It’s no news that Disney is trying to make the most out of Star Wars and cramming it into every commercially successful outlet it can. Lego, Barbie dolls… Now it is Sims 4. 8th September 2020 is the release date for The Sims 4 Star Wars: Journey to Batuu game pack.
EA studios being the current game designer with the license to SW, this release comes as no surprise. If the mod turns out to be a success (and I don’t see why it wouldn’t be), we might see EA slamming SW packs into more of its future games. NHL with Kylo Ren? Sure. Need for Speed with Millennium Falcon? Most certainly.
Everything For Star Wars Sim
From what has been revealed, Journey to Batuu will offer everything you might want from a SW Sims experience. New outfits, SW-themed foods and decorations being the obvious necessity, but there are also droid pets and lightsabers. The trailer even hints at flying starships.
The pack will allow your Sims characters to transfer to a fully SW-themed environment. There, besides just visiting cantinas or having lightsaber duels with aliens, they can perform various missions for one of the SW factions. They can pledge their allegiance to the First Order, the Resistance, or neutral smugglers. These factions will have actual characters representing them – Rey, Kylo Ren or Hondo Ohnaka. With more tasks completed, the SW neighbourhood will change to reflect your faction’s rising influence.
The game allows for interactions with characters like Rey, Kylo Ren, Hondo Ohnaka or also less known characters from broader canon like Vi Moradi.
The mod uses the planet of Batuu as basis for its setting. This is also nothing new. Batuu is a planet that did not appear in any of the movies and not even in novels or other SW media until it had been invented by Disney in order to provide a setting for its Disneyland SW-themed land. Thus, among other things, this is a way to advertise Disneyland inside The Sims. From the point of view of commerce, good job.
The idea behind Journey to Batuu is not a new one. Star Wars mods have existed in previous The Sims games in many unofficial versions thanks to meticulous work of individual gamers. Therefore, Journey to Batuu is Disney/EA’s very logical response to a demand that certainly exists. Many people have wanted to play SW-themed sim for a really long time, so there’s nothing easier than to make and monetize an official version.
The game uses the setting of Batuu, corresponding to Disney’s real-life Star Wars theme park.
Just A Quest For More Money?
I see the most value in this pack in that people who want to re-create their favourite Star Wars characters in The Sims won’t have to restort to various better-or-worse custom-made mods. It is still likely that the mod won’t cover everything everyone has ever conceived. But the first reveal already shows a variety of outfits, decorations and most notably, alien species that should allow one to create a functional SW neighbourhood after one’s own taste.
Is this just another attempt to milk the SW franchise for all its worth? Sure. But it is something that many people have been actually demanding, and that many will enjoy.
