crown_of_antlers | The Great Bear World and Turning Back the Sim Clock

Last week I started taking a look at a couple of the custom worlds I had downloaded but at the time didn't know enough about customizing worlds to use them. One that I have now fallen completely in love with and is now my favorite world is Great Bear. It's a large sized world and consists of a tiny rural town that is surrounded by mountains and a National Park forest. It's not populated, but that was fine with me since I like to create my own households.

I really wish I could use this world for my Elder Scrolls crew, but unfortunately there is no place in Morrowind that looks like this. Not even adding the mushroom trees around the world like I did with Dragon Valley will help. Oh well. This means that Gloria and her crew can live in it, and the more I spent time in Great Bear the more I could imagine this being the place where Gloria spent her childhood.

First, a big rave and squee I have to get out of the way. I have tried a lot of games with horses, including dedicated horse games, but Sims 3 with the Great Bear world is the most true to life wilderness trail riding simulation I have ever found. This is it! This is what I've been looking for in a video game.

I'll pause here and just add some of the gorgeous screenshots I took while Gloria was riding her horse Faith into the National Park and along the dirt path through the forest covered mountains.

As usual I made a few changes to the world to suit my personal taste (though not as much as I usually do). I removed a live show and the Port-a-Party venue because I felt their garish neon lights looked out of place in a small mountain town (I live near such a town. No businesses have neon lights and the locals would hate such a look). I also removed the Petite Pony Equestrian Center and the small training grounds and replaced them with the larger versions, placing them in the spots that had been occupied by the live show venues. Next to the Equestrian Center and training grounds I placed the Lexington Festival Grounds.

Another change was that I moved a large fancy house that was in a 64 x 64 lot next to the river and placed it elsewhere (It was too beautiful to remove entirely), then I placed Gloria's cabin in the freed-up lot. Next I added some public venues that I like to have around (the bakery, Fiddler's Green, Stonehenge Coffee, a gypsy wagon, and a nectary).

A couple of screens showing Gloria's cabin (I used cheats to have the game start during the autumn season rather than summer):

Finally I added a couple of buildings from the Northeney world. This is another well done world, though a little small for my tastes plus it's not possible to add any 64 x 64 lots for horse ranches. The world does however have some adorable buildings and the provided save has some fleshed out households. From Northeney I added the "Blue Barn House" and the "Art Barn (small park). The house version of the barn is simply adorable, and the Art Barn looked like a place where Gloria would have had her first art lessons. I also grabbed a few of the households and placed them in Great Bear to help fill the neighborhood.

At last I added Gloria, James, Allison and Robin (along with their parents), plus the Tudor household with Henry and Katherine. To fill the place a bit more I added some of the households that came with the game like the Glover household. Lastly, because I just watched Hocus Pocus 2 and wanted something quirky in the world, I added a Sanderson household with Winifred, Mary, and Sarah. They live in a little cabin that's by itself and tucked away in the woods.

So I'm having Gloria go about her day in this gorgeous setting and yet again I could imagine this being where she grew up, and then I thought...why not?

I started a separate save and remade the four main households (which is easy since each character is in my Saved Sim library). In the CAS I "turned back the clock" and turned Gloria, James, Allison and Robin into children, and of course I made their parents younger. Finally I created two elder couples. One set is James' grandparents and the other set is Gloria's. One of the reasons I added Gloria's grandparents is so that her future house is occupied by relatives which prevents random sims from moving into it. Plus the story is that Gloria inherits the cabin from her grandparents.

Gloria as a little girl:

Needless to say I didn't add the pets that these characters have as young adults since none of these animals would have been born yet. It also goes without saying that aging is turned on for this game.

The story that quickly formed in my mind: Gloria's parents Arthur and Gwen were very young adults when their daughter came along. In fact when Gloria was conceived they had not yet made it down the aisle. Arthur has told his daughter that she was "unexpected but not unwelcome".

During the first nine years of Gloria's life the family lived in Sunset Valley near Gwen's parents. Then career opportunities opened up for both Arthur and Gwen in Great Bear (which is where Arthur's parents lived). Even then Gloria was Loner by nature, so she didn't have a lot of friends to be parted from.

The little family of three moved to Great Bear and into the two-bedroom, three-bath house that Arthur had grown up in. His parents had happily moved out of the large house and into a small cabin that was down the road next to the river (they had been wanting to downsize for some time). Gwen was able to start her career in Journalism while Arthur began his career in politics with his father as his boss (I didn't set it up that way. The game did).

Gloria's first introduction to horses was her grandfather's gentle giant Clydesdale gelding named Ben. Unfortunately she had to wait until she was a teenager before she could learn to ride.

( I promise I am not going to launch into the rant about how in real life children can learn to ride at a very early age. Oh wait, I guess I just did.)

Until she can ride a real horse, she makes do with her palomino rocking horse. Gloria loves this rocking horse. It's her favorite toy. She spends all of her free time on it. In fact I have yet to see her bother with any of her other toys.

On her first day of school she met James and before the day was over the two children were Best Friends. Again, I didn't do this. They did this themselves. Whether these two are the Bosmers Aeronwen and Neldor or as the humans Gloria and James, they always seem to find each other.

At this point I guess we'll just see what happens. Whatever the case, for anyone who likes small town/forest settings, I cannot recommend Great Bear enough.

Here is a video that a YouTuber did of Great Bear:

Watch on YouTube