Simmers love to take the worlds that Electronic Arts has given them and remake them in their own image, sometimes rebuilding all the lots in a given world and replacing all the Sims in it. One went as far as to turn the game’s version of San Francisco into a cyberpunk dystopia, with a storyline to match.
San Myshuno is by far my favourite world in The Sims 4. I make all my Sims visit there more than any other place in the game. Its neighbourhoods, with lots of public spaces to chill and meet other Sims, makes it feel more alive than the others.
Stefan Gagne, director of the visual novel Arcade Spirits, took the vibrancy of San Myshuno and twisted it into neon-soaked cyberpunk.
In this version of San Myshuno, the town is run by OmniCorp, an evil omnipresent corporation that has effectively eliminated the middle class. The rich are very rich indeed and the poor live in a shantytown. Clearly that’s a horrible thing that would never happen in real life, and definitely not in San Francisco. OmniCorp harbours a dark secret, though — it’s run by vampires!
What I really like about this build is that it has all the charm of the lore that’s actually in The Sims, full of lighthearted references to other media, such as the Twin Peaks-y office of OmniCorp’s CEO:
Gagne isn’t afraid to go goofier, with references to Scooby Doo. That’s right — one of the lots that Gagne added to this build is literally Mystery Incorporated, with Sims of Velma, Shaggy and the gang to investigate OmniCorp.
What’s cool about this build is how fully realised it is. The Arts District was once home to a hoity-toity museum, but in Gagne’s version of San Myshuno, it’s been razed by OmniCorp and the community that moved in has tried to remake it into a functioning little society.
It’s a place that looks lived-in, even if it’s dilapidated, and that’s what’s always interested me about cyberpunk as a genre. It’s a crappy place to live, but people have to make a home somewhere, and this is an exploration of what that might look like, vampires and all.
Gagne has submitted this build to Mod The Sims, where it will eventually be available for download, and has also provided a list of mods he used for this build. I can’t wait to download it and check it out, at least to have my Sims hang out in this run-down version of San Myshuno’s once-prestigious museum.
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