Granted, CC is going to be able to change a lot of things (texture replacements and so forth), but how do you feel about the more cartoony, stylized look that we're getting for TS4? Is it a step forward? A step back? Thoughts?

Personally, I quite like it. I have never been much for ultra-realism for my sims, so the brighter colours and more stylized appearance looks great to me. I'm not so much a fan of the default hair textures, and like many I am lamenting the loss of CASt, but overall I think the visuals look pretty good.

I really like the look! I've always been a bigger fan of stylized looks and I remember seeing the concept art livestream a while back and I really felt attached to it then, favoring a more comic inspired look. Even though in some shots the Sims look a bit, ahem, Sims Freeplay and Sims phone games, it's still a style that I've embraced.

Especially since The Sims 3 was just a goopy mess of same face and bizarrely dead and bulging eyes. The Sims has always benefited from being pretty wacky and the stylized look really helps bring that wacky spirit back. And I can tell the difference between Sims again, WHAT A TWIST.

The hair textures are pretty lame though, as much as I love the painterly looks, it doesn't work for moving characters. And yeah, I'm REALLY gonna miss CASt, at least they;re giving a paltry substitute with color choices for clothing, but CASt at least helped flesh out Sim styles.

In graphical side they made huge step back. Sims4 look like game for facebook.New sims have pretty faces but overall look is horrible, in my opinion.And I don't think that CC can help much this time, cuz okay we will be able to improve sims look,but how about all environment: trees,sky,plants,objects?
The game looks too childish and too cartony. So I better keep my money until sims5 ( hope it will be better).

I think the style is perfect. It's colorful, vibrant, and I think fits the franchise better than a realistic look. I'd say it's a step forward from sims 3 for sure. Especially the environment. It's so detailed and the plants are finally 3D models again that move more naturally.

Texture wise, i'm in the minority. I like simple textures that are hd but not detailed/photorealistc. Like the grass. In 3 it was a picture of grass painted on the ground. Without 3d grass blades all over the place, it just looks extra flat and grainy. I much prefer the look of the grass texture in 4.

When the game actually comes out, i'll be able to do full comparisons, but as of now, i';d say, visually, that 4 is the best looking, followed closely by 2.

I like both. I'm curious to see how the sims will look like with CC though.

I like it. I think it's all very pretty.

My sentiments exactly. I mean, the game is likely going to be rated "T" in ESRB territories, so why make it look like an "EC" game? Makes no sense. The clay-like hair, flat skin textures? I'd hazard a guess that E.A., continuing their laziness motif from TS3, just decided to half-arse the visuals and try and pass it off as a unique "look". I mean, the game looks like it came out in 2003, for crying out loud. Although, I might wager that a 2003 game would look much better.

The aesthetic has grown on me slightly - it's certainly distinctive, and going in a different direction than most games nowadays. But the lack of alpha hair - and the fact that it is going to be very hard to use CC to take the game in an ultra-realistic direction the way we have with TS2/TS3 - means I am not real keen on the style. I think EA's trying to differentiate the style from a lot of the other games out nowadays, which have gone for every pore visible ultra-realistic... And it certainly makes life easier for their texture artists, who can just slap a gradient on an object and call it done. But it's not a style that will inspire me to make new stuff to match it, which makes me sad.

Nothing wrong with cartoony... but Sims 4 looks terrible in general :/ Muddy textures, low poly objects, basic lighting, nausea-inducing colors...

Agreed on some elements- the art style isn't too bad, the vegetation looks better, and the ambient occlusion is much appreciated. Some elements like the fake reflections on the windows and flat backdrops makes me wonder what direction they're going in.

I'd like to know if they're cutting out specular highlights, reflections and other things like that as well- will everything in the game be that flat, matte texture? I'm getting a Mysims 2.0 vibe from the shots.

Bear in mind I am not the least bit interested in the sims hair or fashions. My interest in the sims themselves centres around non-graphic things like intelligence and genetics. However I am am interested in the world and its structures. I am finding the new graphics shallow at best, in this area. I love to replicate the ambience of real life places that have left an impression on me, and I think I might find it hard to bridge the gap I am going to find between the painted quality of TS4 graphics and photographic reality. To say nothing of how will I do it if there is only 3 levels and no slopes!

