Stop kissing the pool boy please, Sally
The latest free update toThe Sims 4will let you “define the conditions under which your Sims become jealous”. That’s handy. The new feature, called “Romantic Boundaries”, will give you some settings to tweak that determine whether a Sim will be bothered when they see their partner flirting with the neighbour, or kissing the neighbour, or getting into bed with the neighbour, or becoming a blur of obscene pixels with the neighb- okay Cindy, stop! I’m not comfortable with this. When I said we could open up I didn’t mean withNigel.
You can make it so Sims will get bothered by “non-physical romance”, such as a stranger complimenting their appearance. Or you can limit jealousy to kick in only when “physical romance” begins, like kissing and holding hands. Or you can switch it all off completely to createthe polyamorous couple of your dreams/nightmares.
By default, any existing Sims in your saved games will all be fiercely jealous monogamous types. But newly created rando-Sims will vary on what they consider cheaty behaviour. Thepatch notes go into more detail, but basically the new options appear in the character creation screen, alongside “Gender” and “Sexual orientation”. The patch also changes some of the language of relationships to be more neutral, with “husband” and “wife” keywords getting replaced with the simple “spouse”, while “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” have become “partner”.
There are other quality of life changes when it comes to relationships. “Previously, the Partners relationship could only be established through gameplay,” say the developers. “Now you can set it within Create a Sim between two Sims in your household.” That’s useful for setting up a couple straight off the bat.
This all comes ahead ofthe paid Lovestruck DLC, which is coming out tomorrow and is due to add a bunch of new dating options for romance-focused Sims. They can use a new dating app, for example. And you’ll be able to set your wee peoples' “turn-ons” and “turn-offs” to help determine exactly how their romantic entanglements shake out. But that’s all the paid stuff - today’s patch is a free update to the basesimulation, basically prepping the ground for the new features the DLC will add.
Alongside the changes, there are a bunch of other fixes and rejigs. As is my custom, here are the ones I found most enjoyable when read out-of-context.
Like I say, the Lovestruck expansion pack isout tomorrow on Steam, and costs £35. Turns out moneycanbuy you love.
