Introduction

It’s obvious that The Sims franchise have put EA in a unique situation. With the first ever game title to have over 100 million sold, the question remains what’s next for The Sims 3? What could be done to vastly improve what’s been introduced The Sims 2? No doubt there are questions such as what will be included, what would be deferred to expansion packs, and most of all, whether The Sims 3 would be a rehashed version of The Sims 2 but just slapped on with new graphics. There were many questions we sought to have answered. Contrary to popular belief, there were English fan sites who did attend The Sims 3 fan invitational.

I think it’s most important to stress on before reading anything more, is that The Sims 3 is still in full swing development. Developers for The Sims 3 are still in the development process, trying to conceptualize, develop, and refine aspects of The Sims 3. There are still months of work ahead for them and what we were permitted to see was merely the tip of the iceberg, the frosting on the cake, the crust on the pie, the, well, you get the idea. It was just a sampling of what’s to come.

Much of the details aren’t simply there yet because The Sims 3 isn’t complete. Mind you, after seeing a several things, we gasped, applauded, cheered and just wanted to take it home already.


SecuROM and System Requirements
So let’s get down to business and talk Sims 3. Several webmasters, including myself, have had increasing concerns about the recent revelations about SecuROM and its increasing restrictions upon gamers. We were even more concerned about the possibility that EA may very well limit how many times we could install and reinstall The Sims 3. The simple fact is that for The Sims, we simply install, and reinstall at quite a sheer volume or rate. We raised that concern with The Sims 3 team and Rod Humble, however at present, there were no firm decisions on whether they would even use SecuROM or anything else for that matter.

For those wondering what the system requirements will be, again, the game has not been finalized and thus nothing’s here yet. The goal is still to make it to a wide and accessible audience as possible with fine tuning at a later date. So if you’re reading just for the sake of knowing what The Sims 3 System Requirements are, you may stop now.


The City
The Sims 3 itself takes us beyond what we’re use to in The Sims 2 and The Sims 1. It is finally time our Sims got into the world where we can finally interact with them beyond the lots of homes and community lots but now on a full city level. It’s now about life at home and beyond, allowing you to interact with your environment at a whole new level. Certainly community lots gave a degree of interaction we’re use to, but we’re looking at some of the more finer details that makes the game more personalized and relatable than before.

Ben Bell demonstrated to us a Sim he freshly created and took her the city center. During the time in the city center, he demonstrated how the city center was fully interactive, and how his Sim could interact with its environment. As an example, he took his sim fishing. Ben noted that as your Sim gets better at fishing you could take them home, and place them into an aquarium and give them a name. I couldn’t help but take notice that some of the graphics and water reflections were far more refined from Bon Voyage. It seems like the water in the pond had more depth, and personality and mimicked the water more.

The overall neighborhood is customizable, allowing you pick up homes from one part of town and move them to the coast of beaches or move then into the hills. I noticed a non-linear road structure, with a wide variety of curves, and bends. The city itself is totally seamless with a Sim being quickly able to leave their home, hop into a taxi or their personal car and head to work or the city center. The city itself is fully functional with a wide variety of homes, businesses, and functional buildings. Examples we saw alluded to were police stations, hospitals, an outdoor bistro and so forth. Mind you when we pressed for additional details, we were told “we can’t talk about that right now”. Drat!!!!!!!!!

But what was neat was we could finally build a true house of our dreams on prime real estate of our choosing. From the desert to the sea, our Sim can finally have a great view of the city, or like many have been dying to get, beachfront property.

From fishing, Ben took his Sim to interact with Sims in the city center. As Ben demonstrated his Sim talking to another Sim who lived in town, named Molly, we learned she was a daredevil and what her impressions were of Ben’s sim.

Ben started elaborating some of the vision of The Sims 3 and how they wanted to build The Sims 3. It wasn’t merely enough that they wanted to create Sims anymore. It’s about giving life to The Sims and a personality. The ultimate goal was to make each Sims unique.


