I have always enjoyed giving my actor and writer sims "real" projects for their stories. Like Violet Deppiesse's sci-fi novel series having real titles and even plot summaries. Or describing what kind of short stories Aurora Harris used to write. Or that Nathan Lind once wrote a flop of a pulp legal thriller. Or knowing exactly what kind of soap opera Bella Bradshaw (stage name Isabelle Gibson) used to act in. My sims are never allowed to just make up filler titles and descriptions for their work. I suppose, as a writer in real life, I'd be annoyed that they got to fake it so easily, lol!
Summer was lucky enough to be picked for this project before acting was even a thing in TS4. I needed a character to be my avatar in FFXV Comrades, and she fit the bill! The story goes that she was drumming with her awful band one night and a producer saw her banging on things and thought, hey, she'd look really great with a sword. So he asked her to audition. The film was meant to be a minor B movie spin-off in a niche franchise, so it was no big deal that she was a complete unknown to the acting world. She had the right look, so she landed the part. As these things sometimes go.
Now that we have a real acting career in TS4, I've decided that my sims can enter it in two ways. (Because it would be no fun for me if every sim who ever caught a whim to be an actor could just become one, barring all skill, talent, and luck.)
1.) I might pick them, the way I picked Summer, hand out of the sky, to exist in some other non-TS4 game. I will imagine them to be actors in a movie based on that game, and I'll make up a little "movie" with the screenshots. Then in TS4 gameplay, I'll assign them a certain number of gigs in a corresponding genre that they're allowed to perform for money.
2.) Otherwise, they'll have to wait for a role provided by a TS4 sim movie producer. I have a couple of aspiring directors among my sims. Whenever one of them is ready to produce a film, TV show, or commercial, they will audition hopeful actors and pick their favorites for the roles. That sim producer will assign how many gigs and what kind of scenes they can perform for their pay. As they work, I may take a few screenshots to make up a little "movie" and blurb to show off their project.
Like this:
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Final Fantasy XV Comrades
Starring, in her film debut, Summer Phoenix!
Genre: fantasy/action
Synopsis: In a world overcome by daemons and darkness, members of the Kingsglaive help defend the kingdom of Lucis as they await the return of their king. A plucky young fighter struggles to remember what happened in the fall of her home, but with no time to waste. The world and the future needs her help before there's nothing left to save.
Starring: Summer Phoenix, Odin Grant
Box Office Debut: $6.8M
Review, by Drew Bradshaw, arts critic for Sierra Sun Magazine: B-
- Not as exciting as the main film, nor was it meant to be. The CGI monsters and special effects live up to their expectations. Summer Phoenix is a delight to watch on screen, landing many of her own stunts with agility, marking her out as a stellar new addition to the action film genre. She is strong and sassy as the film's fearless underdog, but on the downside, the generic script lacks any opportunity for Summer to show off her acting prowess. If she has any. But we hope she gets a chance to prove her worth some day. In another, different franchise, that is. There is little hope for Summer in this FFXV world since future sequels have been unceremoniously canceled by the producers.
(click for bigger)
Here is Summer, in the flesh, promoting her movie at a local arcade with some of her co-stars. FFXV fans might recognize the likeness of Gladiolous (played by my sim Odin Grant) and Noctis (played by my sim Chase Murphy). Considering the studio cancellations, all of these actors are now released from their contracts and free to pursue new work.
Rumor has it that local author, Louise Fontenot, has a screenplay ready for a film version of her popular historical romance series, Carolina Whispers. Young starlets all over will clamor for the chance to play Rose and Aiden on the big screen. Everyone wonders who the lucky actors might be!
How cool is this! Summer looks like a complete bad ass! ;) Love that you think of your sim characters while you're playing a different game too.
ReplyDeleteI'm yet to test out the Actor Career, is it any good? It looks like fun. In TS3 I avoided the celebrity thing because I found it annoying. lol I did notice in TS4 they added fame details to your sims panel so if you want to change it you don't need to go into settings.
It was really neat to see Summer in action instead of some blank character I had no attachment to. Although, likely if I had played Comrades with a blank newbie character, I would have grown attached and wanted to make them into a sim, lol!
DeleteI would say the actor career stuff is great! The costumes, the animations, the set pieces, the new skills. There is a LOT of stuff that will be highly usable in my gameplay. (Talked about that a bit on Tumblr.) The career itself, I'd probably give it a C+. You can tell they put a lot of work into it, and there are about 15-20 unique scenes of different genres for your actors to perform in. Considering they had to program all of that, I wouldn't have expected more, exactly. It's just that those scenes are totally static, and will be from now until eternity. The career itself provides 0% customization. You can't edit the sets or vary the script of the performance at all. Even though I've only attempted a handful of the scenes so far, I can already tell that I'm going to become super bored of them in time. Think of it the same way your doctor and scientist sims end up doing the same work over and over again. Except slightly worse, because the tasks have even less variety, and edits to the movie set lot don't stick the way the hospital and science lab do. (And the movie studio lot is UGLY AS SIN!)
It's just a shame that they didn't provide a way for us to edit the movie sets or dictate our own scripts in any way. A simple UI to choose a set, choose a costume, choose three or so scenes to perform. The possibilities could have been endless! But that seems to be a recurring theme in TS4--kill all chance of customization. :(
So my plan is to only use the acting career lightly, as needed for promotions, paycheck, and unlocks. The gigs can be over and done with within a couple of hours, especially the entry level ones that get used a lot, so that leaves plenty of time to send my actor sims to MY movie studio and have them working on their "real" movie.
I am enjoying fame in this EP so far! I love the way you have to opt into it. It was a nightmare in TS3!
This is so very, very cool! This is an incredibly dumb question but are those movie shots really from TS4? Or FFXV?
ReplyDeleteYour post is also quite timely for me, as I'm about to play Xavier, one of my writer sims and I'd like to get a bit more detailed with what they're actually writing. Probably not this detailed, as amazing as it is, but to give some idea of what kind of writing he actually does. It's not something I've bothered with before but I think it's fun to think about and just makes for a more well-rounded sim.
I am relieved that in Get Famous, you have the choice on whether you want your sim to opt into the whole fame thing or not. That was so irritating in TS3, getting famous for reaching the top of the law enforcement career or getting 10 skill points in Handiness or whatever. Dumb.
Ah, these are FFXV pictures (apart from the "fan signing" event that I staged at the end). Get Famous did add some pretty neat sword fights and green screens which I look forward to using in future movies, but they definitely look like TS4 art style.
DeleteI agree, it totally makes a difference to their character whether they write spy thrillers or romance novels or children's books or whatever. I can't remember if there were book genres in TS2? But I do remember being able to choose those plot icons, then when a sim read the book, they'd think of the plot points. That was always kind of neat. :)