Asking for more adult themes in a life or social simulator or even a "storytelling game" is not asking for blood, sex and violence. It's merely asking for maturity, and a higher level of realism and relatability.
The Sims in 4 are never challenged. They don't have to overcome any challenges to succeed, they just...succeed. This is one of the things that makes them unrelatable and when the game is unrelatable, it's not as fun or interesting.
Sims also don't carry anxiety or fear or have nervous breakdowns when their life desires aren't being met, they don't hold grudges against wrongdoings, they don't react to stressful events with anything more than a moodlet buff that wears out quickly or gets overrun with one of the gazillion happy buffs.
I mean, seriously. They don't have a fear emotion at all. That, in itself, is a travesty.
They don't fail. How can this game ever claim to be a successor to its previous iterations when Sims can never go wrong? Yeah, there are little hiccups of small and insignificant failures, but there are no consequences to be carried as a result. So even those rare and tiny failures hardly matter.
Maxis has been pushing and promoting this game as a way for players to tell our stories, whether fictional or from our own life experiences. Well, what if those stories are meant to be full of hardship? What if those stories need obstacles? What of the tales about overcoming fears and anxieties and getting through stressors to come out stronger in the end? And what about the personal struggles of getting knocked down, of facing failure, and then finding a new path to accomplishment? Why can't we tell those stories without Sims constantly grinning from ear to ear and skipping off to the nearest electronic device?
And the thing is, these things can be done in a way that's humorous, that makes us smile and recognize these circumstances and become more invested in our Sims because now we understand them, now they make sense. We all go through hardships and stress and anxiety. We all fail once in a while, we all fear something, and it's those things that unify us because we can acknowledge it and empathize with it.
The older games had this magic. They had the ability to make us really relate and empathize with our Sims and laugh about the dark side of life. In a way, it was therapeutic to see the simplicity and commonality of life problems manifest in this little digital world of people, and have the power to either direct them through it or revel in it. That, to me, is a true safe space. A place where each player can decide for themselves how they want to work through these obstacles, or even avoid them altogether. The choices were ours.
Now, unfortunately, those choices have been made for us. I would most definitely like to have them back.
