The latest Sims 4 update will take you far, far away—as far as Orlando or Anaheim. Whichever one’s farther for you, I guess. Honestly, during a pandemic, anything that’s outside your own home is far enough.
The Sims 4—Star Wars: Journey to Batuu is an upcoming game pack set on the same planet as Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, the theme park expansion that opened last year at Disneyland and Disney World. Batuu, a planet on the outer rim, is home to Black Spire Outpost, which conveniently has the kinds of things you’d expect to find at a theme park: rides, costumed characters, all sorts of themed merchandise and food, and more. It’s about as immersive as theme parks get, and as a guy who’d go to Disney parks once or twice a month before COVID, I’m desperately missing it.
Well, it looks like I’ll be able to return to Batuu without any coronavirus fears through The Sims 4. The trailer for the new update shows a Sims village that roughly follows the layout of the real place; this virtual cantina actually has seats at the bar, though, which would be a huge step up for the ones at Galaxy’s Edge. The lead sim in the ad gets wrapped up in all kinds of Star Wars business with R2-D2 at her side, and meets up with Galaxy’s Edge characters Hondo Ohnaka and Vi Moradi. As a Star Wars fan who loves theme parks and is deeply ambivalent about The Sims, it seems kind of cool to me.
Apparently Sims fans generally don’t find it cool. The response to Journey to Batuu’s announcement has slanted negative; that trailer currently has 10,000 more dislikes than likes on YouTube. In a rough, highly unscientific survey of Twitter, there seems to be about three angry or disappointed tweets about the Star Wars themed game pack for every positive one. And since this is Star Wars in the year 2020, we have to assume some of those tweets aren’t coming from Sims fans but Star Wars fans, so many of whom have a weird obsession with hating the thing they purport to love. The people who act like every single thing Disney has ever done with Star Wars is a complete disaster are probably out in force on this one.
I don’t know. Seems okay to me. I look forward to seeing how they turned this physical space into a virtual one.
We’re all entitled to our opinions, of course. If you want to form your own, watch that trailer below. The Sims 4—Star Wars: Journey to Batuu will be out on September 8.