Ambitions: A Closer Look
EA has announced the new expansion pack, and Simmers are getting REALLY excited about it! (Myself included!) Called "Ambitions," this expansion pack promises to let you "control your Sim's actions and interactions while they're on the job"; introduces new career tracks like Firefighter, Ghost Hunter, and more; apparently gives you more career track choices; and introduces new skills including tattooing, inventing, and sculpting.
I'm most intrigued by that bit about controlling your Sim while they're on the job. In the very earliest days of Sims 3 (maybe a year after Sims 2 came out), the promise was that "you can follow your Sim to work and perform their job." Then it was narrowed down to the "rabbit holes" you find on the community lots, and the drop-down menu where you can control your Sim's job performance in a general sense.
(I want to be clear that I'm not dissing those drop-down menus! The ability to have children and teens "Work on late homework" while at school is JUST AWESOME. I also like the ability to level up a Sim's skill while they're at work, like making a Musician practice playing music while at work.)
Will we now be able to actually follow our Sims to work and make them do stuff? Or will this simply be an expansion of the menu options in the drop-down "at work" menu? I suspect the latter, but we can only hope for the former!
The announcement of new career tracks is very exciting. I get kinda bored with signing my Sims up for the same careers over and over. The careers in Sims 3 are practically identical to those in Sims 2, albeit with some variation in the end results. I miss the career rewards objects from Sims 2, but I do enjoy the career-specific actions like "rummage through trash."
New skills are always welcome, and I'm particularly happy to see skills that result in concrete items. Skills like Handiness and Cooking are okay, I guess, but it's awfully fun to see what paintings come off the easel. The idea of a Sim practicing tattoo artistry tickles me to no end! Picture some of those early paintings… but enshrined for posterity in another Sim's skin. Let's hope that beginning tattoo artists start by practicing on a ham hock or something!
Inventing is something we saw before in Sims 2, but I'm intrigued by Sculpting. There was the pottery bench, of course, but that thing was pretty lame if you ask me. I'm hoping that Sculpting combines the pottery bench with the random artistic choices of the Painting skill.
Out of the entire announcement, the bit I'm least interested in is "Your Sim's on-the-job choices now change their town and affect other Sims as well." Color me "Meh" on that one, but A) you can't please everyone, and B) maybe it will turn out to be cool after all.
I mean, I remember being "Meh" when I heard about the new martial arts skill being released with World Adventures! But I have since had to eat that apathetic reaction, because martial arts have turned out to be pretty neat, between Zeneport and the ability to break Space Rocks and release gems (and HYPOTHETICALLY Mysterious Mr. Gnomes, although my gnome dry streak continues, and I have yet to get one this way).