Mikayla's Art & Multimedia
Mikayla's Art & Multimedia
2/22/2021
In this sim topic, we’ll be reviewing the “Into the Future” expansion pack from Sims 3 and making comparisons to references and technology that are featured in the Sims 4. If you’re familiar with the Sims 3 “Into the Future” expansion pack, you might be familiar with the storyline and some of the cool features the future has to offer in this game.
“Into the Future” was the last expansion pack released for the Sims 3 game. Since the Sims 3 game was released in 2009, the game takes place in the 21st century where the latest technology for sims is having a cell phone. With the expansion, a time machine is placed on the sims lot where a sim named Emit Relevart appears and tries to convince your sim to travel back to his home in Oasis Landing, which is a location only available to visit threw time travel. This time traveler sim will have you complete some tasks before traveling to the future with him and give you some extra opportunities to complete once you arrive in the future.
Once your sim arrives to the future, your sim will be located at a guest home that is shared with other sims from the future. Your sim will get a quick taste of what living in the future is like by interacting with technologies like food synthesizers, dreaming pods, hoverboards, and robots. While your sim explores different aspects of future living, your friend Emit Relevart will give you opportunities to explore other areas of the future that will push your sim to meet your descendent (a future version of your sim) and other versions of the future that exist (read more to learn about the Utopia and Dystopia futures). Your sim can choose at any time when they want to travel back to the present, which will resume where they last left off before traveling to the future and vice versa.
Although the “Into the Future” expansion pack does not make a return in the Sims 4, the expansion pack itself does hint at some references made and technologies that return in the game. The most obvious is the switch in storylines. It’s noticeable that popular npc sims have a storyline that follows a timeline of that sims life in each of the sim games, but if we take a look at the Sims 4, almost all of the returning sims from past games follow storylines that are not in sync with past games.
It’s believed that the Sims 4 world was meant to be an alternate universe, which would clearly explain why “Into the Future” was the last expansion released for Sims 3 and why the rumors of Sims 4 being “in the works” spread at the time of the expansions release just a year before Sims 4 was announced.
Another thing to take note of is the technology that is featured in the Sims 4. It’s no surprise that each sim game accurately represents our relationship with technology as a society in real life. If we take a look at the Sims 3, Sims 3 has an accurate representation of our interest with technology at the time of it’s release date (2009). Sims 3 introduces cell phones for the first time and integrates features like “social networking” in the expansion “Nightlife”.
Now if we take a look at the technology in Sims 4, you’ll notice a crossover of technologies from the “Into the Future” expansion pack. Instead of interactive technology being apart of the futuristic theory, interactive technology can be accessed by sims in the present. The Sims 4 also includes more skills and interactions with social media as well as exploring space, with the chance of running into extraterrestrial life, which before was nearly impossible in the Sims 3.
I like how the EA developers strategized and coordinated the release of “Into the Future” to go along with hinting features in the Sims 4 game at the time of it’s release. It’s something that i’ve never seen EA developers do in previous sim games and I think helped transition active sim players into the new age of the Sims 4. I don’t know if I’d expect to see this expansion return if EA ever did come out with the Sims 5, because the “Into the Future” expansion has such a focus on interactive technologies and follows old school theories of what the future should look like. I feel like it would be complicated to do something similar to this expansion pack that would introduce new ideas to come to Sims 5. Do you think there will ever be another futuristic pack in the sims? And do you think EA will ever come out with a Sims 5?