Definitely need a sad button on this site now.





Something I can finally agree with you. Cartoony is not all bad but the colors and details are very disappointing. I do find the faces of the sims attractive but can't imagine how CC hairstyles and clothing will be styled. Some of the furnishings look odd, some may fit to scale and others are way off scale, along with the windows and doors. Some objects are flat and paper like. Every so often as I look around the town, still feel like I am playing a Pixar cartoon.

Here's hoping the game has some exciting, game changing type play or I may not be interested at all.

I kind of like the graphics, and don't particularly mind the textures. Of course, considering one of my favorite games is Daggerfall, graphics and textures mean squat when it comes to stuff I pick at. I can tell what things are, what they are for, and can tell the expressions on faces so I'm all good with them. The somewhat Disney-esque look to the world and its environs is also perfectly fine to me, it also sort of reminds me of Mankar Camoran's Paradise in Oblivion crossed with what I see outside everyday. Again, all good here.

But, yeah, it's gameplay that matters, I'll agree with others on that. But, I still like the way 4 looks.

I find it funny how every body uses Pixar as description for 'cheap and cartoony' while Pixar quality graphics would burn and explode your computer to the moon

It's not bad, but they have got to do something about that BLOOM effect and provide more blonde hair color options.

I think they're referring to the style, not the quality.

Not to mention that Pixar actually has hair, not that cop-out, half-arsed clay monstrosity.

Even then its a quite weird comparison. Only because they are both cartoon with the difference Pixar has realistic cartoon.

But oh well I don't think the graphics are bad but atleast its a change in graphics. The Sims 3 looks almost identical to 2.


Yhea that hair took 6 years to script and over 40.000 PC's to render with 96 hours per frame. Not going to work sorry. And well to be honest hair has always been worse in the Sims. Actually every game has terrible hair lol.

More natural-looking blonde and red shades would be nice in addition to highlighter yellow and Ronald McDonald.

I had to give the TS2 version of one of my characters brown hair because I wanted his hair to be darker than his sister's and they didn't differentiate between shades of red back then.

I actually really like the visuals of TS4. I think the cartoony style not only gives it a more bright, happy feeling, but it'll also make the game run smoother on computers, which is a plus for a lot of players.

To be honest, if they went for a more realistic approach and the visuals looked more like Skyrim or whatever other realistic-looking game out there, it wouldn't really feel like "The Sims" to me.

Well you have a point. Maybe I am looking for something that doesn't exist yet. Maybe it really *is* impossible to have both realistic graphics and realistic human character behaviour in one game.

It isn't impossible but surely not possible with the technology and computer specs most of the Sims players have. The closest we get to realistic is Crysis 3 at the moment but almost nobody of the Sims fanbase could run that game.

Beside we are still on a point where games become more and more realistic but still far away from real realistic. The Sims + realistic just wouldn't work also because the game is open and not scripted unlike 99% of the other games.

I really like the graphic style, it reminds me of Sims 2 especially with how the Sims move and emote.

If it was realistic like Skyrim they would lose the character appeal. The characters in Skyrim move like robots. I'd rather not sacrifice the animations for real looking sims.

Even at its laziest, Pixar still looks damn good.

The Sims 4 in terms of textures is literally pulling from Pixar's scrap bin of old textures. I already said, I like the stylized look and I'm even a fan of bright colors, but they still need to include subtle colors and textures. It's possible to imitate reality with cartoons dang it, they're just not trying hard enough.

OK, I haven't really paid attention to cartoon movies lately so I went with Pixar and see after that image above, Sims 4 isn't that detailed. So not a Pixar cartoon, maybe something like the Jungle movie from the '80s.

Hopefully someone can make a lighting mod that will cut out the bloom and the loud pastels, that's when I get the game.

I like the new style, I think it's very well done, very stylized.

I usually see people saying that they took the decision to make models more simple so they can run on lower end computers, but i don't think that's actually true, rendering 3d models is really easy for a computer, the hard part is rendering lights, shadows, particles, etc. and i see a great improvement in that aspect of the game.