Well, evidently the announcement came today. The secretive Paradox Tectonic has just made its announcement of their new "Life Simulator" called "Life By You". Here is the teaser trailer that was announced at Paradox's New Game Announcements
I'm gonna warn ya right now...
If you play Sims 4 and like that graphic style, you're NOT going to like #LifeByYou by Paradox Tectonic. Rod Humble, I think, listened to those who were unhappy with the direction EA went on Sims 4 and catered to them. He was one of those who had full direction on the way Sims 3 went when he was at EA and thus has leaned more towards that in terms of creativity.
I'm starting to think of this as Sims 3 rebooted with way better graphics. And with the assets and DLC, this is going to stomp Project Rene (Sims 5)'s ass.
I watched the teaser trailer this morning and HOLY ****! I was blown away by the opening shot. I'm getting shades of Cities:Skylines. This is going to take away the monopoly that EA holds on the life-sim genre and turn it on its head.
To me it looks like the spiritual successor to The Sims 3. It looks as though we're getting an open world and cars right off the bat like in Sims 3 in the base game. Also there's a shot of the realistic looking art-style that may put those who like Sims 4 off this game with the argument that it's uncanny valley.
I personally like the realistic style of this game and the various sections of this game that were teased show that Rod Humble (formerly of EA/Maxis on Sims 2 and Sims 3) was making sure that he envisioned a sequel to what he did with Maxis in Sims 3. And he mentioned in a number of interviews that he wanted to pursue deeper gameplay. And I think he's accomplished this with "Life By You".
Now Paradox's game Cities:Skylines tends to call their little people Cims as a sideways barb at Sims. So I'll continue to call Life By You's little people Cims in that same vein.
Most Sims 3 players who haven't migrated to Sims 4 have felt cast off by EA and perhaps ridiculed for continuing to play a game that by all intents and purposes has been considered by devs as "finished". Their opinion is: Time to kill that game and go onto the next one. Except that the next one hasn't met our expectations. I prefer Sims 3 and will continue to play Sims 3 until such time as Life By You is released. Then I expect that I will jump to that game.
Now five and a half months after Project Rene's announcement by EA, we still only have the furniture shots to go by and no actual view of any Sims that have been shown other than a leak on Reddit with some wireframe models, I don't see how Project Rene could be any better than what has been tabled by Life By You from Paradox. Understandably, Project Rene is still in early development, but they still have a lot of catching up to do. If I don't like the Sims, I'm definitely going with Cims from Life By You.
Certainly Sims 5/Project Rene is going to be a monumental project for the development team at Electronic Arts, but unless EA decides that they will cast off their business practices of releasing half-baked, buggy EPs and GPs, nothing will improve insofar as Simmers complaining about them and being rightfully annoyed at the lack of quality control. I'm pretty much done with EA and for the past 7 years I've hoped that somebody out there would come out with a true competition to the Sims franchise: to force it to step up to the plate and give us quality instead of tossing us a bone here and there and telling us to give them money. That tactic doesn't work insofar as making me open up my wallet.
With Rod Humble at the helm of Paradox Tectonic, I'm pretty sure that Life By You is Paradox's go for the jugular as far as life simulations to go after the market share that The Sims monopolizes and it's about time.
