The Sims 4 has updated its character creator over the years to represent the diversity of people that exist in the world. While its updates have improved diversity by adding a better range of skin tones, hairstyles, pronouns, and different sexual orientations, The Sims still has a lot of room for improvement. Project Rene needs to learn from The Sims 4's pitfalls and include a character creator that reflects the diversity of people seen in real life, with the options to create diverse Sims present from launch.
One of the areas that Project Rene could improve on The Sims 4's character creator is representing body types. The Sims 4 has two body frames, masculine and feminine, which exist alongside sliders. Clothing, hairstyles, and accessories are also separated into these categories and, while they can be used on the other frames, the clothing often doesn't look natural as it's been designed for the other frame. While the sliders allow players some freedom, Project Rene needs to introduce more body types that reflect other gender identities, and remove the categorization of clothing completely.
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Improvements Project Rene Can Make to Create-a-Sim
This can include different types of hair, skin tones, and mobility aids. The Sims 4 has improved thanks to feedback and grassroots effort from its community, and has added more skin tones, hair, hearing aids, and insulin monitors to better represent life. The next big project in the franchise is Project Rene, which needs to include all of these additions, but it could do better by expanding its range of body types.
The Sims 4 only has masculine and feminine frames, which mostly affects how clothing fits on a character model. Sims can have custom and nonbinary pronouns, and there are other options that players can use to define a Sim's gender, but splitting body types into a binary is incredibly limiting and doesn't represent the full range of bodies and genders that exist. Games like Baldur's Gate 3 have multiple body types. While those were also limited, including more body types that aren't limited by masculine or feminine characteristics in video games has become more common. As Project Rene will be a life sim, it needs to include customization options that outshine RPGs.
Project Rene Could Better Represent Body Diversity
Project Rene needs to have a Create-a-Sim that goes beyond body sliders. Instead, there should be multiple body types to choose from as a base, rather than giving players just two options. Another problem with the masculine and feminine frames is how clothing fits on Sim models. Clothing in The Sims 4 is categorized as masculine and feminine and, while this categorization can be turned off as a filter, clothing does not fit properly on the character model if it was originally designed for the other body type.
Aside from creating an unnecessary limitation, categorizing body types and clothing like this means that feminine-framed Sims get a disproportionate amount of clothing and hairstyles compared to masculine-framed Sims. This has been a frequent complaint since The Sims 4 launched, as content packs and updates regularly include far more content for feminine frames. Removing the binary would mean everyone gets more options. While this would potentially mean more work to ensure that clothing looks good on different body models, it's a move that will modernize Project Rene.
The Sims 4
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 70 /100 Critics Rec: 26%
- Released
- September 2, 2014
- ESRB
- T for Teen: Crude Humor, Sexual Themes, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Maxis
- Publisher(s)
- Electronic Arts
- Engine
- Proprietary Engine
- Cross-Platform Play
- Xbox, PlayStation, and computer versions of Sims 4 are all separate games incompatible with each other
- Cross Save
- no
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Simulation
