The Sims 4 Life & Death has learned some important lessons from the rocky launch of My Wedding Stories

The Sims 4 Life & Death expansion pack is due to launch on Halloween, which is all well and good for an add-on that gives playable ghosts their long-awaited overhaul. But while the spooky trappings aren’t inappropriate for a DLC that’s also reintroduced the oft-requested ability to bone the Grim Reaper, I can’t help but feel that it undersells the pack’s most revolutionary feature: for the first time in the franchise, you’ll be able to say goodbye to your dearly departed Sims with a proper funeral.

It’s a far more sensitive and grounded approach to, well, life and death than the other major features of the expansion, but nevertheless, long-time Simmers are understandably a little wary on the subject of event-gatherings of this type. The My Wedding Stories game pack, launched in February 2022, is likely the closest point of comparison Sims 4 players have for funerals, and it’s safe to say that said add-on is notorious for all the wrong reasons – not least of which being that almost three years later, wedding events themselves still only kind-of work as advertised.

Upon reflection, the L&D team identified that the main issue with My Wedding Stories was its attempt to impose a rigid structure on the anarchic free-for-all that happens whenever a group of Sims get together, especially if a lot of them aren’t part of the active household and therefore are completely computer-controlled.

The infamous image of a neighbour in a tuxedo doing push-ups in the aisle as the bridal party attempts to walk down it is surely one that will haunt the My Wedding Stories pack for years – although your mileage may vary as to whether this ruined the big day or was just a hilarious case of Sims-being-Sims.

As a result, funeral events in Life & Death will be more “free-flowing”, according to lead producer Morgan and lead designer Jessica, who helmed a virtual preview of the pack for press last week. This means that funerals will be more like other events present in the game – dates, parties, holidays, etc. – with a series of goals for the player to oversee before the timer runs out, but without the requirement to wrangle every attendee into doing the same thing at the same time that proved so disastrous for My Wedding Stories. There’s also been rigorous testing to ensure that guests adhere to any dress code you choose to set – another frequent sore spot for players tired of seeing NPCs turn up to life-defining moments in questionable attire.

There is a viewpoint, of course, that weddings and funerals are more linear and structured than, say, a house party, and that a certain real-world ceremonial weight is lost by essentially side-stepping the big shared moments at a funeral. But all video games are built around technical constraints, and the mistake at the heart of My Wedding Stories was to overreach that. Life & Death instead seems to be taking the more practical approach of working creatively within those limitations to deliver an experience the players want in a way that is still recognisably (and achievably) Sims-y.

There are other reasons to be optimistic about the launch state of Life & Death. The virtual preview I attended demoed the expansion pack with all other add-on content for The Sims 4 installed, taking the opportunity to demonstrate cross-pack interactivity and stability, factors that have been conspicuously absent from the conversation around some of the game’s prior releases ahead of launch.

With the recent announcement that The Sims 4 will be an ongoing legacy title – and thus won’t, as previously predicted, be stepping aside to make way for a Sims 5 anytime in the foreseeable future – it seems as though EA is looking to rebuild some goodwill from The Sims player base.

The current state of the game is not without its controversies in other areas: right now, a free Halloween event is once again acting as a hot-button both for players who don’t want time-limited content in The Sims, and those who wouldn’t mind if only it could actually be relied upon to work properly. But between the largely well-received romance overhaul in July’s Lovestruck EP and what we’ve seen so far of Life & Death, it seems like the franchise’s linchpin expansion packs might at last be getting back on track.