Delve Into Lunacy

Well, it’s no big shock when I jump the gun on something and I’ve done it yet again. In my previous post “Maxis & The Elderly” I was ranting about Brandi not being allowed to get engaged to Don because she was elderly. It never occurred to me at the time that he might already be engaged to someone and that could have been why it wasn’t letting Brandi propose. My mistake.

Before I go into what all happened since figuring that little tidbit out this situation does shine a bright light on an aspect of the game that I wish would be changed. You can interact with NPCs to a large degree but at no point does it ever really give the player any real details about the person unless you are controlling them. Using this situation as an example, there is no way I could have known Don Lothario was already set up out of the box as being engaged to Cassandra Goth unless I had actually stopped playing Brandi, gone back to the neighborhood and then played Don. Being engaged or even married doesn’t stop a Sim from falling in love again so it’s hard to tell from their interactions alone. The pre-built story for the neighborhood mentions Don and Cassandra being in love but I don’t recall it mentioning them already being engaged.

Another example is in regards to age. Although some teenagers in the game definitely look younger there are others that I’ve ran across that look like adults…Tosha Go for instance. An adult can’t interact with a teenager the same way that they can with another adult, which is understandable, but you can invest a substantial amount of time trying to develop a relationship with a particular Sim only to then find out they are too young. More details about the NPCs need to be made available to the player especially considering not all NPCs from the neighborhood can even be directly played.

Back to the issue with Don and his engagement. Once I realized he was already engaged I needed to come up with a way to break it off, but since I was already in love and living with Brandi this was going to have to be done delicately so Brandi didn’t catch us. I ended up waiting for Brandi and Dora to go to bed and called Cassandra over. Initially, there wasn’t any option to break the engagement so I just queued up about 12 arguments between the two of them thinking I could hurt the relationship enough that the engagement would just fade away. That brought them both out of being in love but they were still best friends and it didn’t really the hurt the relationship much overall so I knew I had to get more drastic and somehow let Cassandra catch Don cheating on her. Of course that would have to happen without Don pissing off whoever he would be cheating with and also not getting caught by Brandi who would be inside the house the whole time.

So the next evening I plopped Brandi down on the couch to study cooking and promptly called up Cassandra and Kaylee and asked them both to come over. They show up at the same time and I greeted Cassandra first and then queued up greeting Kaylee. Cassandra wasn’t going to make this easy so she immediately ran into the house to watch TV and missed the whole kiss greeting Don and Kaylee had. So I called Cassandra over but then Kaylee tried to run off and it was like herding cats trying to get them both there at the same time. It eventually happened and I quickly kiss Kaylee which brings on the slap fest from Cassandra. Again, it hurt the relationship but it didn’t do the trick and they were still best friends and engaged.

At this point I sent Kaylee home since she had served her purpose for the evening and ran back in the house to catch Cassandra. A few more arguments later and thankfully the option to break up finally became available. So Don finally kicked her ass to the curb both figuratively and literally since he asked her to leave right afterward.

Here’s where I discovered another issue with the game. Don is setup with the romantic aspiration and therefore wants to get his groove on but things like engagement, marriage and kids etc cause bad memories. So one would of thought Don would have been thrilled to no longer be engaged, but like anyone else he spent the next two days sobbing uncontrollably. Oh well, I could finally have Brandi propose to Don and he accepted even though it was one of his fears and has now kicked him into the red on his aspiration level. Unfortunately, the game won’t let the elderly procreate which makes since but I would have liked Brandi to squirt out another kid before she dies.

Regarding Don at this point I’m gonna go ahead and move him through his career despite the fact that I constantly want to kill him. He’s just an insanely irritating character to play. He’s as slobby as a Sim can be and the romantic aspiration is just boring. Unlike Carl however, who is just as slobby, Don truly fits the description. I have yet to see him flush on his own. Every time he showers it floods the bathroom. He won’t put books back on the shelf after reading or clean up his dishes after eating. Carl would normally do all these things with only the occasional slip-up.

I think I’ll go ahead and play the Swipers until Dora heads off to college since by that point Brandi will probably have died or at least be on her last day or two. I’ll then switch back over to Carl and Dina until Carl is dead and then hook Don and Dina up together since the Lotharios are really sucking as far as money goes. Maybe I’ll get Dina pregnant with Don and then finally kill him off since he just irritates me so much. At the very least I’ll probably focus on his fears more than his wants since I want to see him go crazy.