Don't know if bringing in Will Wright will do any good. The Sims 1 was made by a handful of people, under bad conditions as they had no support what so ever. They were trying their best to get their dreamgame published, which was extremely hard until EA came into the picture.

I agree that Sims 3 was a bit lifeless, maybe because they lack some of the passion of the Sims 1 team. They have all the money, tech and people they need. Even Will Wright may not have the passion for it anymore as he's busy with his own projects.
But the new Emotion system sounds very interesting. It could very well bring back what's missing from Sims 3.

You know I can't really agree with this statement because in TS3 they have given us a lot of things that the player can't control and I mostly hate it! It's like the devs now get to decide how you play your game and there's only one way to play it. For example without mods, you could create a legacy couple and start a family and if one of them fell in love with someone else, regardless whether they actually had an affair, the other partner would somehow 'know' the other was cheating and decide to divorce your sim.

I thought this game was supposed to be about ME playing MY scenario and not yours, EA.

I think it is because the Sims' Team have moved away from trying to do a simulation game and now they try to design stuff that would fit in your average run of the mill game instead. That's probably all they usually play, after all. That's why a lot of people claim that they don't really understand The Sims. Plus EA wants to make the game appeal to a broad group of customers so they throw in everything. Of course no one is probably actually happy with the game because of this but apparently they just don't get it.

In the example you gave, yes, I would love that kind of surprising randomness. But there is no 'win/lose/let the game screw you over crap to create "surprise" to that example whatsoever. It's just a lovely, emotionally demonstrative animation that is probably programmed to randomly occur when certain conditions are met, or maybe it's random with parents and kids, who knows. But the point is that it is simulating family life and not trying too hard to be a "game" by throwing random dumb stuff at the player that 9 times out of 10 doesn't even make any sense.

And now, I am reminded of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mznsEcZlM2I

And I want a Horacio Sim including the animation.

I remember this Far out from release of SimCity 2013 it seemed to look very promising come release date it was a major disappointment in game play, again another original Will Wright game that has lost it soul.
Hope I am proved wrong but each year I have less faith in any EA Product.

It's intriguing to see The Sims franchise being analogized with soup.

The fact that they're going back to the more cartoonish graphics proves that they have listened to us a little bit, and that they're trying to bring back that special element the original/TS2 had. They're just too proud to admit they messed up. I'm no modder, but I really enjoyed the way the mods looked for TS2, and I found more of the mods I wanted back then. A lot of the better mods for TS3 were just brought over from TS2. I could tell you guys probably enjoyed modding as much as I enjoyed downloading them, and I hope we can get back to that with TS4 .

The Sims 2 wasn't special because of the cartoony look, it was special because of the interactions between the sims themselves. I have seen pics of people's Sims 2 game where it is ultra-realistic, and it doesn't detract from the game.
That doesn't mean, however, that the graphics don't have an affect on people's enjoyment of games. So far, I don't care for the style of the game at all. I already have to do a bit of work to replace townies with actual Sims that look like they came from Planet Earth. As it is, I would have to totally remake the look of the whole town, and even then it appears I would be stuck with whatever pre-set decor and items EA decides to foist on us. Ain't nobody got time for that.