn't very complex as during the process of getting to know each local you will take note of their dietary interests and even learn recipes they favour, all so you can use that to inform your dish choices when playing with the cooking suite. As for preparing a meal, this is also very rudimentary, to the point where it's mainly about fitting a dish's chunkiness and tenderness-level to what each guest tends to appreciate, all using a Cooking Mama-like mechanic that has very, very little depth to it.

At the beginning of the adventure, you don't really think twice about the complexity of Tales of the Shire as you're simply engrossed by the sweet, charming nature and the fantastic and lively version of the Shire that Wētā Workshop has created. However, the more time you spend in the game, the more you begin to realise that the lack of complexity could be this game's biggest problem. I say this as some of the quest design is simply bad. You will travel around Bywater talking to the locals and completing what are pretty much one-dimensional and uninspiring fetch quests. You'll fill your time doing absolutely nothing but waiting for the sun to set so you can go to bed and slightly advance your crop's growth or potentially even see the fast-moving seasons change. You'll slip into the mindset of a pensioner, marginally rearranging your furniture, spending hours at the lakeside fishing for river trout, or simply wandering around the world possibly with the end goal of concluding the day at The Green Dragon for a pint. The fact that the world is quite rigid and stiff to wander around doesn't alleviate this problem, and while I was hoping Tales of the Shire would be more akin to a Middle-earth Animal Crossing, the distinct lack of mechanical depth and complexity means that the two games don't really exist in the same headspace.

Yet, even though this is the case, I can't help but feel as though Wētā Workshop has completed the task at hand with flying colours. Hobbits are notoriously simple and boring creatures who live minor and unadventurous lives and this is exactly what the developer has offered up here too: a Hobbit simulation without any deviation. Tales of the Shire is a game where you basically do nothing, for hours at a time, without any repercussions, and while that might seem like a terrible design choice - and it probably would be for almost any other project - here... it somehow works.

Tales of the Shire won't challenge you, keep you on your toes, frustrate, confuse, bewilder, surprise, or thrill, but what it will do is leave a massive grin plastered over your face as you skip mindlessly around the lush and vibrant hills of the Shire, embracing a life without any of the worries that we all know all too well. So, do with that information as you see fit. For me, I'm perfectly happy to live a life without consequence and scowl at the unrespectable Bagginses as they head off on their grand adventures. Who needs danger when you have po-tay-toes and neatly pressed handkerchiefs?