What a day! We knew for awhile that the second expansion pack for The Sims 3 was coming, but to be bombarded with all of the news and images from today is too much to take in! I don’t even know where to begin to start the discussion!
I’d like to answer a comment that was left earlier today on the site regarding why the updates are so short. Usually when I post any sort of news or images, I either write a very brief comment and post what I have. Sometimes I just post what I have without saying a word. There are a few reasons behind that.
- I like to keep things short and simple.
- I’m a very boring person in real life and I often repeat myself so I’m saving you the trouble of reading it.
- Most updates are done at work when I’m scanning documents, thus leaving me with short bursts of free time.
- I don’t have that good of an attention span when it comes to writing out long posts unless it is a rant or something on my mind
So there’s my reasons why you see the short updates 🙂 Now that I have a free moment, I’d like to share with you my thoughts on The Sims 3 Ambitions.
My thoughts on this expansion has risen to a level like no other. I’m way more excited for this expansion then I ever was for The Sims 3 World Adventures. For the most part, it has to do with the fact that two of my favorite subjects are introduced – time travel (which I’m not sure we’ll actually get to experience) and ghostbusting. For long time followers of this site, you should already know that I have a deep love for both Back to the Future and time-traveling in general as well as Ghostbusters (movies and cartoon show).
The Sims 3 Ambitions in my opinion is an expansion that should of been released first – heck perhaps something that should of been included in the base game. I’m not griping at EA or anything on this, we got what we got…but it appears this will bring a lot more depth to our Sim’s lives. 
For ages we have been wanting to take our Sims to work – now it is finally happening!
The expansion opens up many new career paths for our Sims to follow: private investigator, firefighter, architect, tattoo artist, inventor, ghost hunter, doctor, sculptor and a stylists. Will there be more? It’s possible, but it’s speculation at most. It’s practically The Sims 2 Open for Business on steroids. To be truthful, that expansion was one of my least favorites of The Sims 2 series…I don’t think I’ll have to worry about this one.
From the above video, we’ll be getting an actual firehouse for our sims that follow the firefighter career. For starters, this allows us to actually create the Ghostbusters headquarterd and have an actual working firepole to slide down. That alone will keep me entertained for 30 minutes (it doesn’t take much, really). But in all seriousness it will be our job to handle the equipment, the truck, go out on calls and stop fires and gas leaks. The only thing that would make it perfect is to include a Dalmatian with the truck, but we’ll end up seeing that in a future pets expansion more than likely. You want to know the biggest part about firefighting? Earthquakes. Yes, EARTHQUAKES are going to be a part of Sunset Valley if Grant Rodiek is to be believed from the Q&A session. How exactly will it work? Is it visual or do we just get a pop-up ordering our Sims to visit X amount of houses after one has struck? I’m eager to hear more details on this. Oh, and by the way – how many of you plan to re-create the scene with Jack Nicholson from The Shining with the axe? “Heeeeerrrrrreeeee’ssss Johnny!”
The stylist career…meh not to thrilled. It is pretty funny with how bad you can mess up your Sims but other than giving them bad makeovers, I don’t think I’ll be spending too much time with this career. As for the Tattoo artist, again, not sure if I’ll spend time on this but I do know that I’ll be spending some time trying to create the tattoos for a Francis (Left 4 Dead) sim. I just hope he doesn’t hate them (joke if you ever played the game).
Inventor will be one of my most played careers. I don’t know why but the Sim above looks a lot like my dad did back in the years he served as a marine. For the most part I’ll be blowing crap up along with using the time-traveling machine. If someone could clone that to be a TARDIS from Doctor Who – imagine the stories you can tell! Robots are a bonus in that Servo practically returns – with a little makeover for himself. Other inventions that we can build are toys, a floor hygienator (provides hygiene to sims who walk over it), widgets and personal drilling device! Not only that but for this career we should see the appearance of a Junkyard!
The detective and sculptor careers are given a thumbs down for me. Again, not really suited for my interests so I don’t know if I’ll be bothered to try them out. The ghost hunting shown at the end will be my main focus. Once this game comes out I’d be willing to PAY to have someone create acceptable Ghostbusters uniforms and an Ecto-1 for the game. I spent hours playing Ghostbusters the Video Game when it came out…but we couldn’t control the storyline, we had to follow a linear path. With it now merging into The Sims universe, we can come up with all sorts of stories regarding the crew! As for the Architect career, I think that gets a pass as well (but my view may change – I just need to see/know more about it).
Other notes I’d like to squeeze in here – we’ll now be able to add/remove and modify lots in the existing game and add neighborhood objects – hopefully it’ll be easier to manage that Create-A-World (actually, it’s not that difficult when it comes to plopping down things). A much needed feature that was missing from The Sims 2. This expansion will also include a motorcycle as well as a trampoline, a new item introduced in The Sims series. Hmmm, I have an idea for the trampoline that may make a good machinima video *hums The Man Show theme music*
There are still so many questions left to be answered…Will this open up the existing rabbitholes in the community? Can we actually view our Sim traveling through time? What all can be blow up *raises eyebrow*? How exactly are these careers going to work with existing neighborhoods, or are we getting a new world? How many licks does it really take to get the center of a Tootsie Pop?
The Sims 3 Ambitions is scheduled for release on June 1st in the US and throughout the week in other regions. It will retail for $39.95 and more than likely will come with 1000 free SimPoints. Share your thoughts about this expansion in the comments area.
News you may want to catch up on as of March 4, 2010
- The Sims 3 Ambitions…is real!
- Official PR – EA announces The Sims 3 Ambitions expansion pack!
