Omnihanded Entertainmet News | ‘The Sims’ is getting a multiplayer spin-off, no plans for ‘Sims 5’

The Sims bosses have revealed more about the future of the franchise, with a multiplayer spin-off in the works.

The Sims 4 was released in 2014 and has been regularly updated by developers over the last 11 years. In 2021, EA announced they were working on the next generation of The Sims franchise and the following year, they confirmed Project Rene was a “couple of years” away from release.

Many fans assumed Project Rene would be a direct sequel to The Sims 4 but last year, EA said it would be moving ”beyond linear, sequential Sims releases”. In a new interview with Variety, EA Entertainment president Laura Miele confirmed that there are still no plans for The Sims 5.

“What I wouldn’t want to have happen is you to have to start from day zero and start from scratch and give up all of the things that you have created, give up all of the content that you’ve purchased over the years,” Miele explained. “We put out over 85 content packs over the last 10 years on The Sims 4 and so resetting that is not player friendly and not a good idea for our community.” She went on to confirm EA will keep “creating and updating the base technology and the base user experience on the core game.”

[embedded content]

However work on the multiplayer spin-off Project Rene is still happening. The game is described as a way for “friends to meet, connect and share while playing together in an all-new world.” According to Miele, Project Rene “represents one of the biggest growth opportunities for Electronic Arts” and the team is currently “hard at work and feverishly developing what this [multiplayer] platform is going to be.” It comes after rumours the project had been scrapped started circulating online earlier this year.

“I see The Sims as a significant ecosystem and a universe of multiple experiences that we have to build on,” she added before confirming a movie adaptation of The Sims was still in development. The project is being created by Amazon MGM Studios and Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap after “years and years and years” of conversations about it. However no further details have been shared.

For the first method, the Scoutmaster’s Bugle is a rare item, meaning that it has a very low chance to appear in the game. You have a chance of getting the item from either Ancient Luggage–which are the suitcases that have the red emblem on them–or from the Ancient Statues that appear at the summit of each biome. Note that for the latter, all players must be alive when you interact with it. Otherwise, the statue will revive any fallen climbers, instead of dropping an item.

It’s indeed possible for the Scoutmaster’s Bugle to appear in multiplayer matches as well. In either case, the chances of encountering it are quite low. In over 26 hours of playing Peak, I’ve only seen the item twice–but again, there were several instances where the statue didn’t drop an item since one of our teammates had died in the biome, so your mileage may vary.

The Scoutmaster is not messing around.

If you’re playing Peak in multiplayer, encountering the Scoutmaster is somewhat easier. You need to distance yourself from your co-op buddies, whether that’s just one more person or several of them. A way of ensuring you trigger the encounter is by having everybody else but you stay at the starting point of the Shore biome. Then, head over to the opposite side toward the peak and start climbing.

After a few minutes of gaining latitude, you’ll begin hearing a different music than the usual background environmental track, similar to bells in the distance. The Scoutmaster is designed to chase whoever splits from others, so you’re likely to see him get close to you. A good way of knowing when he’s nearby is a film grain effect on the screen, which will gradually obscure your visibility the closer he is.

If the Scoutmaster is in your vicinity, get close and you’ll see the Mentorship Badge achievement appear. There’s a chance of him falling off a ledge and interrupting the chase, but he’ll likely climb back up again shortly. From here, you can either attempt to escape–the Scoutmaster is quite fast, mind you–or let him trap you. When tackling this myself, the Scoutmaster grabbed me and promptly threw me off the mountain.

That’s all you need to encounter the Scoutmaster. Bear in mind that there’s a chance of triggering the encounter by accident if you stray from other players. It’s a punishing and quite terrifying way of ensuring that you’re lending a helping hand whenever possible.