How The Sims 4 Can Fix Its Lackluster Lore… by a Sims Lore Expert
The Sims 4 has been out for seven years, which is crazy to me. I remember being so excited for the next iteration of this game. I had been obsessed with The Sims for years, and my mom finally let me buy The Sims 3 in 2012 when I was old enough. The Sims was a comfort game to me in sort of the sense. I was an awkward, yet creative, middle school kid. Being able to create whatever stores I wanted in a world where I controlled everything was really fun. Over the years, it’s become a passion for me. I’m probably one of the biggest Sims fans and players you will ever meet.
One of the things I enjoyed the most about The Sims is something I think a lot of people don’t know about, and that’s the timeline, lore, and backstories of the townies already in the games, particularly the main base game worlds (base game refers to the main game, without any extra downloadable content) like Pleasantview in The Sims 2, and Sunset Valley in The Sims 3. I remember perusing The Sims Wiki for hours in middle and high school, reading about all the families who lived there. I know all about the Goths, the Landgraabs, the Pleasants, etc. without even having played Sims 2.
I was an expert on Sunset Valley, considering it was The Sims 3 world I played the most. You can find these stories in game when you look around the towns. Every pre-made household and Sim from Sims 2 and 3 has their own biography, their own personality traits, aspirations, family tree with ancestors, and for the most part, everything is fairly consistent and fits within the timeline and lore between each game. You have to pat the game developers on the back for that.
So, lets paint a picture here. It’s December 28th, 2014, and my dad and brother went to GameStop to spend our Christmas money. I was fourteen years old and in eighth grade at the time, with sixty dollars saved up so I could specifically buy The Sims 4, which I had been excited for since it was announced the previous year.
I pay for the game, and we make the drive back home. I excitedly load the game up on my laptop… And I’m quite disappointed. So many basic features that were present in past Sims games are missing, including but not limited to: the toddler life state, ghosts and graveyards, family history/family trees, personal Sim biographies, pools, burglars, firefighters, and decent dark skin tones. Basically, everything that made past Sims base games a true fun life simulator masterpieces. I was so disappointed that I spent my precious money on it and immediately went back to The Sims 3 until they started adding many of these features in free updates over the years. (And yeah, it was actually SIXTY dollars at launch while being so incomplete. I was fourteen and dumb, don’t judge me lol)
The Sims 4’s lore is even more abysmal than the missing features. While the game has been updated to include more features and gameplay, the premade Sims have not caught up. The playable premade households are not consistent with the lore and stories of the previous games. There is no progression in the stories, and they all feel like the creators rushed creating the premade townies, and paid little to no attention to their relationships or drama. I think part of this problem was the fact that so many things were missing at launch. Now we have many of the things on that list of previously missing features, (and yet, we still don’t have everything the past base games had) the pre-made worlds and townies feel especially incomplete and lazily made.
In August of 2021, we received news that The Sims Team is planning on giving a “tiny overhaul” to the lore and the visuals of the pre-made Sims. But personally, as a self-proclaimed Expert on Sims Lore™, I can tell this game needs more than a “tiny overhaul” if it wants to match up, or even, be better than the lore of the previous games. So here is a list of things, that I would like to see fixed.
1. Fix The White-Washed Townies. (And make the Sims from previous games actually look like themselves)
It goes without saying that this is one of the worst things that The Sims 4 has done in terms of lore. It’s wild to me that the Sims 4 has more variety of skin tones than Sims 2 (which only had four skin tones), yet Sims 2 had better representation of people of color than The Sims 4, a more modern-day game did.
I don’t think it was on purpose, but it comes off as racist and colorist to many people that many of the premade Sims of color in Sims 2 who make a return in Sims 4 have much lighter skin tones and some are just flat-out white with a tan. Maybe this is because darker the skin tone selection was not good at launch and it took until the end of 2020 for the Sims team to fix that.
The biggest example of white-washing is the Caliente sisters. Not only were they completely botched in The Sims 4 and look like middle aged women trying too hard to appear youthful rather than the young, pretty, party girls they were in Sims 2, they went from having a medium dark skin tone to being just white with a slight tan.
