Sims 3: Zodiac Challenge - Chapter 5, The Dragon(s)

 

Back home, Chelsea and Richard have decided on careers!  Richard is a bot builder while Chelsea is an inventor.  They now have a basement lab, and I've moved Hialeah's secret vampire bedroom down there as well.  It's behind a fake bookcase door.

We also have a bookcase of random stuff, including potions made by Richard.  He got a wish to discover all of them, and I saw no reason not to indulge it. 

Richard is tutoring Chelsea on logic.  Apparently, it is logical that they have a baby.

Before that, Chel has some 'sploding to do.  It's part of being an inventor.  She needs the scrap.

Richard gets caught in the blast and so does his ex, Hannah.  She seems to accept his apology.

Until Chel shows up.  Hannah is not happy to meet the woman Richard left her for.  Richard, presumably, is unimpressed with Hannah's reaction.

That evening, Serena mourns herself.  Bunny is just happy to see her youngest son.

Avery, like his grandmother, is thinking about himself.

Meanwhile, Jacob is reading while Haven wants to talk about the robot who is outside painting.  That's RJ-73, Richard's first robot.  The name was randomised, but I've decided it stands for "Richard jr".

I gave RJ-73 the artististic algorithm trait chip, so he was a level 10 painter and just spent all day painting stuff to sell.  I kept this one for Remy's studio.

Chel is pregnant!  She knew yesterday - she was throwing up at the junkyard - but now she's showing a bit.  Hannah's aunt does not look impressed.

Meanwhile, Hialeah is receiving an award for having mastered the architect career path.  Outside, she runs into Hannah.  Hialeah has completely forgotten that Hannah is Richard's ex, and sees her only as an admirer.  Hannah tells her she wants to learn more about Hialeah's career.  I was planning to have Hialeah invite Hannah over, so she could meet the baby and blow up and officially become Richard's nemesis, but she never came over when called.  So she's just going to have to be Richard's nemesis on the basis of being blown up by Chelsea, and then finding out that Chelsea and Richard are expecting.

Feeling unfulfilled over her award - and upset about that - Hialeah goes to see Lola Belle, her on-again/off-again girlfriend.  Hialeah asks to stay the night but is rebuffered.  Presumably, Lola Belle is still not willing to be out about their relationship.  Hialeah tells her they can't keep doing this and leaves.

Hialeah has now joined the sculptor career.  Maybe that will be more fulfilling than architecture.  She thought her life's wish was to design 100 perfect rooms, but it doesn't seem to be any more.

The biggest hold-up with moving the plot forward has been Remy's lifetime wish, which requires mastering the bass, piano, guitar, and drums.  I'll be honest, I made his needs static to get a move on with the piano.  I hoped it would just make him static, but it made everyone static, so all four of them made huge leaps in their skills and careers.  The only one we need now is Remy to get from 8 to 10 on his bass skill.

This picture is from when Chel went into labour.  Hialeah reminisced with Remy over their own childhood.  Presumably, she's referring to the homemade cakes Bunny would make for their birthdays.

I was genuinely surprised that Chelsea and Richard had twins.  Sure, Serena and Jake had two sets of twins - Rosemary and Jasper and Haven and Liberty - but they'd both had fertility treatment.  This was pure random chance.  

The twins are named Guilherme and Sakura because I looked it up and Chel is based on an actress who is of mixed Brazilian and Japanese descent.

Sims 3: Zodiac Challenge - Chapter 5, The Dragon(s)

 

In the present, everyone has moved into a bigger house.  Richard and his new wife, Chelsea, go and build a snowman together.

Since Hialeah designed the new house, she was able to build herself a secret vampire sleeping lair.  Her great-great-grandfather, Jake, seems a little surprised that his descendant is an immortal vampire.

Hialeah also got to meet her great-grandmother, Haven, so that was nice for her.

The new house is built into the side of a cliff - because there were limited areas to build a new house in the city - so I've put Hialeah's bedroom, office, and vampiric lair in that area.  There's limited light because there's a massive cliff right next to the window.  And then I put giant curtains over it, to make her even more vampire-y.

It's been a while since I played, so just to remind us all of where I am:  Richard and Hialeah are my twin Dragon heirs for this zodiac challenge (not actually twins, Richard is 12 years younger than Hialeah).  Richard needs to finish two more degrees, so basically earn his PhD.  Hialeah must also achieve professional success.  Currently, she's an architect, but she's eventually going to become leader of the free world.  No hurry, she's an immortal vampire.  They both need to attain a personal nemesis, and I know who that will be but I haven't revealed it yet.  Also living with them is Remy, the second eldest (the third and youngest siblings, Dan and Saoirse, stayed behind).  Remy's goal is to be a master musician, and I'm going to work on achieving that for him too.  He needs to master three more instruments and reach the highest level of success with his band. 

