The Sims 4’s season of “To be continued” is, indeed, continuing with a reveal trailer for the upcoming Life and Death expansion pack. The pack seems less about life and death than it does death and life after death, with a focus on funerals, bucket lists, the grim reaper, and lots of post-life options.
As usual, the accompanying Life and Death blog post doesn’t give absolutely everything away, but there’s a pretty complete feature overview in there. There’s a new world called Ravenwood with three of its own neighborhoods, for starters. Sims will be able to create a bucket list of goals and, based on how many they complete, get reborn or stick around as a ghost with unfinished business. They can also plan for death by creating a will, naming inheritors of their heirlooms and guardians for their dependents. They can host a customizable “grieving ritual” event as well. Meanwhile, those still living can take on jobs as the Grim Reaper’s assistant or as an undertaker.
There’s also a lot of new gameplay for ghosts, it seems. “Linger on as a Ghost and spend your afterlife helping or terrorizing the living,” EA says. “Ghosts will grow in their abilities as they do everything from assisting with household chores to levitating living Sims and hanging them upside down (fun AND profitable – they may drop Simoleons!).”
It almost sounds like ghosts are becoming their own occult sim category. I’m still betting that could mean we’ll be able to make ghost sims from scratch in Create A Sim, but the reveal post doesn’t exactly say that and instead says that “As Sims adjust to their playable Ghost Sims form, they can customize their looks in CAS.”
The number one worry I’m seeing from other players right now is around funeral events. Nobody’s forgotten the buggy mess that weddings became after the My Wedding Stories pack, so it’s fair to be wary about what Life and Death will do to this totally different life milestone.
I will say that trailer sure did almost make me emotional, which I’ll chalk up to the music choice. That track is “Nothing Matters” by The Last Dinner Party, if you were curious.
We should be able to expect Maxis to do a livestream demonstrating everything else in the expansion sometime later this month as per usual. Life and Death launches on October 31.