In The Sims 2, Nina and Dina had a family history of Arab and Latino descent. Their mother was Nihat Al Mahmoud, and their father was named Flamenco Caliente, who is half Latino and the other half alien as his father Nestor was abducted and impregnated by aliens. (Sims 2’s lore was crazy, and that’s what I love about it.) Bizarrely, Nina and Dina’s mother was changed from Nihat Caliente to “Katrina.” The new mom, Katrina became a well-off middle-aged MILF whereas Nihat was more of a middle-class traditional housewife. They changed a whole character to a completely different person thinking we wouldn’t notice.
Bella Goth (née Bella Bachelor) in The Sims 3 had a black grandfather & a Latina grandmother, making her father half black and half Latino while her mother had a Greek name, implying Greek descent. In The Sims 1 and 2, Cassandra Goth, Bella’s oldest daughter had a medium skin tone just like her. But In Sims 4, the whole Goth family is just white. Cassandra’s white washing being the most apparent. She’s extremely pale in Sims 4 for no reason.
I could go on and on. Another point is that the facial features and hairstyles just don’t match. But the point is: a lot of thought was put into their backgrounds and ethnicity in the past games.
In Sims 4, it seems that the premade Sims were created in like, ten minutes from someone who doesn’t know much about them and their backgrounds. Erasing this is just NOT okay.
2. Incorporate the previously missing features back into the early worlds
We’ve talked about the missing content at launch. Toddlers, pools, ghosts and tombstones, dead ancestors, family trees, favorites and least favorites, swimwear, and hot and cold weather outfits have all been patched into the base game, however, the problematic part of this is that these things are missing from the old worlds. Willow Creek & Oasis Springs haven’t been changed since 2014 to adapt to the updates.
If someone bought the base game itself and decided to create a toddler, there are no other toddlers in the world for their toddler to meet, nor are there fun toddler activities or a toddler toilet on public community lots. Sims don’t have public pools to visit. The rich families don’t have pools either, which, I feel many rich families have pools at their mansion. The premade Sims in town also don’t have any dead ancestors. There is no graveyard to place deceased Sims after their life comes to an end and they turn into a tombstone.
Another thing is that three outfit categories were added. Swimwear and pools were added in a few months after launch, and they even added a premade swimwear outfit to each Sim’s taste.
Then, let’s fast-forward to 2018 where The Sims 4: Seasons came out, and now we have two new outfits: an outfit for hot weather and cold weather. However, this time they didn’t go back and add premade hot and cold weather outfits. So when you play the game and it’s cold or hot outside, it will choose random accessories and outfits that make no sense, and that are different every time. It’s one thing for random townies to do this, but now the premade Sims have to go through this too!
The Sims’s randomly dressed townies have been roasted by everyone since the beginning of The Sims 3, when story progression allowed for new randomly generated townies to move in and other Sims age up and have children of their own. When the game creates random townies, new people are born, and the children age up to adults, the game has to choose a random outfit for them. Often the random outfit is extremely flashy, ugly, and it adds a bunch of random, non-cohesive accessories, like the infamous pink eyeball ring Sims players all hate with a passion. I feel at least the premade Sims should have decent outfits when it’s cold or hot.
Why did EA completely forget that they can add premade outfits to the Sims? They did it with swimwear. They can do it with hot and cold weather outfits!
Another thing that could be a nice touch, is some ancestors.
In The Sims 2, almost every living premade Sim had parents and grandparents in their family tree, and I think this led to people being able to imagine and create so many stories around them. Some of them, such as the Goth ancestors, also made a reappearance in The Sims 3, even though not every Sim would have ancestors in Sims 3. But in The Sims 4’s first launch, there were no ghosts or family trees at all, so I can see why there are no ancestors since there was no way to track them at the time.
Before the ghost update and the family tree update, when a Sim died in The Sims 4, they were just deleted, and permanently unplayable. In previous games, they would become ghosts and they would haunt the lot they resided on, whether it was on the home lot or the graveyard. You could even add them to your house, play with them, and bring them back to life! After the update in Sims 4, we can now do all that again, but is it really worth it when we don’t have a graveyard to visit itself?
