The Sims 5: EA has Teased the Sequel Project Rene

The Sims 5 was only a hopeful wish for a long time, but now it has at least partially come true. EA has teased the sequel to the successful life simulation—and showed the first images as part of the “Behind The Sims Summit” stream.

The Sims 5 is coming: On the evening of October 18th, EA streamed its “Behind The Sims Summit” and gave the fans of the life simulation The Sims a small gift. After less than half an hour, the head of The Sims developer team, Lyndsay Pearson, stepped in front of the camera and made this big announcement about The Sims 5.

Yes, The Sims 5 is indeed in the works, but it’s called something completely different: The Sims Project Rene. As always, with announcements like this, there were all sorts of marketing speak for us to filter out, but there is actually a bit of information left. We’ve summarized everything we could find out about Project Rene for you below.

But unfortunately, one thing is rock-solid: Sims fans will have to wait several years for the sequel.

The Sims Project Rene is supposed to develop the concept further

According to Lyndsay Pearson, The Sims Project Rene will be built on the foundation of “charming Sims, powerful tools, and meaningful stories.” This is what the series of life simulations have always been about, but this should be further developed now.

What EA means by further development: The Sims team leader did not clearly comment on whether The Sims 5—Project Rene—will be a pure multiplayer title. However, her speech sounded mostly as if Project Rene might follow in the footsteps of the social MMO Second Life. Pearson stated thus:

“The future [of The Sims] requires us to align ourselves with what The Sims has always been, while pushing forward with what The Sims thinks and how it behaves, to continue to improve tools for building and customizing, and to explore innovative ways to not only tell stories, but to collaborate on those stories with our closest friends – beyond their favorite platforms.”

First tools were shown: Under the disclaimer that in the following presentation, very early material is used, the first customization tools from The Sims Project Rene were then presented. Here, especially the extended possibilities for the color selection of furniture pieces caught my eye. An RGB radial menu seems to set practically no limits to the creative thought here.

Furthermore, furniture will also be changeable in its appearance. It was demonstrated, for example, that couch seat cushions can be changed, and the spatial position of smaller cushions on them can be adjusted. In addition, it should be easier to share your creations with friends in Project Rene. This seems to be possible directly in the game—including two privacy options in the preview (“Share with everyone”, “Only visible to me”).

Same game, different screens

As a special feature of The Sims Project Rene, Lyndsay Pearson also highlighted that there will only be one version of the multiplatform title. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether you play the title on a PC, console, or cell phone—it will be the same game on every system.

For the future, Pearson promised plenty of Speak Peeks, “behind the scenes” content, and insights into the development results. If the time is right, The Sims Project Rene will be released in Early Access. But as we said, that will still take several years. We will keep you up to date, of course.