A little over a month ago, The Sims 3 was announced to the world by EA and Maxis. A wealth of information and screenshots were provided to the community. First looks have been given to many magazines. And The Sims franchise has achieved over 100 million in sales. But still we know little precious information about The Sims 3.

So what do we know? Well first there’s the seamless neighbourhood, the new Create-A-Sim, realistic personalities with ‘traits’ and ‘unlimited’ customisable options; are what EA and Maxis are parading. But what do the screenshots show?

One interesting titbit in this screenshot is that it looks like the mailbox and trashcan look movable, at least without cheats! Something power users of The Sims and its sequel know how to do, but not accessible to the majority of players - looks like it may debut in The Sims 3. One other feature that we can see in this image is angled furniture, again something that can be done in The Sims 2 with a cheat – and I’m sure something that every player of The Sims 2 wanted. This screenshot also shows that we can now place objects in between wall kitchen units and base kitchen units, a little feature that adds to the realism. A rather cute thing I noticed in this screenshot, is that it appears that sims now have slippers at the end of their bed!

I’ve put this screenshot in to show how much more realistic lighting in The Sims 3 can potentially be. I love this sunset and hope that a more realistic sunset makes it into the game! (that is of course assuming that this is a rendered sunset – and not an in game image) We also see the new lighting effects in the image below, the shadow of the active character even includes the active floating crystal above.

As you can see above clocks seem to be very detailed – just goes to show how much work has been put in.

In this image we see the first of I hope many career options – a chef, waitress and bus boy.

What I would like to point out to you here is what’s on, or more correctly what’s not on the bookshelf. There are books, but the amount of books says to me, is that you can customise how many books are actually on the shelves!

Here we can see how much more powerful The Sims 3 game engine is. We can see a lot of detail through 2 windows.

Here we can see that businesses can now sell through a hole in the side of their shop!

So the long road to The Sims 3 has begun, sometime next year we will have this beast of a game in our hands! And through The Road to The Sims 3 series – I hope to cover the development!

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