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Chapter 4 Commentary

Here are a few things I have to say about Chapter 4: its story and creation.

First off, I must say – without wanting to throw flowers at myself – that the cover for this chapter is the one I’m most proud of, so far, out of all those I’ve ever made (FOP included). It took me about an hour and a half to make it, so it wasn’t exactly easy work, but I really liked the result. The cover is generally the last thing I do, so I have a tendency to rush it, to get the chapter out. Well, the one for Chapter 1 was made about a month before the chapter came out, but that was a special context. The ones for chapters 2 and 3 were made in about 15 minutes to tell you the truth. However, for Chapter 4 I really wanted to try to do something different. Anyway, I hope you liked it.

The whole first part of this chapter was mostly about getting you up to date with Bella and summing up five years of Strangetown living. I think you now understand why Chapter 3 cuts off anything from the past and settles Bella into a very routine life: I needed her to live a very dull life for the next four years. Some of the information given in the five year summary may seem a little bit out of context. For example, it may seem a bit odd that I mention in one page Lazlo and Crystal’s relationship, without developing more on the matter. I tend to dislike when stories go in every direction and you get a bunch of insignificant plots about minor characters which are only confusing more than anything. This is something we, Sim writers, tend to do, because we want to tell you everything that’s going on in our games. Anyway, I’ll try to keep the number of characters and plots in the story under control, but Lazlo and Crystal just seemed to fit in well in the Strangetown storylines. Crystal will remain a very minor character in the story though.

Though you don’t see much of it, I actually redesigned the whole Curious house for this chapter. It was difficult to create a house which was practical, while keeping it in the original style. If you’ve ever played the Curious household, you’ll know that their house layout is very bizarre: the walls of the rooms are rarely straight and usually twist and turn. I tried to keep this idea going, but I did tone down the contrasting colors, to make the house nicer for toddlers to live in (this, of course, was Bella’s idea in the story). You’ll see more of this house around chapters 8 and 9, and perhaps I’ll upload it, if I ever get my packages working properly (for some reason, I’ve been having trouble with lot packages in my game).

The college graduates are another minor development in this chapter. You’ll get more about Johnny and Ophelia’s wedding plans in chapter 6. Nervous is supposed to be quite important in the story, though he’s going to be in the background for the next few chapters I think. He’ll be more present around 8 and 9 also. Just to let you know, if anyone’s a Nervous fan, he’s got a girlfriend named Claire, who is a college townie from La Fiesta Tech. You may see her someday, though I don’t intend on bringing her into the story for now, so here’s just a bit of behind the scenes info.

In this first part you also start to get some information about Pleasantview, which is of course much more important in the story. I couldn’t help but include a little bit about the Pleasants. If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll know that Lilith Pleasant is going to be a very important character in the story, after the first part. Since The Donnavi Prophecy is about Bella’s experience in Strangetown, Lilith doesn’t have many opportunities to get into the story just yet, but seeing how important she’s going to turn out, I need to include her a little bit, where I can. It was also great to be able to write a bit about the Goths, who are central in this story. You may notice how I slightly changed the way the Goth family was meant to be in the game. If you look into their memories, you’re supposed to be able to figure out that when Bella was abducted, Alexander was a toddler, Cassandra was a teenager and Mortimer was an adult. I had followed this aging system when I was writing FOP, which had led me to have the rest of Pleasantview quite messed up (as I explained in my blog on September the 1st, 2006). When I was planning FOA, I took some time to establish the age of everyone in the story once and for all. I started by establishing the age differences between everybody and then, basing myself on certain points of the action where I knew I needed certain characters to be a certain age, I deducted the age I needed everyone to be at the start of the story. Yes, it was a bit complicated, but that’s how I ended up with the ages you see in the story.

Another reason the Goth family wasn’t aged as they should have been was that I used the Bella Goth interview released by EA Games in 2006, to figure out what I wanted to do with the story when I was planning it. I thought it was a good idea to have Don and Cassandra start going out before Bella’s abduction, since this story is being told from Bella’s point of view only. If I had done it like in FOP, you would have needed to wait until Bella got back to Pleasantview to know about their relationship, which was just bizarre, I think. I had about the same thought concerning Dina’s attempt to seduce Mortimer (yes, I can’t bring myself to use the word relationship here…): I always thought the picture that comes with the game where Dina brings pie to the Goths was the start of Dina’s plan, concerning Mortimer. Since I needed Bella to be there to see it, and that Mortimer is an elder inside that picture, I needed Mortimer to be an elder before Bella left.

Yes, all of this may be a bit technical and petty so let’s go into more relevant topics about the story. I hadn’t really originally planned to describe the way Bella runs the youth association, when I first planned the chapter. However it seemed to fit in nicely and I won’t get another chance to do this: as you’re able to see now, the story is picking up speed and Bella’s life is going to be much more agitated in future chapters. The challenge of the youth association was getting it to look good, despite some lacking possibilities in the actual game. Ironically, now that I’ve done it, EA Games has decided to release the Free Time Expansion pack, which has some great stuff I could have used for YOUNG.