And is The Goth Manor really the Goth Manor without the ghosts of the Crumplebottom and Goth ancestors roaming the lot? I don’t think so. So I think some of the households should get deceased ancestors, and a graveyard lot could be added to one other base game empty lots so we have a better place to put our Sims in their final resting place than just our backyards.
Death is a huge part of this life simulator, and it seems so weird that we don’t have a place to bring our deceased Sims in Sims 4. Most people in real life aren’t rich aristocrats like the Goths and don’t bury their family members in the backyard of their mansion.
And lastly, Likes & Dislikes!
In The Sims 3, every Sim had a favorite color, music, and food, and this feature was missing in Sims 4 at launch. After the update that came out along with the Dream Home Decorator in mid-2021, the base game now has the option to give your Sims “likes and dislikes” related to colors, music, and activities. If you have Dream Home Decorator, you can also chose a décor preference.
However, much like the hot weather and cold weather outfits, these preferences were not assigned to premade Sims. So when you ask that Sim what their preferences are in the game, it assigns them random ones.
To me, Bella Goth seems like a classy women; the type whose favorite colors are Red and Black and she enjoys Jazz and Blues music. However, when I ask her in the game and says her favorite color is Yellow, she hates Red and enjoys Heavy Metal and Kids Radio music, it just… doesn’t make sense to her character at all.
3. Fix the messy timeline.
Many people have forgotten about the Sims series’ timeline. In terms of lore, each main game is on a timeline and major families, like the Goth family, are all connected.
The Sims 3 is a prequel, and the earliest time period you can play in The Sims universe (not counting The Sims Medieval). For a point of reference, let’s use some Sims’ ages. Mortimer Goth is a child who lives with his parents, Bella Goth is also a child living with her parents and older teen brother.
The Sims 1 takes place 25 years after The Sims 3. By then, Mortimer and Bella are adults (in their mid-30s?) with their child-aged daughter Cassandra. Bella’s brother is a college student and her parents are implied dead (as there are graves for people named “grandma” and “grandpa” in the Goth graveyard) while Mortimer’s parents also came with The Sims: Unleashed, and they are alive and elderly and live close by.
The Sims 2 takes place 25 years after The Sims 1 and 50 years after The Sims 3. By then, Mortimer Goth is an elder, his parents have died, Cassandra is an adult about to get married, and he has had a second child, Alexander.
Now where does the Sims 4 take place? Well, nowhere on this timeline. It was confirmed by the Sims team that The Sims 4 is an “alternate universe” and because of this, the ages of the characters don’t make any sense.
One example is that Malcolm Landgraab and Mortimer Goth were the same age in The Sims 3 (children). But in Sims 4, Mortimer is an adult, Bella is a Young Adult (yet somehow has a teen daughter) and Malcolm is a teenager living with his parents who are the same age as Mortimer. Cassandra is also much younger and closer in age to Alexander than she was in Sims 2. It makes no sense.
To me, this seemed like a way for them to be lazy and not have to pay attention to the lore, considering how inaccurate the Sims 4 premade households are. The main reason I don’t like this, is that it’s really confusing and doesn’t allow for any sort of progression in their storylines. So many unanswered questions were left in The Sims 2’s story. Like, what happened to Bella Goth? And what’s in store for the next generation of the teens and children who will grow up in Pleasantview?
With this “alternate universe” they can still keep their same characters without having to come up with new, actual storylines. I personally think they’re afraid to make Bella Goth old for some reason, because her portrait in Sims 2 was still young where she should have been an Elder alongside Mortimer, and also the fact that Bella is a Young Adult while Mortimer is an Older Adult in Sims 4, even though a Young Adult couldn’t feasibly have a Teenage daughter without cheats in Sims 4.
Long story short, it makes brain hurt to keep track of these two alternate universes…
So my wish is that we get to see the next generation, maybe continue the pattern. Make it 25 years after The Sims 2. Let’s see some progression in the stories! Let Mortimer and Bella die, let’s see Cassandra and Alex as adults and parents, let’s see the next generation of the families. Answer the question: where does all the juicy drama in Sims 2 Pleasantview lead to in the future?
