How home decorations in Tales of the Shire pay homage to Tolkien's life

Tales of the Shire it promises to be filled with tons of activities, from growing a garden to making friends with other hobbits to hosting shared meals with the entire neighborhood. One of the many activities available in Tales of the Shire is a home decoration, where players can customize each room of their hobbit lair, as well as their outdoor garden space, using a variety of themed decoration sets. When designing the furniture, lighting, accessories and other items available to players, Weta Workshop chose to stick faithfully to the original Hobbits AND The Lord of the Rings books as well as the life experience of the author JRR Tolkien.

Game designer Catherine Booth delved into Game Rant Tales of the Shire'S home decor features, including the team's research process and how they decided which aesthetic to include. He explained that while much 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 drawing the hobbits. 'peaceful agreement.

The aesthetic of Tales of the Shire is faithful to Tolkien's experiences

JRR Tolkien describes Hobbiton, hobbit places, festivals and farms quite generously in his novels. In the very first paragraph of The Hobbit, summed up the aesthetics of a hobbit's abode succinctly: “it was a hobbit hole, and that means comfort.”

But Weta Workshop didn't stop at simply reading Tolkien's books. They studied the author's life and the time period he lived in and wrote his books to create a look that matched the world he would see around him when he put pen to paper. Booth explained the team's design philosophy:

“We're very inspired by the aesthetics of the time he grew up in, even before the age 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, his upbringing, being in nature.”

Tales of the Shire's design aesthetic is welcoming, colorful and thoughtful

The resulting design aesthetic is rustic and welcoming, including lots of rich woods, bright colors and earth tones. A strong emphasis is placed on natural decorations, with candles to illuminate the hobbit-hole rooms, paintings of plants and nature scenes, and handmade accessories made of wood or clay. Booth revealed the team also drew on their New Zealand heritage; for example, one of the items players can find in the game is a Temuka vase made in the traditional New Zealand style.

Weta Workshop also made sure that the game's objects and characters were accurate Tales of the Shire'S place in the timeline. The game takes place next The Hobbit but first The Lord of the Rings, so Bilbo Baggins has returned from his journey but quite some time passes before Frodo leaves on his. As a result, Booth revealed that the team had to be careful about including or excluding key elements from the series:

“Because the events of
The Lord of the Rings
have not yet taken place, we did not want to make any reference to the One Ring. We really made sure there were no plot holes or weird inconsistencies going on, that it worked for the moment.”