The Sims 4 game packs have been pretty solid lately (once they’ve started working properly). My Wedding Stories let you have the wedding of your dreams, but it was clunky at first.
The most recent one was Werewolves, which finally allowed players to live out their Twilight fantasies now that both vampires and werewolves could be put in the game.
The thing is, they’re just game packs. Small potatoes. New stuff, but nothing big like an expansion pack. That’s where the real meat is.
The last expansion pack for The Sims 4 was back in July of 2021. Cottage Living is an absolutely beautiful expansion that allowed players to live out their cottage-core dreams.
It was an incredibly timely expansion pack, as many were frothing at the mouth at the idea of saying a big Fuck You to the piss-ridden city life, to then live in an idyllic cottage with a lovely little farm. It rocked.
Considering EA has pretty consistently released two expansion packs a year for The Sims 4 since about 2018, it was surprising that Cottage Living was the only one to come out last year. That being said, it was also huge.
But now they’re back! In the wee hours of this morning, EA decided to drop an official reveal trailer for their newest expansion pack, High School Years.
High School Years seems to be doing what fans of The Sims 4 have wanted for a very long time now: create an actual distinction between teens and young adults.
George Pigula, the lead producer of The Sims 4 High School Years, explains the expansion’s new features.
“Sims will learn to juggle school and extracurricular events, form lifelong friends, and experience big moments like prom. They can even develop their own fashion likes & dislikes with the new Trendi app with clothes designed by Depop sellers. High school is an incredibly formative time, and we wanted to give players the chance to create and customize their own, personalized high school experiences before their Sims reach young adulthood.”
In High School Years, you can follow your teen Sim to high school, similarly to how Get To Work allowed you to go to work with your adult sims.
You can attend classes, get to know your teachers, hang out in the cafeteria, and decorate your locker. It’s very much an Americanised high school experience, but fun nonetheless!
If it were an Australian high school experience in Sims 4, you could probably smoke ciggies on the far side of the playground where teachers couldn’t see you, and go to late-night piss-ups in the park.
There’s also the classic prom experience, as well as graduation. On top of that, to really hone in on the teen experience, it looks like new traits and actions have been added to experience the worst part of being a teenager: puberty!
The High School Years expansion also comes with a new collaboration, this time with real-world Depop sellers like Jeremy Salazar and Sha’an D’Antes to finally bring some new teen clothes to the game that aren’t just smaller versions of the adult clothes.
The teen Sims have generally shared quite a lot of traits with adult Sims, making them feel like less of their own age bracket. The High School Years expansion looks like they’re finally doing something about it.
I’ll admit it, I have plenty of things that I did and said in high school that I regret. Stuff that haunts me to this very day. While I have absolutely no plans to relive those days, I’m more than happy to play out an idealised Sims 4 version of high school.
The Sims 4: High School Years expansion pack will be releasing July 28th 2022, and you can pre-order it to get a Vibing Streamer Gear Pack on their website.
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