Hey, remember Richard's ex, Hannah?  Her aunt came over and met Chelsea.  She did not seem impressed at Chelsea introducing herself as Richard's wife and talking about how happy she is in the new house.

Chelsea herself doesn't have much of a role in the present, which is probably quite depressing.  I mean, what's the point in studying anything or working at anything when you're from several hundred years in the future?

Still, she's with Richard, so that's something.  This isn't the new house, this is from when they went to uni so Chelsea can complete a bachelors and Richard can complete a Masters.  I first moved them into shared accommodation, where this picture was taken, then moved them back home then back to uni so they could live in a cute little house I built.

See how cute it is?  It's based on that house in the very first sims game where all my original characters lived.  We decorated it with all the gifts Richard's thirsty fans keep sending.  Weirdly, despite being married to him, Chelsea is not famous at all, and we're all okay with that.  If you've come from the future, it's probably best to keep a low profile.

First day, at the student union!

Building a snowman!  We have a massive wall around the garden both to keep out the thirsty fans and the occasional zombie attacks and to main the family secrets.  In this world, the family secrets include Richard being a werewolf, Chelsea being from the future, and the bot-building and chemistry stuff that's happening in the garden shed.  In the homeworld, we can add Hialeah's being a vampire and Bunny's escape from Jenna, though since both are dead now, that one probably doesn't matter much.

...and, Richard has graduated!  His skills are so high that he basically already has 3/4 of any degree he might want to do, so he was able to finish quite quickly.  Chelsea's skills are lower, so she'll be finishing off her bachelors when he returns for his PhD.  But first...back to the city!

General Updates

 I've now started a Masters degree, so games might be taking a backseat for a little while.  Since my last post, I've completed quite a few.  I might have mentioned some of these before.  

I finally finished Marie's Room and Gone Home.  The latter inspired the former and The Suicide of Rachel Foster.  They're all walking simulator style games, where you wander around an empty building and find various hints - often diary entries - about what happened there.  Like I said, I feel like The Suicide of Rachel Foster was weakened by not having us hear from Rachel herself in any way, so Marie's Room and Gone Home are better in those respects, as you do actually hear directly from the person the protagonist is interested in.  Those two also have more uplifting endings.  That said, I've been thinking about The Suicide of Rachel Foster recently and considering playing it again.  What I've been thinking about is...the creators explain, very clearly, that some of the plot is implied by the objects in the hotel but not actually stated.  So perhaps they intended to tell a story of madness and obsession and how a victim like Rachel is silenced, and so not hearing from her is a purposeful plot beat and not something that's missing.  It's another terrible thing that was done to her.  I like that interpretation better.

I played and enjoyed Plague Inc although I'm not very good at it despite having a degree in Genetics and literally working in a Covid lab while playing it.  I liked that it provided a lot of context for the current scenario, though that obviously wasn't intentional.  I did find that the best strategy was to get the infection spreading via coughs and sneezes and then suddenly make it deadly once it's spread everywhere.

I played through a lot of the Dark Parables series, specifically The Swan Princess and the Dire Tree, The Thief and the Tinderbox, Return of the Salt Princess, and The Match Girl's Lost Paradise.  This leaves me with only one left to finish, Portrait of the Stained Princess which is the 15th game so far (I think actually 16th, but one appears to have been wiped from the internet entirely?).  What's interesting is that Blue Tea Games, who made the first few games also made the last few, while those in the middle were made by, iirc, Eipix, and some are made by both companies.  This means the last few games get more of the creepy feeling and horror elements that the earlier games had, which I really liked, but they retained some of the things Eipix put in, like having achievements.  Unfortunately, they didn't put in the ability to just replay the main or bonus game after finishing them without having to set up an entirely new player profile, which means, if you missed a single changing object thing or parable piece in the bonus chapter then you'd need to set up a new player profile and replay the entire game from the start - making sure you didn't miss any of the things you got before - in order to find it.  That's annoying.  Return of the Salt Princess was one of the ones made by both, which seems to mean that it had the toughest achievements and so it's the only one for which I don't yet have all the in game achievements.  I'd have to replay it again - for the third time, since the second time I got one of the things I missed but missed one of the things I got - and I just don't have the heart right now.  I've really enjoyed the series, and I hope they realise another one soon.  At the moment, I've played the games for a combined total of 101 hours, which makes the cost about 91p per hour (since I bought them for £91.76 in the first place), but I expect this to drop further as I finish Portrait of the Stained Princess, finish off the achievements in Return of the Salt Princess, and maybe play the games over again someday.  Considering I'll spent £3-4 on a book that takes an hour or two to read, I'd say that's a bargain.  I'll probably try some of the spin-offs, like Cursery or Fabled Legends.  I think only one of those is one Steam.