The idea to have Bella draw her family came from a drawing of the Goth family I was trying to do around the time I was writing the chapter. I had intended on including it in the story, but I never got around to finishing it, so for now it’s not there. If I ever do get it done, I’ll include it.

The pictures taken at the youth association show a little bit more about the story than it’s mentioned in the text. You won’t be able to see anything for now (really, it’s not noticeable), but once you’ve read Chapters 5 and especially 6, you’ll be able to see a little something more.

This may sound bizarre, but the evening with Jack was actually the base idea for Chapter 4. This is how I imagined Jack’s inclusion in the story, when I was planning it: I wanted Bella to have a friend in the same situation as she was, and to have this emotional evening with him. This is why I included the picture of the both of them looking at the stars on the cover: the moment where they look at the sky is the most significant part of the evening. As it is explained in the story, there’s a certain symbolism of how the sky from where they came to Strangetown.

I hesitated as to whether the two of them should kiss, or at least get close to kissing, for the same reason I explained in the Chapter 3 commentary. In the end, I decided against it, because it seemed inappropriate, and I didn’t think it would fit Bella’s character to kiss a man, when she knew she was married.

Bella’s dream about Cassandra is very significant, but I can’t fully explain it to you yet, without revealing certain elements of the next chapter. So far, what you know, is that it helped Bella remember Cassandra, and then the rest of her family, but as you may have already seen, there is more to it, and so I’ll develop on this again in the chapter 5 commentary (though it will be rather clearly explained in the fifth chapter anyway). Originally, the moment where Bella wakes up was the end of the chapter, but it actually ended up being short, so I included some ideas I originally planned for 5.

So, the last part of this chapter is the long hypnotherapy session. I still prefer not to explain the image of the wrought iron stairs in the white room explicitly yet, but I suppose you already have a clue as to what it means.
When I first imagined this hypnotherapy, the main idea was to have Bella remember her family. At first, I thought it would take place quickly, as a big rush of emotions and flashes of the scenes, only. As you can see, however, I decided to make it longer and extend the different scenes. I liked linking the scenes together quite irrationally and fluidly: from one you just go into the other, like it often happens in dreams.

The scenes you see in hypnotherapy are my way of including storylines about the Pleasantview characters, even though the current story is based in Strangetown. This last part of chapter 4 sort of reminded me of the first chapter of FOP. The scenes you see don’t have particular significance (besides for the last), and aren’t really related to each other, but they all help Bella remember a bit more about her past life.

In this chapter, I enjoyed taking the originally provided pictures by Maxis, and including them in active scenes. Of course, the most important element in this hypnotherapy session is Bella’s abduction memory. In it, you start getting some explanations for what Bella saw in Chapter Two (you’ll get a bit more info about it in Chapter 5, and finally a full explanation with 9). I’m hoping you noticed the parallelism between this scene, when Don tells Bella to look into the telescope, and the one in chapter 2, when Nervous does the same in the first hypnotherapy. Indeed, in her first hypnotherapy session, Bella subconsciously remembered the way Don told her to look into the telescope, the night of her abduction… This is another clue in understanding that moment.

Don’s attempt to kiss Bella wasn’t something I really wanted to do, but it’s something that did supposedly happen in the story, based on Don’s memories, and it did give me a good opportunity to have Don leave the terrace, while Bella got abducted. Indeed, as you may know by now, one of the things I have changed from FOP to FOA is that Don wasn’t involved in Dina’s plan to get hold of the Goth fortune (not intentionally at least.) Already around the end of the first chapter of FOP, I was having my doubts: Don was growing on me, so I made him back out (though his initial involvement would have eventually caught up with him). When I started planning FOA, Don’s innocence was one of the first things I established (you can check my blog around early 2007 for that). You’ll find out exactly what happened to Don in chapter 7, after Bella was abducted.

Finally we get to the last scene, in the spaceship. The reason the spaceship is so bright is explained by their genetic heritage: their eyes absorb much more light then men do, and so they can see through brighter lights. Well, that’s the technical reason; for the story, it was of course to create a very confusing environment for Bella. Getting the aliens to attack Bella was a bit of a challenge, seeing the Sims 2 isn’t adapted to that kind of interaction. Most the time, the two aliens are fighting, while Bella is doing another interaction, such as startle, or die. The difficulty with the pictures was to not reveal Dina’s identity, before the text said it. So I made Dina very dark, so that you could guess it was her, but couldn’t be sure until the last page.

I suppose Dina’s involvement in Bella’s abduction was somewhat predictable, for those who had read FOP, and some people had already guessed it, but it was still very fun to do… As usual, you only know a part of it for now, and there’s more to come on Dina (as soon as chapter 6).

Alexis, 16th December 2007.