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So in a fit of 'I need to poke YouTube,' I went to see if the Sims Medieval trailer was posted there instead of just on the official site.
Of course it is, along with several interviews with Rachel Bernstein, the senior director of The Sims Medieval. (I also hear tell she also worked on Sim City Societies, although I don't know in what capacity.)
So in one of these videos, she said, "We're not a bunch of historians about to crack open history books we've never looked at before. We all have a picture in our mind of what Medieval times look like, and that picture is from movies, it's from books that we read as a kid, all sorts of beautifully painted storybooks..."
She then proceeded to wax masturbatory about how all the textures in the game are handpainted and how she wanted a very painterly, storybook look. (Objects look passable. Sims look like mud wrapped in leather.) In another interview, she goes on to say how 'rustic' they wanted the outfits to look.
Yes, I'm sure you can hear me gnashing my teeth from where you sit, O reader.
I've hit 'flames on the sides of my face' territory again, because apparently the Sims 3 art department just wanted to make a bunch of fairy-tale crap and wrap a minigame around it... and also, their handpainted textures on hair and skin look like handpainted turds. Especially the hairs. There are several closeups in the trailer, which, okay, yeah, is probably complete lies and propaganda at this point (except they've got seven months until their projected launch date, so I don't know), and I promise you, the basegame hairs were better painted.
'Rustic' Medieval clothing and the whole "Oh, we're too awesome to crack open a book or poke around Google, we have an ~*~Artistic Vision!~*~" thing just...
I can't even.
Just.
I will not go on about how I know the Sims' world is not our world, or how it irks me that Sims 3 keeps trying to bring the Sims' world more in line with ours. I will even restrain myself from fuming about the kind of morons who assume that you can't make anything but 'rustic' clothing with wool, linen, wooden looms, hand-needles, and the spinning, weaving, sewing, and embroidery skills you've been practicing since you were three goddamned years old. (The people who believe shit like this will be the first to fall when the zombie apocalypse comes, because they will continue to assume that when already-scarce resources wear out, you'll have to do without them, and that there's no way mere mortal hands could manage to craft decent clothing, weapons, armor, shelter, or food. You need machinery for that, right? Otherwise it's rustic and flimsy, like all the crap humanity limped along with before the Industrial Revolution, right?) Okay, maybe I'll just bitch about that a little. I will, however, say that it is probably wise to look up the word you'd like to use as the hook of your title just to be sure you're not using it to mean something that it does not mean. "The Sims Medieval" is about as Medieval as my copy of the complete works of the Brothers Grimm-- which is to say, not at all. (And without the inclusion of such awesome stories as The Devil's Smelly Brother.)
Originally, I wasn't even going to consider getting Sims Medieval because a) I don't like the look of it, b) DRM is highly likely, c) I'm pretty goddamn deeply invested in Sims 2, and d) um, a slight case of sour grapes. (I swear it smells like a Sims 2 Stories game that got shoved at Sims 3 because Will Wright quit and Rod Humble got a hard-on for the human characters in Shrek.) Now? Now not only am I not going to buy it, I'm going to write a nasty letter to EA because I have no words for how pissed off I am that these... profit-humping bug-purveyors keep declaring that history is bunk and storybooks are better.
Don't get me wrong, I love a good storybook, but history has this advantage of having ACTUALLY HAPPENED. With documentation! And sources!
Of course it is, along with several interviews with Rachel Bernstein, the senior director of The Sims Medieval. (I also hear tell she also worked on Sim City Societies, although I don't know in what capacity.)
So in one of these videos, she said, "We're not a bunch of historians about to crack open history books we've never looked at before. We all have a picture in our mind of what Medieval times look like, and that picture is from movies, it's from books that we read as a kid, all sorts of beautifully painted storybooks..."
She then proceeded to wax masturbatory about how all the textures in the game are handpainted and how she wanted a very painterly, storybook look. (Objects look passable. Sims look like mud wrapped in leather.) In another interview, she goes on to say how 'rustic' they wanted the outfits to look.
Yes, I'm sure you can hear me gnashing my teeth from where you sit, O reader.
I've hit 'flames on the sides of my face' territory again, because apparently the Sims 3 art department just wanted to make a bunch of fairy-tale crap and wrap a minigame around it... and also, their handpainted textures on hair and skin look like handpainted turds. Especially the hairs. There are several closeups in the trailer, which, okay, yeah, is probably complete lies and propaganda at this point (except they've got seven months until their projected launch date, so I don't know), and I promise you, the basegame hairs were better painted.
'Rustic' Medieval clothing and the whole "Oh, we're too awesome to crack open a book or poke around Google, we have an ~*~Artistic Vision!~*~" thing just...
I can't even.
Just.
I will not go on about how I know the Sims' world is not our world, or how it irks me that Sims 3 keeps trying to bring the Sims' world more in line with ours. I will even restrain myself from fuming about the kind of morons who assume that you can't make anything but 'rustic' clothing with wool, linen, wooden looms, hand-needles, and the spinning, weaving, sewing, and embroidery skills you've been practicing since you were three goddamned years old. (The people who believe shit like this will be the first to fall when the zombie apocalypse comes, because they will continue to assume that when already-scarce resources wear out, you'll have to do without them, and that there's no way mere mortal hands could manage to craft decent clothing, weapons, armor, shelter, or food. You need machinery for that, right? Otherwise it's rustic and flimsy, like all the crap humanity limped along with before the Industrial Revolution, right?) Okay, maybe I'll just bitch about that a little. I will, however, say that it is probably wise to look up the word you'd like to use as the hook of your title just to be sure you're not using it to mean something that it does not mean. "The Sims Medieval" is about as Medieval as my copy of the complete works of the Brothers Grimm-- which is to say, not at all. (And without the inclusion of such awesome stories as The Devil's Smelly Brother.)
Originally, I wasn't even going to consider getting Sims Medieval because a) I don't like the look of it, b) DRM is highly likely, c) I'm pretty goddamn deeply invested in Sims 2, and d) um, a slight case of sour grapes. (I swear it smells like a Sims 2 Stories game that got shoved at Sims 3 because Will Wright quit and Rod Humble got a hard-on for the human characters in Shrek.) Now? Now not only am I not going to buy it, I'm going to write a nasty letter to EA because I have no words for how pissed off I am that these... profit-humping bug-purveyors keep declaring that history is bunk and storybooks are better.
Don't get me wrong, I love a good storybook, but history has this advantage of having ACTUALLY HAPPENED. With documentation! And sources!