For my birthday, my friend got me Confines of the Crown, a visual novel romance/palace intrigue game that I really enjoyed.  It deals with some questions of gender identity, and while there are many things there could be improved on, I think they did an okay job (full disclosure; I cis and have never questioned my gender identity, so take that with a pinch of salt).  It took me just under 5 hours to play it through in full - all endings, all achievements - and the game cost £14.99, so I'd personally wait for it to go on sale before purchasing it.  I also played PSYCHO-PASS: Mandatory Happiness, another visual novel, and wrote a guide for it.  While PSYCHO-PASS does have some romance plotlines, it's more of a police procedural than a romance game.  One thing that's really annoying about is that the skip function doesn't work properly.  There are scenes you can see as both characters which are identical but which don't skip unless you've seen both.  Sometimes the game just wouldn't acknowledge that I'd previously played through a segment and let me skip it after reloading, but other times it would?  This artificially inflates the playtime, although there is still a whole lot to do in the game.  There's loads of different endings and scenes to unlock.  I finally finished Lake of Voices as well, another romance visual novel but darker than the others by virtue of the fact that people actually die.  It's very melancholy.

The biggest chunk of my time was taken up with Persona 4 Golden.  I played the original game on the PS2 years ago and loved it, so it was great to play it again.  I really liked the additions to this version, like two whole new social links to get to know.  I played the game through twice, since one bonus boss is only available on a new game plus and I still enjoyed it the second time (though I made a lot of use of the fast-forward button).  I'm considering making a day-by-day guide to maxing all stats and social links, but that would be a huge undertaking and someone else would probably have made one before I was done.

The other games I've finished are Hitman Go and The Turing Test.  I'm not very dexterous so the traditional Hitman games are hard for me (I would assume, I never actually tried them but other games in that style are hard for me).  I like the Go games, like Hitman Go and Lara Croft Go because they change the gameplay to something I'm better at.  It's solely a logic puzzle, not a logic puzzle with added dexterity and I enjoy that.  And I liked that I could play these well-known series' in a style that I enjoyed and so gain some appreciate for what everyone else is playing even if I don't want to play the main games.  Speaking of games I'm not good at The Turing Test is technically the first first-person shooter game I've ever played, though it's really more of a puzzle game that uses a gun, like Portal (which I have played for several minutes with a friend).  It made me a bit dizzy at first, and I did struggle, but most of the puzzles are static logic puzzles, and there's only a few that require carefully aiming while moving or anything like that.  I liked that you could replay any chapter you wanted, so if you missed the optional puzzle you could just go and do that without replaying the entire game.  There's no way to backtrack, each puzzle is in a discrete area, so replaying the chapters was the only way.

Apart from finishing games, I've also been permanently removing games from my Steam account.  I get a lot of games from Humble Bundled which sometimes means they come bundled with other games, which I am less interested in.  I added those games to my Steam account but never played them.  Those, I've been playing a little bit and then deleting them if I don't enjoy them.  I did also delete a few games I bought like Ms Splosion Man, which I bought in 2014 and have played for less than 2 hours, and Layers of Fear, which I got for £2.99.  The latter made me feel sick and dizzy and the plot and gameplay weren't enjoyable enough for that.  If I spent £3 on a coffee that made me feel that way I'd chuck it out, so same logic (if I spent £3 on alcohol that made me feel that way, that would be a lot of alcohol for very little and I'd still need to be in the right mood).  This does throw off my spreadsheet calculations about what I've spent on games and the time spent playing them, but the point of this whole thing isn't really to save money.  I mean, I don't want to spend money on games I don't want, but the biggest goal is to get my unplayed games down.  I've already spent the money anyway, not deleting the game doesn't save me anything.

Anyway, at the moment, I own 225 games and I've completed 109 or 48% of them.  I have 10 in progress, 34 I've played to some extent and 72 I've never played at all.  I'm so close to halfway!

Sims 3: Zodiac Challenge - Chapter 5, The Dragon(s)

 

Back in the present, Richard and his perfect aptitude test go back to university.

He meets a fellow werewolf - who recognises that he's the dragon heir - so that's cool.  He did dewolf, but the moons of the future, the present, and university are not synced up, so he immediately got hit with another full moon on arrival.

However Richard and Chelsea are getting letters to one another, it's working.  So, he sits down to write her another one.

He also works on his bot building and builds a bot!  Richard did not inherit his grandmother's evil trait, but considering he has a secret lair where he builds robots and will soon earn a doctorate, I can see how he might come across like a mad scientist.  He is not though.  At most, he is a mad engineer.

