The Sims 4′s upcoming Adventure Awaits expansion allows you to live out your reality TV show dreams via a new competition feature that pits Sim against Sim. According to EA, players can have their Sims compete in everything from Iron Chef-style cooking competitions to Survivor-esque elimination contests and romance competitions a la Love Island.
I was already a bit skeptical about Adventure Awaits for the simple fact that The Sims 4 is really, really broken right now, but EA is reportedly going to spend the next eight weeks fixing the game’s many bugs, so hopefully the new expansion pack launches without issue. EA’s shown off many aspects of Adventure Awaits already, but we don’t know too much about the competition feature except that it exists and has various categories. Notably, we don’t yet know what rewards can be earned by winning a competition. It’s likely that Sims get a trophy or something similar to display in their home, but given the fact that nearly all the advertising for this DLC references reality TV (there’s even an in-game lot named Love Highland), I have one question: Does the Adventure Awaits expansion work with the Get Famous expansion?
Released in 2018, the Get Famous expansion pack allows Sims to do exactly that. Whether they want to take on a career as an actor or actress, become famous by selling their paintings and photographs, or simply gain popularity by updating their social media pages and livestreaming their daily activities, there are plenty of ways for Sims to earn Fame Points and climb the celebrity ladder. Sims gain special rewards like free gifts, fanmail, access to exclusive in-game locations, and other special perks as they work their way toward becoming a household name. In theory, Get Famous is the perfect expansion pack to pair with Adventure Awaits. The problem is, EA hasn’t yet revealed whether or not there are any special features available for players who own both Adventure Awaits and Get Famous.
Personally, I think that winning a competition in Adventure Awaits should award a Sim with Fame Points if Get Famous is also installed. This isn’t a big ask, either — Adventure Awaits will be The Sims 4′s 85th DLC pack, and plenty of the game’s numerous DLCs already interact with each other in special ways. The Businesses & Hobbies expansion pack launched in March, and it has so many special features related to other DLCs that EA wrote a whole blog post about it. But so far, none of EA’s blog posts about Adventure Awaits mention anything about interactivity with other DLCs.
If Adventure Awaits launches with no connection to Get Famous and without the ability to gain Fame Points from winning competitions, I’ll be sorely disappointed, but not surprised. The upcoming DLC already feels like a weird mish-mash of unrelated ideas. It includes reality TV competitions, kayaking, weightlifting, summer camp for children, the return of Imaginary Friends, and a new type of vacation called a Getaway. These are all neat features, but none of them really seem closely related, making Adventure Awaits feel more like an amalgamation of features that were left on the cutting room floor and Frankenstein’d into a new DLC, rather than a well-thought-out expansion. But EA’s advertising has focused almost entirely on the reality show competition feature. If that’s the angle they’re going with, they’d better back it up with features that connect it to other related DLCs, and Get Famous needs to be at the top of the list.