The Sims 2’s Preset Storylines are What Made it Magic

Would you believe me if I said that my favorite part about playing Sims was the preloaded characters already in the game? When I first started playing The Sims 2 as a child, I was drawn in by the immediate notice on the screen that a character named Bella Goth had gone missing. I needed to know who she was and who these other characters in the game were, and how they related to her disappearance. What do you mean there were mysterious sightings of Bella in Strangetown? Why was there a town dedicated to Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”? I’ve recently been getting back into my love for the Sims franchise, and I’ve noticed that there is less of a delivery of lore within the game. Sure, there are pre-made characters to play as in The Sims 4 with small snippets of story in the corner, but nothing feels as interesting or compelling as The Sims 2. Spoiler alert: this is not a lore lesson on Bella Goth, that still goes way over my head (but I will link a youtube video explaining her disappearance in the later paragraphs)

The Sims is a lifestyle interactive game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts, where you create a sim, build a household, and control their day-to-day lives. The appeal of these games to most people, I would assume, is to create your character and live a fun lifestyle without the consequences of real-life actions. This exact reason is why I would make my character have a husband and kids, and when they went to work I would WooHoo with the maid (I was problematic at 12 years old I guess).  But what really intrigued me was the story in the background of the game.

In The Sims 2, we were greeted off the bat with drama. When you load into one of the three neighborhoods, the screen would immediately fill you in on the gossip of the town. The sims here were not just placeholders or people for you to interact with for leveling up your own charisma skills, but they had their own missions and goals. In Pleasantview, you were introduced to the mysterious disappearance of the aforementioned Bella Goth, the beautiful bride of the loaded Mortimor Goth. You also find out that the Caliente sisters moved in just around the same time as Bella’s disappearance, and one of the sisters, Dina, is currently having an affair with Mortimor. At the same time, in-game, Mortimer is an elder with only 7 days left to live. Things adding up for you now? In the tangle of all these characters is the womanizer, Don Lothario, who is currently engaged to Bella’s daughter, while sleeping with his maid, and BOTH Caliente sisters (none of these people are aware of his infidelities).

If that wasn’t soap opera enough for you, we also have the town of Veronaville, with the Capps and the Montys teen romance, family feud. Not only is the neighborhood based on Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” but there are also some other characters from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” that are playable. The third town within the base game is Strangetown, where there are alien abductions and strange sightings of Bella Goth (which are very rare to trigger in-game). There is a storyline here of three brothers, one of whom is abducted by aliens and comes back pregnant with an alien baby.

The Sims 2 is not only known for its in-game lore, but it’s part of the story you play. You have the option to do your own thing with your Sim, but if you encounter these people and stories it’s easy to become wrapped up in them. What was most compelling to me as a player was to be able to play as the premade household of Don Lothario and be immediately wrapped up in the drama of his affairs. Seeing how my choices on these characters that the developers wrote would affect the game was always really fun. I can’t tell you the number of times I would start a new game as one of these households and then not save my file after hours of a playthrough because as a 12-year-old, I thought my choices would ruin the game! Currently, I have not found a household that I really want to play in The Sims 4, and that kind of bums me out. I know that they exist and there are small bits of stories surrounding them, but without having them as the center of the game, they feel truly irrelevant to my playthrough.

Creating your own content and living in a world that you’ve created is the appeal to most people, but having the background story matter changes the gameplay, in my opinion. I think this is where The Sims 4 is lacking, and as much as I enjoy the game and the downloadable content, where is the drama? What The Sims 4 is doing with the series is nothing far off from the improvements they made in The Sims 3, for example, adding new content as DLC in packs for players to have new places to explore. There has always been DLC with the Sims franchise, but the third installment really changed the game in terms of content. The timeline of The Sims 3 takes place before the events of 2, so you can play as Bella Goth as a child, but to me, it only felt like an easter egg instead of core content like the previous installation.

My gripe with The Sims 4 is that the story falls on you, as a player. I might be alone in this opinion, but the series is great when there is lore and mystery happening that you can interact with. Sure, there are preloaded households and characters with some skill sets ready to play on each map, but the game doesn’t feel like it’s intertwined with those stories as much as it used to be. Right now, The Sims 4 is in the best place for simmers who enjoy building and creating storylines. With 12 expansion packs, 10 game packs, 18 stuff packs, and 4 kits, players can spend an endless amount of time in the game creating their own stories the way they want to. I’m currently living my cottage-core fantasy with the newest Cottage Living expansion, making my sim lactose intolerant, giving her chickens to raise, and making her bake her own bread in her off-the-grid house. I also have my Suga from BTS-inspired sim who just graduated university with all A’s so that he can excel in the music industry and grow his fame. I’m having too much fun while putting in a ton of hours into The Sims 4, don’t get me wrong, but I do really miss the mystery of it all.

Maybe it is a nostalgia factor, or maybe it was being a pre-teen and feeling intertwined in this messy world, but The Sims 2 was the best installment for the stories it told alone. I would like to load into a new world in the 4th installment and be greeted by a screen with all of the neighborhood tea. I want to know each character and why they are important to the town without it feeling like a minor subplot. Also, if you’re like me and are enamored with Bella Goth and want to know what really happened, you should do a deep dive on YouTube where simmers have broken the code and found out the truth of the mystery.