As PC’s most popular life sim, it’s only natural that The Sims 4 has a lot to say about death. The end of a character’s time on Earth is an important part of the process, whether you’re someone who lives out generations of family growth or a more chaos-driven player looking to intentionally boot your Sims off this mortal coil. Ahead of its next expansion, The Sims 4 Life and Death, a new update changes how Sims interact with and are affected by death – and in an oft-requested change, you’ll finally be able to get intimate with the Grim Reaper themselves.
The Sims 4 patch notes have often been a great source of fantastic sentences to read, and “Sims can WooHoo with the Grim Reaper again” is certainly among those. That’s right, you’ll now be able to do more than simply get close to the Grim Reaper by, well, getting close to them. That’s just one side note of the latest update for the free Steam game, however, which focuses on expanding death-related interactions and the way ghosts work.
To start with, your Sims will now have more unique reactions to deaths depending on the situation, their traits, and their relationship to the departed. Lose a loved one and they’ll of course be distraught, but the sudden passing of a nearby stranger may instead inspire a bout of sickness.
Death, of course, isn’t the end in The Sims 4 – now, when one of your controlled characters dies, you’ll have the choice to make them into either a playable or free-roaming ghost. In this afterlife form, ghosts will now have a fresh set of spectral-specific needs: disposing of ‘goo waste,’ consuming ‘ethereal sustenance,’ or seeking out ‘ethereal bonding,’ for example. You can also create ghosts of any age in Create a Sim, and define how they passed away, with dog, cat, and horse ghosts available if you own the relevant expansions.
When a Sim’s marriage partner dies, they’ll now be considered widowed; a new interaction, however, will allow them to ask their spouse to stay married, reinstating their marriage status beyond traditional limits. EA has also improved the behavior of autonomously controlled ghosts, making it less likely that they’ll break objects and leave puddles of ectoplasm everywhere.
Head over to build mode and you’ll find a new outdoor category called “life event activity” that includes all the accouterments needed for the likes of funerals and weddings. Ten of the most popular formal shoe, boot, and high heel styles have new ‘true black’ color variants, ideal for attending such a gathering.
You’ll also have the option to manually swap between gravestones and urns, and a range of additional themed graves have been introduced for players with certain other content packs for the likes of Vampires, Merfolk, and Werewolves. There’s even a new bonfire pit as a special consideration for the time of year, along with plenty more bug fixes that you can find in the full patch notes courtesy of EA.
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