Tales Of The Shire is a new Lord Of The Rings game with zero violence
To celebrate International Hobbit Day, a new ‘heart-warming’ Lord Of The Rings game has been announced by movie FX house Wētā.
No, we didn’t know it was Hobbit Day either. But publisher Private Division (part of Take-Two) and Wētā Workshop did, and so they’ve chosen today to announce Tales Of The Shire, a new cosy game in the vein of Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley.
Announce may be too strong a word, though, as the teaser trailer below doesn’t show any gameplay footage and it’s not really clear what the game is, beyond the following description: ‘Your cosy Hobbit life awaits in Tales Of The Shire, a heart-warming, new, The Lord of the Rings game due out in 2024 on console and PC.’
The word cosy is clearly not chosen by accident, as it’s become an increasingly common term for games that feature little or no violence and which usually concentrate on crafting, designing, farming, and social activities.
Previously, almost all Lord Of The Ring games went through Warner Bros., as they were responsible for the movies, but they lost the rights and Embracer Group bought them instead… and they’ve been busy licensing them out to seemingly anyone that asks.
The most recent game was the critically lambasted The Lord of the Rings: Gollum but Amazon also has a new MMO coming out, presumably based on their Rings Of Power series – although it’s never been shown in public.
The reception to Gollum doesn’t seem to have put off Embracer Group, who have been cancelling other projects to focus on more Lord Of The Rings, such as EA’s new mobile title.
An obvious problem with Tales Of The Shire is that Wētā Workshop is a special effects house – the same one that worked on the movies – with no experience of making video games.
That doesn’t necessarily matter if Tales Of The Shire doesn’t feature much in the way of traditional gameplay, but it’s still a concern.
What’s also concerning is the future prospects of Embracer Group, who have been cutting staff and projects left, right, and centre this month – with rumours abound that they may be looking to sell off Borderlands developer Gearbox Software.
Every time that happens – the most recent example was with Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics – they say it’s necessary restructuring and insist that Lord Of The Rings is their priority.
That seems a little odd given no previous Lord Of The Rings game has been big enough to deserve that level of confidence, but given how Gollum turned out Tales Of The Shire doesn’t have to do much to count as an improvement.
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