The Sims 4 Life and Death is shaping up to be one of the biggest expansion packs for the ongoing game yet, with ample new features to explore. For those who love witchy, gothic vibes, there’ll likely be plenty to dive into – and for everyone else, it might be time to get chill with depictions of death.
During a recent livestream, EA and Maxis dived deep into the next chapter for The Sims 4, revealing everything players need to know about upcoming features, including funerals, “living” as a ghost, penning a will, creating a bucket list, and moving on to the other side.
Here’s all the major new features detailed for The Sims 4‘s Life and Death Expansion Pack.
Table of Contents
Your Sims can create a bucket list
The Sims 4 Life and Death seeks to make the lives of your Sims more meaningful. To that end, they’ll now have more goal-oriented lives, with a bucket list determining what they want to get out of their time on Earth. There are over 100 unique bucket list goals to discover with Life and Death, and each Sim will obtain a certain number of these, as related to their personal wants and traits.
Bucket list goals are discovered organically as you play the game, but you can also choose your Sim’s goals by manually selecting the option to write them down via a journal or computer. If you complete specific criteria in gameplay, a “Perfect Goal” can be selected for your Sim, but there will also be more general bucket list goal categories to choose from.
Should a Sim complete every goal on their bucket list, they will complete their Soul’s Journey, to have a fulfilled life. Should they transition to becoming a ghost, they can also complete additional goals to gain a special trait on “rebirth.”
Your Sims can become ghosts
In The Sims 4 Life and Death, you have three options when you die. You can become a playable ghost, a freeroaming ghost, or you can experience “rebirth.” Playable ghosts are a new occult type in this expansion pack, and they have their own special abilities and needs. Playable ghosts can gain abilities like a “transcendant” WooHoo with ghosts or living humans. There’s good, neutral, and evil abilities to unlock, and you’ll earn points to unlock them by interacting with the living world.
A freeroaming ghost is much like the ghosts in the base game, so there’s no real surprises there. As for rebirth, that allows you to resurrect your Sim in the body of another. You can choose rebirth on death, or by swimming in the Baleful Bog (living Sims can also swim in this bog to get a temporary taste of life as a ghost). On rebirth, you will select a new family, and be reborn as a new family member of any age. Certain Sim traits will be retained in this transition, based on how fulfilled your Sims’ life was.
Read: The best Sims 4 expansion packs for beginners
You can host funerals and create wills
Another major feature in The Sims 4 Life and Death is the ability to hold funerals for your Sims. When a Sim dies, they will leave behind a Will which stipulates any items (heirlooms) a Sim may inherit, and it also reveals which funeral activities the deceased Sim has requested.
Once a will has been read and Sims have reacted (whether negatively or positively), you can hold a funeral. This is a special event where certain activities take place, including eulogising, lighting candles, and mourning. The mood is more like a wake, so it’s meant to be a celebration of life in all its many forms.
You can select which urn your loved ones will be housed in during their funeral, and work to ensure their farewell is exactly what they want it to be.
Ravenwood is a perfect backdrop for cool, gothic Sims
Ravenwood is the new town introduced in The Sims 4 Life and Death, and it looks absolutely wonderful – particularly if you love gothic architecture and spooky sights. The land is split into two portions: a living side, and a dead side, with a gloomy river/lake between them.
On either side, you’ll find an array of lots – including five free lots, populated houses, a bar, and a club. There is also a cemetery populated by an evil little girl ghost named Edith, and another roaming ghost who’ll sell you mysterious items and/or souls. As you explore these lots, you’ll uncover a range of activities, including frequent festivals, and special attractions like haunted houses and magical wells.
Here’s the town’s description, for a bit of flavour:
“Things always get a little spooky in Ravenwood. The Whispering Glen with its nightly Moon Revelry festivities is perhaps the most ‘normal’ part of the area, where locals have settled down for a slice of quiet, country life. Crow’s Crossing village, however, is clearly quite haunted – swings swaying by themselves, that Merchant fellow down by the Crypt, scary little Edith guarding the Well of Longing and Regret… but despite the hauntings, the living have certainly made it their home as well, with a variety of festivals and places to explore. Mourningvale is where things get extra ethereal! It’s well known as a home for Ghosts and those seeking them. Sometimes Grim even stops by!”
As described by EA and Maxis, Ravenwood is inspired by the Romanian countryside.
New Grim Reaper and Undertaker careers will take you on a wild journey
There are two new careers included with The Sims 4 Life and Death Expansion Pack: the Undertaker career, and the Grim Reaper career. The Undertaker career lets you be a mortician or funeral director, but it does send your Sim to a rabbit hole.
The Grim Reaper career is a full-blown career path where you will head to the Grim Reaper’s HeadlessQuarters, a dedicated spooky building set on the top of a haunted mountain. In your role as a Grim Reaper, you’ll need to perform various activities (researching, sharpening your scythe, scrying) and then head to select locations to reap souls.
Depending on the kind of reaping, you will need to act a certain way – sympathetic, nice, stern, etc. – and perform the ritual to move souls on. Like other jobs, this is a goal-oriented process, so you’ll need to hit certain tasks to successfully do your job. Each day on the job should be a bit different, with an array of reapings assigned.
In our preview, the EA and Maxis spokespeople described this career path as being inspired by Dead Like Me, the short-lived but much-loved drama about Grim Reapers, created by Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies, Hannibal).
Olive Specter and Nervous Subject are back, in new form
As speculated by players, Oliver Specter is the young woman featured on the box art for Life and Death. She appears in this game in younger form, as a resident of Ravenwood. Her son, Nervous Subject, also appears in the game – although he’s been renamed as “Nyon Specter.”
This is likely to differentiate the character from his counterpart in The Sims 2, and possibly to give him more agency over his own fate. Nyon and Nervous do appear to be the same character, and share very similar traits.
The Sims 4 Life and Death lets you have kids with the Grim Reaper
It’s very important to note everyone will be able to WooHoo with the Grim Reaper when Life and Death launches. You won’t need to purchase the expansion pack to perform this act – as long as you only want to do the deed.
If you want to have kids with the Grim Reaper, you will need to have Life and Death. This expansion pack introduces the “Try for Baby” option for this NPC, allowing you to have special Grim Reaper babies, who will arrive with a scythe birthmark on their neck, and a unique trait that allows them to live longer.
There’s new CAS and build/buy items (of course)
As with all expansion packs, The Sims 4 Life and Death introduces an array of new options for Create-A-Sim and Build/Buy mode. For a quick CAS rundown, you can expect: a handful of new hairs, including a split-dye option for men, darker makeup options, longer dresses for women, and Victorian-era clothing for men and women of all ages. Toddlers will also have a very fun bird-themed costume, inspired by the game’s new Crow critters.
For build/buy mode, there’s new wallpapers, floor tiles that are “broken” and see-through, new caskets, new beds, new artwork inspired by tarot cards, flower decorations for walls, a fortune teller’s hut (career reward), tarot cards, new swing sets, and new rugs. There’s also a new purchasable critter in the Crow, which also comes with its own special death type: Death by Murder of Crows.
The Sims 4 Life and Death Expansion Pack launches for PC and consoles on 31 October 2024. Stay tuned for more on the upcoming pack.
