Meredith Sweet

When Sims maker EA Games announced “World Adventures,” the first expansion pack for Sims 3 early in August, they indicated that players would now be able to travel to three real-world places: Egypt, China, and France. Unlike previous towns in the Sims franchise, these locations are obviously based off of real-world locations, but they wouldn’t be in a Sims game if there weren’t a little bit of  the franchise’s noted style of fun added to them, say, in the form of mummies!

IGN interviewed EA Producer Lyndsay Pearson about the game, which will introduce a whole new game element: rather than just letting players set up shop in these new locales, they must first establish a “base camp” and work their way up to having their own home away from home. The “work” that leads to that lovely vacation home involves everything from assisting local merchants with finding lost artifacts to meeting locals and getting involved in a whirlwind adventure. No more will you simply be able to click your way into a treasure room; you’ll have to earn entrance, possibly by dodging mummies and who-knows-what-else!

Pearson also said that the Sims won’t be limited in how they can interact with the locals; they can meet, make friends (or enemies), fall in love, and end up staying in touch…or staying local themselves!

“Maybe your culinary Sim has always longed to learn new French recipes and fall in love with a renowned French chef–that’s a story you can tell now,” Pearson says.

Furthermore, the game will introduce exclusive online content for the game at launch, so those that get their hands on the expansion sooner rather than later will likely enjoy a bundle of goodies in the new Sims 3 Store, where additional game content like clothes, furniture, and accessories that wouldn’t necessarily make it to a future expansion pack can be featured.

I, for one, am now very tempted to get Sims 3 now, having made twenty-something excuses why I should delay my purchase until later. With three awesome Simified countries to explore, I might just make myself a Rick O’Connell sim and battle my way through mummy’s tombs with a cute librarian sim! I’m also already itching for future expansions to Japan, England, and who knows where else? Going through history might be a nice expansion idea, don’t you think? But in the meantime, I’ll stick with this dimension and the three countries EA will be revealing to Sims fans everywhere later this season.

Sims 3: World Adventures requires the full version of Sims 3 to play, and will be out for PCs, Macs, iPhones, and other supported mobile devices on November 17 in the United States; November 16 in Europe and Australia.

(Source: IGN, EA Games)