The Sims 2 Nightlife Q&A - The Art of Romance

By Staff, GameSpotPosted Jul 14, 2005 12:50 pm PT

Senior producer Tim LeTourneau is back once again to answer our questions about how the dating scene will unfold in this expansion.

After going to college with the first expansion pack for last year's blockbuster game The Sims 2, EA and Maxis are setting their sights on going downtown with The Sims 2 Nightlife. As with any expansion pack to The Sims, you can expect plenty of new content and objects to play with, as well as new and interesting forms of gameplay. The focus in Nightlife is about going out and having a good time, and to facilitate this, the expansion will add cars (so you can zoom downtown faster without having to wait for a cab), tons of new locales, such as dance clubs, bowling alleys, and restaurants (along with the ability, of course, to design your own downtown locales), and a bunch of new social interactions. We were more interested in some of the new dating and social aspects of Nightlife, and senior producer Tim LeTourneau was once again good enough to indulge our questions. You can expect Nightlife to ship this fall.

So that's the infamous Smustle.

GameSpot: There's more of an emphasis on dating in Nightlife, but what's improved? As it is right now, it's not too hard to get sims to go from complete strangers to engaged in just a day or two of game time. Will you stretch this out a bit in Nightlife to make the courting ritual more of a challenge? Will you need to work harder to woo a potential partner?

Tim LeTourneau: It's true that experienced players can speed through the relationship game in a couple days, provided all the conditions are right. What we've done here is make some aspects of the relationship game easier if the conditions are really right--if the sims are attracted to each other, and the player is focused on making sure a date goes well. With each expansion we add a lot of new gameplay, and that new gameplay takes time out of a sim's limited life span, so we have to find new strategies that allow players to get through parts of the game more quickly so they have time for all the new stuff. To make it challenging for the hardcore players, we added a lot of rewards to the dating game, so mediocre dates won't be that hard to achieve, but "dream dates" will take some work. The fact that dates are scored, have strategic challenges, and, most importantly, have rewards make it a whole new dating game from anything we've done before.

GS: Will we see a return of the bar mechanics from the Hot Date expansion? In other words, can you go stand at a bar and try to pick up other sims using moves that are exclusive to the bar, like ordering someone a drink?

TL: There are some bar moves like ordering drinks, but not like Hot Date. Romantic interactions are spread all over the place. A lot of the moves are on the dance floor and in the booths, and even in the cars.

GS: Nightlife is about more about dating, though. It's about having fun. So University introduced pool tables. Nightlife will introduce bowling, but what else? New dance moves? Raves, or ravelike dance clubs? Posh restaurants and street diners?

TL: You kind of hit a lot of it in the question--you've been doing your homework. The dance clubs you can build are really amazing. I've had a blast just designing what mine look like--there are so many different choices. Also, I can't wait for people to see the sims doing "The Smustle" together. Other fun stuff includes the poker table (one of my favorite new objects) and the karaoke machine. You can't help but laugh when you see a low-creativity-skill sim sing his or her heart out badly. So whether it's a date, a boys' or girls' night out, or an evening of family fun with the kids, there are a lot of really fun things to do and experience.

The addition of cars finally means the ability to make out in cars.

GS: In our previous Q&A, we learned about the new date score, which measures the wants and fears of both your sim and his or her date and displays the score as a meter onscreen. How does the new date score improve the dating system? Aren't you simply just doing the things you were doing before, like giving lots of hugs and kisses to work your way up to a romantic crush or more? Or is it more like when you're giving a schoolmaster a tour of your house in The Sims 2, and you're trying to keep him impressed so you can get in?

TL: It's not just about romantic socials, it's about having fun, both for you and your date, or all the folks in your group. Different events while you are out are scored differently, and sims respond differently to events. An active sim might really go for bowling, but a lazy sim might dislike it. It's never the same date twice. Also, dates and outings now have levels, so it might not be that hard to have a so-so evening, but "dream date" is going to take some serious strategic work for the player.

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