The Case for The Sims 3½

This post is inspired by SimmerErin's video below:

Yes, title chosen as a reference to The Lion King 1½. With The Sims 5 canceled, fans of the franchise are nervous about the future. The Project Rene side project isn't stirring much optimism, and EA followers are becoming increasingly convinced that the way to go moving forward is to abandon ship and embrace InZoi.

However, there is a way EA can restore hope. And it's been right under their noses the entire time: remaster The Sims 3!

The Big Deal

So what were some of the biggest concerns with The Sims 3?

Outdated graphics

This one is a given. Graphics would obviously need an overhaul.

Clunky UI

The improvements to UI in The Sims 4 served it well. A revitalized Sims 3 could learn a thing or two.

Crash tendencies

Part of this was its 32-bit architecture. Most Sims games can crash easily. Fixing those tendencies would make for a very robust comeback, however.

Tarantula Baby glitch

The aging system in The Sims 3 was not as advanced as that in 4, but was a huge step up from the game-breaking crises that the system in 2 could cause! That being said, Tarantula Baby is probably the least pressing issue. Still, it'd be nice to see it gone forever.

Pudding face

Old Rod Humble was a huge fan of Pudding Face. Not everyone else was. Life By You almost brought it back. Meanwhile, HystericalParoxysm at Mod the Sims made an "Anti-Pudding Mod" to fix the Pudding Face issue. With no more Rod, EA can address Pudding Face once and for all - without having to completely reinvent the wheel on Sims 3.

Hats are hair, rather than accessories

This one should be really easy to fix. Nowhere was this more of an issue than with the Swappernetters character pack for The Sims 3, which had Tabitha Pang having to choose between a non-canonical hat or a non-canonical hairstyle. It was impossible for her to have both hat and hair be canon.

This was not an issue in The Sims 4, though her lack of decent parkour gameplay or open world environment gameplay made Tabitha feel a little pointless in that game. Swappernetters took a lot of cues from the Mirror's Edge series. So in similar fashion, Faith Connors in The Sims 4...feels rather pointless!

32-bit architecture

Being designed to run on the earliest editions of Windows XP really hurt The Sims 3 in the long run. What self-respecting game of its caliber limits itself to only 2 GB of RAM? In today's world, that's INSANITY! The VM page file to support that drove the entire operating system to a creeping snail walk, especially for those with traditional hard drives!

A remaster opportunity like The Sims 3½ would be an excuse to address those problems - for both Windows and Mac users! It's disgraceful that old school Sims 3 got a 64-bit update, but only for Mac!

Lack of tick optimization, especially in Create-A-Sim

Waiting half of forever for the game to load was irritating. Waiting half of forever just to view a catalog of shirts to wear was downright aggravating! While there have been mods to fix the ticking issue, an official repair to this problem by EA would restore the faith of many players.

The Way Forward

By simply repairing these issues, the game could be remastered into something that would please most of the fandom. Add in nuanced animations for things like moving chairs and pizza around, the nice "little things" that added so much charm to The Sims 2, and include some AI updates like in The Sims 4, to make the pool ladder issue a non-issue.

Poof! Fixing these issues, releasing the remastered Sims 3 as The Sims 3½, and allowing those who downloaded the original game to freely update all their DLC that they've already purchased, would create a very robust open world game that could address most if not all of the issues that players had with classic Sims 3 - while also keeping the game relevant in an era where Rod Humble's Life By You went bust, and where The Sims 4 has lost all sense of direction.

The way forward, is to go back. As an added bonus, moveobjects on in The Sims 3's engine works on Sims themselves, whereas bb.moveobjects does not work on Sims themselves in The Sims 4.

Visualizing The Sims 3½

This demo won't attempt, as the InZoi set did, to recreate 90% of the entire character stock catalog of the Dozerfleet Megaverse. Instead, this small sampling pool shows what should be possible.

This is a picture of a custom Greenlandic world, used for a different demo.

And this is a similar world, approximately how it could look in a remaster, courtesy of Krea AI. Still not as photorealistic as InZoi, but a huge improvement over The Sims 4 - and quite obviously a step up in quality from standard Sims 3!

This is Anarteq, patrolling the waters near Iqaluit. Pretty peaceful, right? But what if the game were remastered?

The soul of the moment is still mostly intact, but that's a considerable bump in quality!

As the current Anarteq, Isitoq Sundue's committment to be a defender of the north is like the US Marines: fighting battles by air, land, or sea! (Ironic, since he's Canadian.) While he's weakest at air battles, he clearly needs to pay attention to what's happening on land. He can't do his job well by ONLY focusing on what's underwater. To assist him sometimes is his cousin Jissika, codenamed "Nemara" during underwater missions.

In this scene, Jissika is going for a jog in the woods, possibly somewhere not far from North Bay.

And now, she can do it in style!

For reference, this is Jissika without a game style training filter.

But that's enough about Anarteq for now. Let's get really crazy, and see what else this remaster could do!

This is George Mirafuentes, from the canceled Q-Basic Gorillas webcomic.

Looking fine, Ole Chap!

Qilantan Gorilloids themselves were the second-hardest thing to make particuarly well in that entire thing, second perhaps only to their ancient enemies, the Ice Chimps. This look for Col. Flix was barely adequate.

The AI's failure to understand what a guan dao is notwithstanding, THIS is a Col. Flix!

Topaz Division's big muscle, Burrpatch, was in a similar predicament.

NOW the Ice Chimps have an adversary to fear!

These samples can be downloaded as PDF files. The Anarteq demo is here, while the Q-Basic Gorillas demo is here.