Neighborhood Stories

Hi all!

I'm a huge fan of this franchise for a long while, and I quite love The Sims 4. But for a while now I'm trying to understand why it didn't click with me like The Sims 2 did. So I came back to The Sims 2 to give it an honest look and see if it was just nostalgia speaking.

TL;DR: I think The Sims should bring back those neighborhood stories we have when we first enter a neighborhood in The Sims 2. It gives us a sense of where we're coming to with our Sims. Would I like to make Cassandra Goth fall in love with one of the Caliente sisters and Don Lotario end up alone? What's about the family feud in Veronaville? What is happening in Strangetown?!?!? You're compelled to make your Sims engage with this environment, which actually makes it more alive than anything else in The Sims 4 and even more than the open-world of The Sims 3, in my book.

Here's the long version of this feedback:

I actually enjoy The Sims 4 a lot. I think it's a return to form after The Sims 3. Sims are more expressive, there's more humor and fun. I love the drag-and-drop CAS and The Gallery, features that feel like coming from Spore's Creature Creator and Sporepedia. I like how it scales well with expansion packs and the reversal of open-world doesn't bother me a lot. Actually, this was the start of my search to understand what's missing. Since The Sims 2 doesn't have open world, why do I remember how lived in was its neighborhoods?

Well, The Sims 2 gives us an overview of that neighborhood before we can play it, and it actually allows us to engage with that story directly: we can choose to play as the characters we just read about, and "yes and" those stories. If we choose to start with a new Sim, if they cross our paths in the game is meaningful: if I start a relationship with the Goths, for example, how it will ripple into other families?

Much of this is just by design. The Sims 2 is a huge evolution from the first game visually, but what actually feel like what the devs were trying to do was the idea of a legacy. By giving neighborhoods stories, the legacy of our Sims would have context, it would not be in a vacuum. Which is, to me, the fatal flaw of The Sims 4. Since we usually start with a new Sim, when we choose a neighborhood and the Sims start to visit us we actually don't know anything. Do some of them like each other? What's the history of the neighborhood my Sim is in? It doesn't makes us care about what will be our Sims effects in that place.

Maybe that's a dev choice as well, since The Sims 4 seems to be more a creativity tool than a game, but some of us Simmers play it because we love the game, and giving meaning to our actions and to Sims reactions are engaging. I miss that particular aspect from The Sims 2. I hope The Sims 4, or maybe Project Rene, bring it back eventually.