4. Add personal biographies and more personality trait slots.
Sims 3 allowed for 5 personality trait slots for Young Adults and up (4 for teens, 3 for children, and 2 for toddlers/babies) as well as 63 distinct personality traits to choose from. One thing that has perplexed Sims players is how The Sims 4 went backwards when it comes to personality. The Sims 4 allows Young Adults and up to have only 3 traits, (teens get 2 traits, children and toddlers get 1 trait, babies get none) and you have 37 traits in the base game to choose from. (Yep. A vanilla Sims 4 adult has the same amount of personality as a Sims 3 child!)
Because of this, most players believe that The Sims 4's Sims don’t have a lot of personality; most Sims feel the same to play. Many mod creators have created more traits, and a mod that allows you to add as many traits as you want. It just doesn’t make sense at how the previous installments have done personalities much better than Sims 4.
Personal biographies along with family biographies were in The Sims 1, Sims 2, and Sims 3. But in The Sims 4, we only have family biographies. It’s really hard for you to create deep lore and stories when Sims don’t have their own individual descriptions. All we have the family biography which isn’t enough as it has a character limit. And again, the devolution from previous installments is so odd. If I can’t express my Sims’ personalities in with the traits, at least let me write about it, you know?
Anyway, I think the Sims team should add personal bios and give them to the premade Sims, because it does add more to their backstories and depth. The family biographies have character limits that are too short to describe everyone in the household with any depth.
5. ACTUAL drama. Put actual effort into relationships between Sims, and extend relationships outside of the household.
The way that they created the premade households in Sims 4 seems like they just created them in Create A Sim and didn’t change anything else about them in the game. They don’t add relationships with Sims outside the households, and sometimes, even within the households.
Johnny Zest, according to his family bio, was disowned by the Landgraab family when he quit school and wanted to become a comedian. He’s a Landgraab, but he has no links or relationships with the Landgraab family. I think it’s heavily implied that he was the older brother of Malcolm and son of Geoffrey and Nancy. But in game he doesn’t know them at all. Even if he was disowned and forgotten, I’d think he would dislike them and have a genetic link with them.
He could even flirt with them if he wanted, he could have a romantic relationship with his implied parents and brother. Even if he isn’t Nancy and Geoffrey’s child, he’s still somehow related to them. The Sims 4 doesn’t allow for incestuous relationships, but since there is no link between Johnny and the Landgraabs, he can. It’s a weird oversight.
The Caliente mess is even more weird. The family bio says that Don Lothario is in a romantic relationship with Katrina Caliente, the mom, but also is implied that he is into Dina and Nina, Katrina’s young adult daughters. However, Don has no romantic relationship with any of the sisters or the mom. Nor with any other women in the town.
In The Sims 2, Don Lothario had a romantic relationship with four women in town. Cassandra Goth, Dina and Nina Caliente, Kaitlyn Langerak, and it’s implied that he and Bella Goth had something as well as Bella was last seen on the roof of his house looking in a telescope before she was abducted by aliens. But in Sims 4, the dude has got literally no romance with anyone despite what his biography says.
Then there’s Bob and Eliza Pancakes. I feel The Pancakes are an iconic Sims 4 family. I like their little dynamic in the trailers that they are that couple. The one who is always fighting and never gets along. But it’s not reflected in game at all. Their relationship is fairly positive. I was expecting it to be negative, but they never autonomously fight or get irritated with each other. If you’re going to stick references to their unhealthy relationship in the trailers and renders, at LEAST reflect it in the game.
So, those are the five things that I want to see changed in Sims 4 in regards to lore and storylines. In reality a lot of this is wishful thinking and I don’t expect them to do all of this considering they called it a “tiny overhaul.” Tiny and overhaul seems like a bit of oxymoron… Overhaul implies major changes so maybe it will be more than meets the eye. A guy can dream, right?
I don’t want to set unrealistic expectations with this article. Set your hopes low with the Sims team. All I’m expecting is maybe they’ll fix the skin tones of the white-washed Sims and give them Hot and Cold Weather outfits.
But this could open the possibility of more fixing of the Sims lore in the future. I think there is so much potential to make the Sims 4 better so people don’t remember it as the worst Sims game ever. I love playing Sims 4. I have even three times more hours in Sims 4 than Sims 3 at this point. But the story and lore needs some MAJOR work.
