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I enjoy The Sims most when it’s ruining my day with random events and today The Sims 4 is bringing back one of the greats: the burglar. After a not-so-sneaky teaser this week The Sims 4 has dropped a base game update which, among a list of bug fixes, also adds a unique new thief to snatch your family’s stuff. It is great to see the old gag make it back to the series, especially after I’ve had such a good time getting burgled in The Sims 3 recently.
The burglar was a series staple for The Sims until The Sims 4, where they’ve always been tragically absent. Back in the day, a horror movie-esque violin wail would signal danger approaching the house—sometimes just a raccoon coming for your trash but sometimes a wrong’un to steal away those hard-bought possessions.
“The infamous Robin Banks (yep, that’s her name—we couldn’t resist) only strikes at night, sneaking into your Sim’s home while everyone is fast asleep (or even if they are awake!),” EA explains in its dev diary for the update.
Along with the burglar herself, The Sims 4 is bringing back burglar alarms to put in your homes as just one of many ways to foil an attempted robbery. Police NPCs are returning too as the default responders to alarms or calls to report the burglary.
Interestingly, there’s a lot of interaction with current DLCs too, from dogs being able to chase off burglars to werewolves scaring them away or spellcasters enchanting them into leaving. There’s even a new lot challenge called “Heist Havoc” that makes burglaries more common on a designated property.
“In total, we’ve included over 50 unique reactions across the base game and 17 different packs, along with 37 player-directed interactions,” EA says, which does really seem like a lot.
I’d felt like the burglar was an odd choice for a base game update ahead of the Businesses & Hobbies expansion in that they don’t feel all that related to each other, but at a meta level both have a pretty clear focus on increasing interactions between expansions and the base game, which is refreshing to see.
In other Robin Banks FAQs:
- Yes you can befriend her (but can you woohoo?)
- Yes she can die but a new burglar will fill her shoes
- She can steal Buy Mode objects but can’t swipe most Build Mode features
My complaint with Live Mode in The Sims 4 lately has been how, compared with other parts of the series, it so often asks the player permission to make anything interesting happen. I’m just hoping that the return of the burglar means I’ll actually have to deal with the consequences instead of seeing a popup on screen that lets me veto the event. Based on what’s been laid out in the announcement post, it sure does sound like this is the kind of ‘deal with it’ random event chaos I’ve been hoping to get more of.
The burglar (and police and burglar alarms and so on) are all coming to The Sims 4 base game in a free update that goes live today, so go on and start installing those home security systems now.
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Kurt Indovina
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