Listen, I know The Sims 4 is meant to be a sim. It’s right there in the name, after all. You can mold little virtual people to be as close or as far away from your real-life self as you want: Change their pronouns, romantic boundaries, walking style, life aspirations, likes, dislikes, the whole shebang really. The one thing I didn’t quite expect to be customizable, though, is the way my Sims mourn someone.
That’s changing with an upcoming base game update, which should be landing alongside new expansion Life and Death on October 31. According to the patch notes, Sims will now “react uniquely to others’ deaths based on traits and relationships.” So, uh, what exactly does that entail? Apparently, it can range from “sobbing for a loved one’s passing to retching at a stranger’s death.”
Now, I don’t know if I would personally start retching if I saw someone I didn’t know had died. Out of like, the horror of seeing a dead body, sure. I might get a little bit sick over that. But why does this give me the impression that the whole stranger-retching is more out of disgust than anything else? Hey, I could be totally wrong, of course, but I’m looking forward to seeing other ways in which Sims will handle their bereavement.
It’s not the only death-themed addition coming to the base game. Ghosts can now be whipped up in Create-A-Sim, and when previously-living Sims finally kick the bucket, they can wander around as a freeroaming ghost (which has been the only option up until now) or become playable spirits. Ghosts will also have new names for their needs, like bladder becoming the rather unappetising “Goo Waste” while energy becomes “Otherworldly Slumber”.
Above all though, the most important bullet point on this list of patch notes is simply: “Sims can WooHoo with the Grim Reaper again.” First of all, I’m sorry, again? My Sims lore knowledge must be a little rusty, because I definitely don’t remember being that a thing that was possible across any Sims game without doing a little tweaking or throwing in a mod. Either way, you’ll be able to get down and dirty with Death himself in the new update, no mods, household fandangling or Ctrl+Shift+C needed.
