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American Truck Simulator's next few rounds of DLC are recreating some of the most boring places in the US, and I for one could not be more excited to drive through the flyover states.
Developer SCS Software released American Truck Simulator back in 2016 with a handful of west coast states, and once or twice a year ever since we've gotten new states as DLC as the game's map slowly expands toward the east. We've gotten the gorgeous forests and important urban centers of Washington, the beautiful mountain ranges of Colorado, and the extreme, uh, texasness of Texas.
Now ATS is entering the Great Plains in earnest. Earlier this month we got Oklahoma, Kansas is well on the way, and SCS recently announced that Nebraska will follow - which makes it easy to guess that the Dakotas are coming after that. In contrast to the gorgeous scenery and varied terrain the previously added states have to offer, these states have, uh… well, they have a lot of long, straight roads with not much in between.
Personally, I couldn't be more excited. The meditative zen of driving across nondescript highways for hours at a time is Americana personified, and for my money no game has ever replicated the mundane parts of the US quite as well as American Truck Simulator. I can imagine no more relaxing a video game scene than this:
That said, I'm not sure my own enthusiasm is shared by too many other fans. While the Truck Simulator community is one of the more pleasant places in gaming, the recent release of the Oklahoma DLC has met with some criticism - on Steam, this expansion has only been rated as 'mostly positive' as opposed to the 'very positive' marks given to previous releases.
Basically, a not-insignificant number of players are concerned about how Oklahoma is much smaller than previous states while offering much less in the way of geographical interest. That's just how the state is in real life, of course, but the DLC wasn't any cheaper than most previous states to compensate.
This negative review pretty much nails the tone of the rest: "As a lifelong ATS fan who has defended SCS from pretty much every criticism. Please know I come at this from a point of love for the game. SCS needs to start releasing states in clusters for $18 dollars. Why? Because $12 for a flyover state doesn't exactly hold the same value as Montana or Colorado for example which are priced the same."
That probably would be a better solution, though admittedly my excitement at driving through boring places keeps me from getting too up in arms about it. I might start to get a bit upset if Rhode Island costs another $12 in a few years, though.
Real-life trucking companies are hiring American Truck Simulator players because the game is making better drivers.
