The Sims 4 turned 10 this week and to celebrate the occasion it's *checks notes* business as usual, apparently. EA published a list of patch notes—longer than usual, thanks to that bug-defeating task force it had announced—and also rolled out a roadmap for the next suite of Sims 4 DLC, appropriately named the season of "To Be Continued". This train don't stop, folks.
Rather than being coy with cute teasers like with the just wrapped Season of Love, the season of To Be Continued is all names and dates forward. Here's what's coming:
- September 19: Storybook Nursery Kit and Artist Studio Kit
- September 24: Reaper’s Rewards Event
- October 3: First reveal of the Life and Death expansion pack
- October 31: Life and Death expansion pack release date
According to the EA blog post, that's the content we're getting for September through December.
The one-two punch of $5 kits coming in a couple weeks is to be expected. We've gotten plenty accustomed to those, like the simultaneous castles and goth outfit kits earlier this year.
The reaper's rewards event is one of the newer types of content drops that began for the first time earlier this year with the Happy At Home event. If this new rewards event works like the prior one, we can expect a handful of free items that you can earn for booting up The Sims 4 a few times per week for several weeks. The Happy At Home rewards were mostly reskins of items that are otherwise only available in expansions which is nice enough. Given that this one seems to be themed to match the upcoming expansion, I wonder if it will reward us with existing items or upcoming ones.
"Speaking of Grim, the fan-favorite hooded figure will make an appearance in the Life and Death Expansion Pack," EA says of the pack itself, calling it "an endless journey through life and beyond."
Honestly, I'm a little surprised that we're getting an entire life and death themed expansion pack. What kind of new neighborhood world is going to come along with that? I would guess, given the release date, that it'll be themed around Día de Muertos. But we did just get the Lovestruck expansion with its Mexico City-inspired world so it would be surprising to see them headed there again. The tarot card theme of the video above is all we're getting for hints. Not to mention what kind of Create-A-Sim styles and outfits we'll get. A suite of headstones? Tons of lacey black dresses? It's pretty abstract, as expansion themes go.
We've got just about a month to wait to find out the details.
In the meantime, though EA didn't really make a big deal out of the 10th anniversary, we did a little reflecting of our own. You can read about the 10 major Sims 4 features I totally forgot it didn't have at launch, Mollie Taylor's opinion on how The Sims 4 is really showing its age, and an overhaul on our list of the best Sims 4 expansions and DLCs (and what price you should wait for them to go on sale for before you buy them).