He gives his robot - RJ-73 - the Competent Cleaner and Afraid of Humans trait.  The latter doesn't bother Richard - because werewolves are not considered humans - and it will keep the robot hidden.  Unfortunately, since the secret underground lair has an outside entrance and no door, the paparazzi wander downstairs and upset the robot, so Richard chases them out.  The paparazzi may be his lifelong enemy - having an enemy is a requirement of the Dragon heir - but hopefully something better will turn up.  I'm still annoyed I'm missed my chance to have him rescue a descendant from non-existence.  She could then be his enemy via never forgiving him for sentencing the rest of her family to never existing while she - and Richard - are the only ones who even remember them.  

Richard has finished his degree, and, weirdly, RJ-73 opens a copy of the grades as well.  RJ-73 doesn't even go here.  I just realised, RJ-73 can stand for "Richard jr".  The name was randomised, but that's a nice coincidence.

Richard hoverboards to his graduation, which is more than I got to do this year.  It had me invite his family - Remy and Hialeah specifically - but neither turned up.

Richard gets an offer no other university graduate has had.  Maybe it came with one of the packs I got at Christmas rather than the original university pack?  I can't remember exactly when Hialeah, Remy, and Dan graduated.  Anyway, Richard doesn't accept any of those and instead begins a career as an athlete.  I am choosing to believe he is a lacrosse player and refusing all evidence to the contrary.

I left RJ-73 alone for a bit and he did this.  I don't know what that is or how he got it, or how to get it back.

Now he has his first degree, Richard takes Remy and Hialeah to the future!  Hialeah's descendants have disappeared.  Remy and Richard don't tell her.  

We arrange a wedding...

Remy now has a descendent, Tory Locklear, who we invite to the wedding.  Tory seems starstruck by Hialeah.  He almost seems more interested in her - and more knowledgeable about her - than he does Remy, his actual ancestor, despite Remy being the most famous sibling, having recently hit 5 stars.  This is a future plot point.

I made a cute af park for Richard and Chelsea to wed in.  I like to think that when Richard donated his lottery winnings to the future fund, he insisted that part of the fund be used to create Gateway Park.  I didn't get a big overview picture, but there's a little wedding island where the stage and wedding arch are, and a bandstand with a dancefloor and a buffet.

Hialeah was wedding photographer, because that's a fun skill.

My game looks prettier because, when I first started playing and it kept crashing, I turned all the settings way down, which seemed to help.  For this session, I turned them all way up, which seemed to make the game freeze a bit more and saving took ages.  Next time, I'm going to turn down some stuff but not everything, and we'll see where we end up.

Remy is really, really happy to have a descendant.  He was really shook to have no descendants and also to himself not exist in the future, and has been having an existential crisis over it (in my head, the game doesn't do that).  I've been thinking about why Remy is so upset while Hialeah isn't bothered, and I've had a few ideas.  

Firstly, Hialeah is just more self-assured than Remy.  She's the eldest and she's always been very confident.  She's an athletic genius, she has yet to find anything she can't do.  If she's not in the future it's probably because her future self is travelling the world or has left the planet as an astronaut or something.  

Secondly, Hialeah is a vampire while Remy is a ghost.  Neither have yet seen a vampire die, but they both saw a ghost - their father - return to the netherworld.  Plus, Hialeah can make anyone she likes immortal but Remy can't do that.  He can just watch them die and hope they come back, but he knows most people don't.  

Thirdly, Hialeah came to the city for her own ambition, because she wanted to live in a vibrant city, be a celebrity, and succeed in her career.  Remy did come for those reasons, but he also came because he was running away from Dan.  He loved his brother, and that's why he couldn't watch him grow old and die, like their father had done for their mother.  As well as their emotional closeness, Remy and Dan are also close in age, so it would also remind him of how old he, Remy, was, and how close he would be to death if he hadn't been born dead.

Chelsea takes a moment to be happy at being married before sharing her first dance with her new husband.  The game didn't add her to my family, despite acknowledging that she is now Richard's wife.  I considered leaving her in the future and drawing out their long distance relationship a little longer, but that didn't make sense.  Richard has seen his and Hialeah's descendants disappear, why would he take the risk that his wife would disappear as well?

Hialeah also takes some pictures here.

Before they leave, Remy vows to Tory that he won't let anything happy to him.  He will protect him.  He isn't clear on what from, because he doesn't want to alarm Tory (who look a bit like Robert Pattinson, am I right?).  Tory is happy to have such a good friend and "uncle".  Yes, for storyline purposes, while Remy knows that Tory is his descendant, Tory doesn't know that.  Tory believes he's descended from Hialeah.