The Sims 4has 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 Simsstill has a lot of room for improvement.Project Reneneeds to learn fromThe 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 thatProject Renecould improve onThe Sims 4’s character creator is representing body types.The Sims 4has 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 Reneneeds to introduce more body types that reflect other gender identities, and remove the categorization of clothing completely.
Improvements Project Rene Can Make to Create-a-Sim
This can include different types of hair, skin tones, and mobility aids.The Sims 4has 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 isProject Rene, which needs to include all of these additions, but it could do better by expanding its range of body types.
The Sims 4only 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 likeBaldur’s Gate 3have 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. AsProject Renewill be a life sim, it needs to include customization options that outshine RPGs.
Project Rene Could Better Represent Body Diversity
Project Reneneeds to have a Create-a-Simthat 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 inThe Sims 4is 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 thatfeminine-framed Sims get a disproportionate amount of clothingand hairstyles compared to masculine-framed Sims. This has been a frequent complaint sinceThe Sims 4launched, 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 modernizeProject Rene.