Traits, Customizations, and This Isn't Your Daddy's Sims
Just exactly how unique? Ultimately unique as a snowflake was the analogy given to us by the developers. Through Create-A-Sim, we can achieve a variety of body shapes through body modifiers. Simply adjust the two sliders thin/heavy and muscle and you’re able to make a fat sim with a ton of muscle (like a sumo wrestler), to a skinny, weaksauce. Or maybe a regular buff guy. Either way, body shapes are the first of many customizations.

Much of the facial attributes are customizable. Interesting enough, it reminds me of the Create-A-Sim Avatar from TheSims2.com. You’re able to tweak a variety of sliders to adjust the things from the nose, allowing you to tweak the size, shape, (yes for you Harry Potter fans, can make a hooked nose for your best impression of Professor Snape). Another slide adjusts the shape of ears, how big it is, or how curved out it is. Plus a favorite for some people would be to no longer have the same shaped head and included would be a wider variety of skin tones.

But most importantly, they say eyes are the windows to the soul…or in this case, our Sim. We’re looking at fully customizable eye colors. There are dozens of presets however for those of us who pride on more exotic colors, a RGB palette is available for you to simply select the perfect shade of color for our Sim. And in the event you want to reuse it, you can save it.

Many simmers would appreciate the fact that our Sims hairs are customizable now as well. It’s broken down into four basic regions: Roots, Base, Tips and Highlights (Note the area names aren’t finalized, it’s just a generic area to help describe with ease what can be done.) Each region can be colored differently, and like the eyes, you can use the RGB palette to customize the hair color and save your favorite shades of color.

But here’s where our Sim starts becoming really unique. Brand new and making its debut in The Sims 3 is the traits, which replaces the aspirations, and attractions. Traits are defined as skills, topical, behavior, ethics and morals. It allows us to attach a distinct personality to our Sim. At the Sims 3 fanday, there were close to 80 traits with more possibly on the way.

Some traits include Computer Whiz, Absent Minded, Excitable, Anti-TV, Schmoozer, Party Animal, Unflirty, Flirty, Party Animal, Rude, Lucky, Evil, Light Sleeper, Heavy Sleeper, Inappropriate (Yes you read that correctly), No sense of Humor, Friendly and Mean Spirited. This is just the short list among the entire list.

Of course there are certain traits that simply don’t match and aren’t kosher. Examples are light and heavy sleeper, or friendly and rude/mean spirited don’t mesh.

The number of traits your Sim can have a direct correlation with how old your Sim is. Toddlers have two traits, children have three traits, teenagers have four traits, young adult and adults have a total of five traits. I think the correct mathematical estimate is that a Sim could have 216360144000 combination of traits, assuming you have 80 traits.

Depending on how you raise your Sim, you maybe able to select a trait when your Sim grows up or the computer may select one at random for you.


Beyond Traits
Taken from My Sims is the ability to customize a Sim’s voice. You’re given voice samples and from there simply adjusting the pitch gives you a unique voice. Other methods of personalizing your Sim includes defining certain “favorites”, like favorite music and food. Included currently is a favorite color, but the developers hinted that it may not make it into the final game.

In terms of what our Sims wear, we’re looking at unique shoes (yes shoes... you have Ben Bell to thank for this one), gloves, bracelets, rings, earrings, and yes ladies, our Sims finally stockings and socks separate from the clothing.

I know many of us are not totally huge fans of the wants and needs system. Newsflash. It’s not in The Sims 3. What replaces it is a wish and opportunity system that can elevate your Sim’s position. Wishes are directly affected by what traits you select. Note just because a Sim wishes to do something, it doesn’t mean you have to fulfill it. You are totally in control on whether you wish to pursue your Sim’s wish.

The opportunity system itself is a way to get ahead in terms of career. Depending on your choice, you could literally have your Sim be a work-a-holic and take his work home.

As the day slowly turned to night, we were graced by a beautiful sunset and the city’s dynamics changed once more. Teenagers started sneaking out, and more “shadier” characters start coming out from their hiding places.

That’s it for this installment. Come back in a few days for our next installment at our first look at The Sims 3. Yes I know you want more, but I'm going through all my notes like crazy trying to pour out my thoughts onto a computer as fast as I can...

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"Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your truth, we wait eagerly for You, for Your name and renown are the desires of our souls." Isaiah 26:8