The Sims 4: First Details on Pools

*Update* – EA contacted us to correct this potentially misleading info from the article below:
 
“Your Sim cannot pee deliberately in the pool as an action. They can have bladder failure though.”

 
During a demo in New York City today, SimGuruRyan showed off some of the new options available with pools in The Sims 4. GamenGuide attended the event, and reveals the new features coming with pools this November.
 
 

The pools are just as easy to create as the buildings. You pick a shape and drop it into the world, and you can expand it to whatever design you want, even changing the depth of the pool from “pretty deep” to “I hope there aren’t any sea creatures living in here” as you please.

Vaughan started us out with a rectangular pool and added a little circle to the end to spice up the look. He sent his Sims family into the pool, where they waded and splashed happily in their new swimsuits, a new (and, as with everything else, completely customizable) addition to the game. We were shown how the Sims could sit on the edge of the pool– a series first- and even pee into the pool have a bladder failure. All signs pointed to a wonderful time, but nefarious plans were afoot.

Vaughan carved out a little square pool a little bit away and put our Vader cosplayer in there before building four walls around him. He was trapped. Now- the wait. He would take a while to get exhausted and drown but thankfully a quick tweak of the developer’s mode and our poor hapless Sim was struggling to stay above the water, and soon he was no more. A little urn with ashes appeared near the walled-off pool, and his family members were sent to cry and grieve over it and lament hiring H.H. Holmes as their designer.

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When I mentioned how nice it was to add the possibility of drowning to appeal to the more sadistic gamers, Vaughan laughed. It’s not their intention to tell gamers how to play, just to provide options for every single way you could ever want to. Even if that includes wet, cold-blooded murder.

Note: Being unfamiliar with the source, I reached out to our contacts at EA who have confirmed the legitimacy of the story, and confirmed that Producer Ryan Vaughan is in New York showing off pools in The Sims 4.