Life by You vs. Sims 5 (Rene)? Rod Humble and Paradox's Life Simulation Game
Rod Humble, a former real-life Sims executive and Sims 2 NPC, is reportedly working on a life simulation game since 2018. For context, Paralives started development in the same year. The most publicly...
I have to say I am so excited for this game, I literally could not sleep the night of the announcement after watching the trailer. I had so many ideas and questions!
I will 100% for sure be buying this on early release in September. It's sounds too good to be true!
Now, what I do think is this:
I don't believe this will hurt EA/The Sims very much, simply because of the art style that they're going for.
Simmers have had 9 years of TS4's pixar-ish cartoony looking graphics and that's what they're used to.
So when they saw this trailer, they couldn't get past the visuals of it. Plus, there are a LOT of simmers who don't actually even "play" the gameplay of TS4 and just build and dress up sims. So for those people, this game looks hideous!
So yeah, this game won't appeal to some simmers at all. They are perfectly content having a game that looks pretty and don't care about shallow and boring gameplay just as long as it looks pretty in their screenshots. These same people also complained about Project Renee's initial reveal of the art-style too.
I am NOT one of those people. I need a game that excites me and draws me in and keeps me so engrossed that when I look at the clock it's 2AM already and I have to get up for work in less than 3 hours! That's the kind of game this sounds like it will be. TS4 doesn't (and hasn't ever) done that for me, not ever! I haven't done that sims TS2 and TS3 ..... and I don't expect it to happen with TS5 either.
I just keep thinking about how amazingly customizable it will be and how I will actually finally be able to play out my own stories without having to adapt them because of restrictions imposed by the devs such as:
A bazillion fake buildings in the worlds, forcing me to adapt my lots/worlds to match what the devs decided the world should look like
No ability to edit the worlds
No ability to build apartments by the players
Only 3 trait slots in CAS
No way to save outfits to reuse on other sims
Mismatched color swatches that don't match anything else
No toggle to turn off certain features
TOTAL FREEDOM to create what I want!
NEGATIVES FOR ME (That hopefully will be addressed and improved before the final release.)
#1 Negative: Character Animations - They are janky! Too clunky and robotic and they look like an amateur modder created them. (Which I overlook when it's from a CC creator, but I can NOT accept that from a major Game Dev Team that has a huge budget and can afford to hire professional animators!) Not a deal breaker, but definitely will be something I continuously complain about until they are smoother and more realistic movements. Oddly though the animations of the people riding bikes and riding the skateboard looked amazing!
#2 Negative: Facial Expressions - They were again pretty robotic and lifeless. You could not read their body language and tell what kind of mood they were in. I definitely don't want anything like TS4's overly exaggerated facial expressions, but I do expect to see some emotion on them, especially when they are interacting with other characters!
#3 Negative: Possible Phone Addiction/Appendage Again? I noticed in all of the Character Icons during gameplay that they ALL had a cell phone icon too, that worries me unless we can customize who gets a cell phone and who doesn't. Hoping it also comes with the ability to have landlines for retro type game play.
#4 Negative: The Hairs - Most of what was shown were pretty atrocious (gave me serious TS3 fugggly hair vibes) But again, I'm sure CC creators will be able to help with that (just like they have in all of The Sims games). So, that too is not a deal breaker.
#5 Negative: Scale of Objects - Some of them look odd and weirdly sized, either too big or their scale is too small compared to other objects. For example the stairs are almost literally straight up instead of a realistic incline.
#6 Negative: Lighting - It's either dark in areas or overly bright in areas. But, I'm a mod user so I'm sure someone will create some kind of lighting mod if it doesn't get fixed before release (I also have to use lighting mods for TS4 too) so that's not a deal breaker either.
POSITIVES FOR ME
10 Traits in Create-a-Character!
Ability to set job, actual age, pronouns, sexual preferences, starting funds and vehicle in Create-a-Character!
Place lots anywhere - No Grid Restriction! (This means that if you don't want the "open world" and traveling abilities, you can literally just set up a block of community lots all within walking distance! How amazing is that!)
1/2 Tile Wall Placements! (Although ultimately I would have hoped that we had NO restrictions on wall placement, but I have been wanting at least bare minimum 1/2 tile wall placements since TS1!)
Conversation creator (Imagine playing another player's story in which they created and/or customized all of the conversation choices along with the friendship/relationship gains/hits!)
Event creator (Curious what an "event" is in this game)
Career creator (Endless Possibilities!)
Quest creator (I do enjoy some questing tasks when I can't think of what to do in my current play session. I wonder if we'd be able to set up a quest for "Character A" to do a crime and then set up a custom career for "Character B" to be the police and their tasks for that job would be to "discover" that "Character A" was the suspect of the crime. Or set up characters to cheat on their partners and create a custom career for an investigator to discover their cheatiness and report back to the client that hired them. Could be sooooo fun!)
Recipe creator (How would that work? I mean, the food asset for the "new recipe" would have to look like the "new recipe" or will you be forced to just use the existing food assets? Or maybe this is more for CC creators who make new food meshes).
Skill creator (I'm not a modder, but I would absolutely love to be able to download other people's custom skills!)
Trait creator (Love me some new traits! But, will they actually affect how the character behaves? Are these things that we get to choose how someone with a certain trait will behave?)
Crafting creator (Again, I'm not sure exactly what this is, when I think of crafting I automatically think of the things we can do in The Sims (woodworking, knitting, cross-stitching, sculpting, etc)
Collectible creator (Love this one! You could literally make some kind of treasure map and hide your collectibles all over, maybe give little cryptic clues for the characters to have to follow, or how about a scavenger hunt type collection?
So if Project Renee can give me all this (or better yet ... even more player customization) then I will be buying both! If not, then it will be a wait and see what "ground breaking" features they implement in the newest version.
Discuss The Sims Medieval, classic The Sims titles, and speculate on the future of the franchise, including Project Rene.Latest Activity: 55 minutes ago7,537 Posts
