Tales of the Shire Shouldn’t Shy Away From Its Own Reputation System

Highlights

• Tales of the Shire focuses on establishing a town in The Lord of the Rings universe, offering a cozy gameplay experience.
• A reputation system may be present, influencing relationships with NPCs and adding depth to player interactions.
• The game could benefit from a robust relationship system tied to reputation, encouraging player engagement and exploration.

Tales of the Shire brings a different perspective to The Lord of the Rings through the cozy game genre. By removing itself from the conflicts that often feature in The Lord of the Rings media, Tales of the Shire instead focuses on the land of the hobbits and gives players the chance to establish the town of Bywater in the Shire. As the game is centered on the establishment of a town, there may be a reputation system as the player builds their hobbit hole, farm, and builds relationships with the NPCs living around them. This forms a complex network that would be more interesting if they affected each other, rather than relying solely on one progress bar to track reputation.

The Power of Reputation in Tales of the Shire

The stakes of a cozy game are, by nature, not as high as the stakes in video games from more action-driven genres. With cozy games comes more resource management, with rewards providing engagement. Tales of the Shire has the chance to take it a step further and engage its players with an extension of the same system that many cozy games already use. A good reputation system with different methods of raising it and rewards for a sparkling reputation can be a great way to increase player engagement and make gameplay more challenging without becoming prohibitive. It can also encourage players to explore the world of the game and speak to its resident NPCs if rewards for doing so are tied to it.

Weta Workshop states on its site for Tales of the Shire that the game will be about establishing Bywater as a town. Making decisions about the future of a town shouldn’t be left in the hands of someone that the community doesn’t trust, and so a relationship and reputation system should not only be present, but closely connected to each other.

Relationships in Tales of the Shire

As seen in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, The Shire and hobbit society in general comprise close-knit communities. This is an opportunity for Tales of the Shire to implement a relationship system that affects the player character’s reputation, and overall ability to shape the future of Bywater. Different hobbit NPCs could have positive or negative relationships with each other, and the player character’s relationship with them could impact their relationship with others depending on their opinions of them. Another alternative way to build a robust relationship system tied to reputation would be to repair or improve negative relationships between different NPCs, with an improvement in reputation each time the player character repairs a previously broken relationship.

Intersecting with Other Systems

Farming and homesteading will likely play a large role in Tales of the Shire, as seen in the trailer. As the player character’s various homesteading and other skills improve, such as baking, cooking, fishing, and hosting, NPCs who value these skills could have an improved opinion of the player character, while their overall reputation increases. Likewise, throwing a party with subpar food or dishes that the guests dislike could lower the relationship score, and thus the reputation of the player character.

Having major milestones tied to a specific type of gameplay can be frustrating for many, and so, for this to work, many different types of NPCs, resources, and skills need to be available to unlock different types of paths. As Tales of the Shire is a cozy game, this would also alleviate pressure and stress on the player, hitting the spot where the gameplay is engaging rather than stressful.