The Latest Sims 4 Update Is Surprisingly Grim and Yet Lifelike

Have you ever felt like your character is the only living one in The Sims 4? The update named Neighborhood Stories makes the NPC act like they are living persons, not functions. But this enables them to face the consequences of the lives they live, and these consequences may get them to the grave.

Neighborhood Stories is the free update for The Sims 4 that Maxis rolled out on March 15. This update enables your neighbors to have more personalized lives. Did you complain that they seem frozen in time? Okay, now they will act like persons whose lives revolve around themselves, not around you. More than that, sometimes they can even call your character and ask for advice in a complicated situation!

What can happen to your AI-controlled neighbors in their lives? It’s up to you, again. The list of events for you to enable or disable includes getting pregnant, adopting the young ones, cats, or dogs, joining and leaving new careers, changing their locations, and also dying in various accidents. Their death will not be quite random, though: the dispatches of your neighbors will reflect their age, habits, and careers. This can act as a warning for your Sim’s behavior.

Each of these features, or even all of them, can be enabled or disabled in the settings. To control your neighbors’ lives, you need to go to the “Manage Households” panel. You can independently configure your households and other households. More than that, various households can have their own configurations.

Last but not least: you can keep track even of the households and characters you never meet in person! Check your mail for that. But visiting them is a better way to keep an eye on events.

If you play The Sims 4, will you use this feature to make your city more alive? Can fictional stories of virtual characters be really exciting? The developers say they can. What do you think? Drop a comment to let us know!