Hitting the Chi-town
Alright, first of all, a disclaimer. I can't confirm whether American Truck Simulator's version of Chicago - famously nicknamed the Windy City - is authentically blustery. For one, you can't get out of your lorry in ATS. Sure, the flags you can see from inside the cab are fluttering, but that could be some form of arcane developer trickery. For two, I've never been to real world Chicago, so have no idea just how windy it is as a point of comparison.
What I can confirm, having hauled some pickups from St Louis to Chicago in ATS' Illinois DLC - out today, May 14th - is that driving into the latter for the first time is as memorable an experience as the best of the truck sim's other motoring metropolises.
As any journey in ATS should, mine started with a quick gaze at the landmarks of the city you're about to depart, in this case a glance up at the Gateway Arch. It's quite big, you know. Picking up my cargo (no puns intended here), I began the trek at around 6 AM on a Saturday, the sun gently rising on the beige horizon as my monstrous Kenworth began to rumble out of downtown St Louis and up past East St Louis as the highway wound northeast.
From here, as Metallica's Seek and Destroy blasted me up through the gears, the road rapidly went from elevated urban bypass to rural spaghetti rimmed by open green fields and punctuated by the occasional bridge over a river. This is what a lot of the easternmost states on offer in ATS look like and while it can get a bit samey if you go a while without heading back into the more arid or forested climes found to the south or west, it's still very pleasant to watch fly by as you make sure you coast along.
Regrettably, my route was programmed to take me up past Illinois state capital Springfield rather than directly through it, and having noticed too late to take a different turn, I only got a slight hint at the sights it has to offer. Annoyed by that blunder, I made sure to pass through the city of Bloomington, which fits the mould of your usual ATS middle American halfway house town between big cities. A main throughfare flanked with shops and the occasional rest stop. Though, upon taking a proper look around, the likes of the bank and a Bloomington-branded water tower offered a bit of unique flavour.
With that, it was on up more delightful farmside asphalt towards the outskirts of Chicago itself. You could argue ATS' map scale means big metropolises tend to end up being rendered at an unsatisfying scale (I'd argue small cities which lack as much imposing verticality can often suffer more starkly in this department), but Chicago isn't one of them. Approaching from the south, its varied and chunky skyline looms intimidatingly in the distance. Getting close might reveal a network of urban thoroughfares as slimmed down as always, but overhead sections of building and railway team up with the looming skyscrapers to make an impression as you're leading down towards the Clarence F. Buckingham memorial fountain sitting by the edge of Lake Michigan.
The rail hub on the city's outskirts, where I dropped off my cargo before heading downtown to sightsee, is also home to some evidence of SCS Software getting ever better and making their worlds feel that bit more dynamic. Trains were being loaded furiously by moving cranes as I parked up and then pulled away, the locos themselves shunting along so new containers could be dropped into place. If I'd not had a city to check out while Pearl Jam crooned away, I might have stuck around to watch the industrious activity.
Having had my hands full with another open world driving game lately, that's all I've had time to sample of American Truck Simulator's Illinois expansion so far. It's nothing world-shifing, but from what I've played it's yet another solid addition to the sim's ever expanding map and great if you're in the mood for some chill automotive virtual tourism. If that sounds up your alley, you can wishlist it Steam ahead of it going live at around 5:10 PM BST/12:10 PM EDT/9:10 AM PDT today, May 14th. SCS have also just announced the free release of two new trucks, the 2025 Volvo VNL and VNR Electric, neither of which I've given a go yet.