Lars typed in the name of his town, and wasn't too surprised when a color aerial view showed up -- so far, it seemed just like Google Earth, with pretty much the same functions to pan around the map, zoom out and zoom in. He found his own street and kept zooming in, noticing that none of the detail was lost. And then he saw, from above, a green minivan driving down the street, and realized that he could also see the leaves on the trees moving slightly in the breeze. He was startled enough that he mashed all the keyboard zoom controls simultaneously, changing focus to the house next door to his, and going through the roof.
He gasped. He was looking at the top of Kelly Jacobson's head as she sat at the desk in her bedroom, reading a textbook. It was like he was watching a movie on his computer screen -- albeit a very boring one. His first thought was that he couldn't believe his PC, a couple of years old, was rendering the graphics so well. His second thought was that he couldn't believe his cute cheerleader next-door neighbor was in this game.
Lars went back to the zoom controls and figured out how to change from the aerial view. Now it was like he was standing in her bedroom, a place he'd occasionally fantasized about but had never been in. He could see every detail, from the posters of pop princesses on her walls to the stuffed rabbit on her bed.
The menu at the bottom of the screen now indicated "Jacobson Family," with small pictures of the faces of Kelly and her parents. Hovering the mouse over her parents, he found "David Jacobson - dinner and a movie" and "Rebecca Jacobson - dinner and a movie." Kelly's picture said "Kelly Jacobson - studying." Lars clicked on Kelly's picture; a yellow outline appeared around it, and a very faint yellow outline appeared around Kelly in real life. A pop-up menu appeared with a variety of options for actions. Jake chuckled as he clicked "use toilet."
Just as would happen in The Sims, Kelly immediately got up. Lars took advantage of the opportunity to check out the "item" pane in the menu. It took him straight into a section labeled "Teenage Girl's Bedroom"; there were what seemed like a bewildering array of submenus, from "Clothing" to "Lamps" to "Books" to "Posters." Unlike The Sims, though, nothing had a price listed.
It wasn't until Kelly came back in the room that Lars realized he probably could have panned over to the bathroom and seen Kelly in there -- well, it would probably have been blurred out anyway, so no big deal. As she went back to studying, he opened the "character" pane. It looked like he could not only create new characters, but change existing ones, and just as with the "item" menu, there was quite a variety of available options, even a "random change" button.
Lars decided it was time he took advantage of these menus.