I’ve been ruminating on Twitter some time ago on how we’ve never seen that many successful videogames based on Tolkien’s works. There’s obviously LOTRO and the “Shadow of…” titles which have done reasonably well. I also personally really enjoyed the LEGO version of the movie trilogy. That aside, there’s the old EA games, an RTS and awful recent failures like the Hunt for Gollum. That is precious little over the past 20 years and I’ve always wondered why we’ve not seen a beautiful adventure game across Middle-Earth, an open-world RPG or casual title. For the most part LOTR based games seem to revolve around war despite the fact that there’s such a wealth of whimsy in Tolkien’s world.
Fortunately, it looks like the folks at Wētā Workshop might change this soon. Thus far, there hasn’t been an awful lot of information on Tales of the Shire other than the website and a more recent gameplay trailer from three weeks ago. But it’s the below update from inside their New Zealand games division that really has me excited:
I would personally love to play a more relaxed and fun LOTR game that focuses on casual play, questing and maybe also farming and building around locations like the Shire, Bree-Land or the South Farthing. I get the impression that there’s a very passionate, talented team of Tolkien fans over at Wētā really looking to create a unique and beautiful experience that could be exactly what many of us explorers and tinkerers have been waiting for. If anyone can do it, it’s probably them. Fingers crossed!
It looks quite interesting, but I’m trying to keep low expectations for now. That way, if it does well I can be happy as opposed to having bonkers expectations and being disappointed.
Quite right. I’m going to manage my expectations but it really does sound rather nice so far! 😀 It would be awesome to have a game like this.