Wētā Workshop isn’t exactly known for its video games. An ever-growing group of passionate developers in New Zealand’s capital are striving to change that as Tales of the Shire, a cozy game set between J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary works, rounds the corner. Here’s the story of its creation from pitch to post-launch support.
Founded almost four decades ago, Wētā Workshop has built its reputation largely for its special and practical effects, contributing to the likes of the recent Dune films, a plethora of MCU titles, and a great deal more.
Over the years, the company has expanded its vision, delving more into the tech side which has since paved the way for a full-fledged video game division. A decade on and the Wellington-based crew – with plenty of external talent on contract too – is gearing up for its first major release.
Tales of the Shire has already turned plenty of heads, including our own after some hands-on time, as its adorably cozy nature paints a new picture of Tolkien’s creation. But how did such a game get over the line in the first place? What is the team doing to ensure it avoids missteps others have made (looking at you Gollum)?
Dexerto sat down with key members on the project to delve into Wētā’s culture, its priorities on Tales (wholesomely called TotS within the studio’s walls), and get a glimpse at their lofty ambitions.
A cozy hobbit life
After toiling away on a few smaller projects, including games built for virtual reality, Wētā’s gaming division looked at what might be possible directly within the Tolkien universe. Warner Bros. was busy publishing the popular Middle-earth series and other earlier spinoffs in the medium were largely action-oriented.
To break the mold, the team started small with a different lens. Rather than go after the darker atmosphere present across Lord of the Rings trilogy, they would instead harken back to the more playful, child-like energy of The Hobbit. This naturally lent itself to the cozy genre, though it wasn’t quite that simple.
“It went through a lot of iterations of what the game actually was,” Art Director Stephen Lambert told Dexerto. Fortunately, there was “very little pushback on Tales from the very beginning” even while finding its footing.
“It was one of those projects where we’re like ‘Why hasn’t someone done this already and can we just get on with making it?’”
“I love a lot of cozy games,” Lead Producer Calliope Ryder chimed in. A longtime fan of Frostpunk, Stardew Valley, and the like, it felt all too natural for Tolkien’s work to be adapted into the genre. But doing so isn’t a simple matter of just copying what’s already there and slapping some hobbits on the box. Far from it, the devs described, as from visuals down to nitty gritty gameplay systems, it’s all been designed from the ground up to leverage the IP.
“We have been creating this game through the lens of what is important to hobbits,” Ryder explained. “We’re not trying to do a really classic cozy game skin but in the Shire. We are framing everything through the perspective of being a hobbit.”
That’s where cooking comes into play, for instance. While the emphasis on homecooked meals surprised me during my first hands-on session with the game, it really does fit the universe given how important food is to our beloved hobbit pals.
“In the beginning, cooking was always there but it wasn’t as important a feature,” Lambert said. “It came to a point where it evolved and became a core pillar of the game. Cooking is love, food is love. That’s where that emphasis in the game comes from.”
“Cooking in particular is one of those features you don’t see done in ways that really feed back into the loop, that makes you really want to go and engage with it,” Ryder added. “It’s usually a necessity – ‘Well, I’ve got to make some potions before I go off into the mines. How can I min-max this so I can spend the least amount of time cooking?’”
In Tales, cooking is central to the experience. You’re gathering ingredients, improvising with certain parts of recipes, all in hopes of charming villagers and building your relationships. But that’s just one part of the bigger picture for Wētā.
No stone in the Shire left unturned
Working on such a prestigious property comes with “a lot of pressure,” Ryder said. “A lot of people really care about The Lord of the Rings and I can relate.”
Obviously no one involved wants to do any wrong in the eyes of the most passionate fans, so every decision must be thoroughly considered. But when many on the team are among the most passionate fans themselves, there’s an internal pressure too, with expectations through the roof given their own love for the IP.
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“I’ve grown up as a Kiwi with this being a huge part of the national identity,” Ryder said. “When traveling abroad, people either know about the All Blacks or they know about Lord of the Rings.
“As a kid, I completely immersed myself in The Hobbit, read The Lord of the Rings multiple times. I was a superfan from pretty young. So being able to work on a Lord of the Rings cozy game in New Zealand, at Wētā Workshop, is really special.
Diving as deep as possible, the team considered it all. From exact vegetation to the layout of precise landforms, every minuscule detail has been factored into the game’s version of the Shire. “Research was pretty exhaustive on everything,” Lambert said.
“Just to give you the level of how much we really thought about every decision, we had back-and-forth arguments about whether lemons should be in the shire for months,” Ryder stressed.
Then there’s the story of the game’s fauna. While the average player will most likely never so much as consider it, there’s been ample discussion about what particular foliage would be present in this area at this point in the Tolkien timeline.
Should even a handful of players get particular references, it’s a job well done for the Wētā crew.
“The great thing about that is very few people are going to get that reference, but the few people that are hardcore fans, they’ll understand what that means, just being able to include stuff like that is really special,” Lambert continued. “I’m really excited to see fans go through and find and discuss those because we sure discussed the hell out of them.”
As a result of being in-house with expert costume designers, practical effects wizards, and many more disciplines in between, Wētā was able to leverage its many unique verticals all in striving for an authentic tale.
“We have the best chance of really being in connection with the Lord of the Rings fanbase, and we have access to so many of the people who created the vision.”
As a “largely project-based company,” many onboard are “accustomed to ebbing and flowing,” jumping over to different tasks as required. Coupled with the global crisis at the peak of development making local New Zealand hires extremely difficult, the team had to get “really creative about problem-solving” and doing so “with the skillsets” already under their roof.
For instance, a handful of concept artists may be brought over from the TV side in order to get work done on the game. The same could be said for lore masters as they weave a web across live-action projects and the game too.
“People will be like ‘I just finished 3D modeling a costume for a big film I won’t name, and now I’m back on Tales of the Shire making hobbit outfits,” Ryder said with a laugh.
A simple walk (to Mordor) ahead
The nature of cozy games is that they’re never truly finished. Look no further than Stardew Valley as a prime example, a title players circle back to for hundreds of hours over multiple years, always finding new ways to optimize, new layouts for their farms, and so on. With Tales of the Shire, it’s built in such a way as to support just that, with devs more than keen to continue supporting it long after its March 25, 2025 release.
“A lot of cozy games are quite sandbox-y, so there’s no cutoff point except for maybe your PC crashing because you’ve got too many things,” Ryder joked. “We have the challenge of bringing in linear narratives to a timeframe and also to a life-sim game. So we would love to keep telling those stories, there’s so much more to say. It really just depends on how players respond.”
“We’d love to see a really long tale, just because there’s so many more things we’d love to do and stories to tell,” Lamber remarked. “We would love to support as many updates as we can, we’ve got plenty of ideas.”