- Two new screens from The Sims 3 Ambitions
- The Sims 3 Ambitions Official Trailer
- Q&A with producer Grant Rodiek on The Sims 3 Ambitions
- GameSpot interviews Grant Rodiek, producer of The Sims 3 Ambitions
- Screens from The Sims 3 Ambitions trailer
- Pre-order The Sims 3 Ambitions at GameStop
“and have an actual working firepole to slide down. That alone will keep me entertained for 30 minutes” LOVE IT!!
Tattoos!? Woo!
Thanks for the great indepth update!
This is like the “Livin’ It Up” expansion pack! It adds a lot of detail to your game, or so it seems. It will be loved!
😀
I personally like your short updates, although I would like to see more editorials like this one! I think it’s a good idea to keep fact and opinion separate (although this runs contrary to most blogs!).
I also agree that World Adventures, although it was a great expansion, shouldn’t have been the first one. The Sims 3 had this great open neighbourhood that was practically begging to be expanded. Not only did World Adventures not expand it, it made you spend less time in it as you travelled to other static worlds.
I’m not into stylists either, but I know of people who have spent great amounts of time and effort to hack the townies or create new ones from scratch. This way it is a lot easier for those people to make cosmetic changes.
I’m most looking forward to the architect career, and able to make more subtle changes to the neighbourhood rather than bulldozing and creating everything my way. This way I can build on what is already there! And storywise it will have more meaning since I will be completing these contracts for Sims.
I agree with the fact that this ep is gonna be better that WA.
I hope EA come up in the future with eps like that and better than that if it’s possible.
Good job EA! If you fix and the bugs with this ep we all gonna be very happy!
Actually I’m happy with all the features of this ep but I still want to know if we will have rabbitholes or not.
Also, I like that EA brings back to us the ability to move/delete/add lots in the game.
!!!!!omgimsoexcitedimfreakingout!!!!
other than that….WA can kiss my butt and stay unbought….my monies be goin to Ambitions….
It’s definitely a step up from the WA idea, even though that turned out a little better than I’d expected when my sister bought it for her computer. 🙂
This has all sorts of burgeoning goodness though, I can’t wait to see how these things can pan out. I’m actually pretty up on the stylist idea too, since one of my favourite ways to goof around back in OFB was to tell–uh, that is, RECOMMEND… what Sims wear and the like. Dressed one NPC in a chicken suit and he paraded around town most merrily with it on. Yay, mischief!
Plus, now we can blow stuff up. WOO!!!
Jud, you keep your posts however you prefer.  There really aren’t that many people complaining and in fact, the traffic of the site is increasing noticeably.  While you are not crazy about certain features, I’m glad you aren’t the type to wish they didn’t exist for those who do like them (such as myself).  The tattoo/stylist features are definitely going to become some of the most popular as evident from many comments at other fansites.  I am glad you found something you liked, though (ghost-busting and invention).  I, for one, need my nightclub back!  🙂
I guess I’m one of the few who isn’t all that excited about this one just yet. n_n; I mean, I would LOVE new jobs, but not if I have to direct/babysit my sim at the job and direct them to do everything (half the reason my sims have jobs is because it gets them out of my hair for a few sim hours, lol!). So at the moment excitement at new jobs is tempered by concern with how they will be handled: will I -have- to direct my sim all the time in these jobs? If I don’t will they handle just fine by themselves (like how current jobs work)? Or will they fail and get fired? Of course, I also don’t mind rabbit holes while most people seem to hate them, so YMMV.
The mention of earthquakes also very much excited me at first – I have been dying to have natural disasters in the Sims! – but, again, it depends on how it’s handled. Will it only occur if you have a sim involved in that career and your sim is needed to go clean up the mess (sort of like an opportunity attached to that job)? Or can it occur at random? Will it have any effect on the neighborhood?
And, of course, what will EA break in the current game with the new expansion? Lol.
So right now, I’m not really counting myself out for Ambitions, but I’m not letting myself get excited for it until we have a lot more information and know how things will work. I don’t want to be excited for it and then just be disappointed when things don’t work how it seems like they should/things are left out.
i just thought of something….what if you had an EVIL, Inappropriate sim and gave him a firefighter job?….
They would go around smashing everything with their axe!
It will just run toward the burning home and point and laugh at it while the family dies. Â That sounds just like an evil Sim.
LOOKS AMAZING!!! im so happy w/ ea right now! when i heard it was gonna be a buisness expansion or hobbies i was like OH NO!!! but they really make this one a masterpeice. i hated The Sims 2 : OFB and freetime. BUT THIS LOOKS LIKE A BIG IMPROVEMENT! i want to be a designer so im looking foward to the stylist and the detective. Just the idea of bribing people to solve the case and get the answers sounds awesome! i hope we can also play as chefs,waiters,clerks,mucisians,and more. AND THERE BE NO RABBIT HOLE ing!!!! ;/ but im definatly preordering this one. I love wa but this should have been first.
that’s cool
Yeah, I’m excited about this one too 🙂 The main concern I have is the one that Audrey mentions: with totally hands-on jobs, how do you deal with a multi-sim household? But for that very reason, I’m hoping and assuming until I learn otherwise that the earlier careers will REMAIN rabbitholes, so you can have one sim per household involve in a hands-on career, and just send the others off to work.
One thing you’re missing, Jud — the great thing about the stylist, tattoo artist, and architect paths is that you’ll be able to alter the houses and appearance of sims not in your controlled family. So you can fix up the ugly or horribly mis-matched townie, and ALSO manually fix the issue with EA’s story progression… where you get a family living in a house that’s completely wrong for them, in terms both of number of rooms and style. But of course, those features are more for the creator types, a category I guess I fit in 🙂
I’m also a gamer, though, and just as excited as you are about firefighting, ghostbusting and inventing.