Next time the sims 4 Enlargement –High school years— has been released, it will be accompanied by a major experience update that will introduce a new feature for all players: the “Sexual Orientation” toggle.
Although your Sims have long been able to enjoy same-sex relationships in the game (in addition always was able to make direct connections), this upcoming update will allow players to make a number of choices and transitions when starting the game, allowing for more flexibility and customization when it comes to who your Sim can connect with.
SimGuruJessica, design lead High school years Enlargement, writes on the game’s website:
With Sexual Orientation, you’ll be able to set a number of attractive settings for your Sim. This is a simple, affirmative statement of who your Sim is attracted to. If a Sim that doesn’t match your Sim’s gender attraction settings attempts to romantically engage with your Sim, they will be rejected.
You can check any combination of charm boxes (including all or none) to reflect your sim’s romantic orientation.
These boxes – and you can change these options later in the game using a mirror or cabinet – look like this:
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SimGuruJessica stresses that, while this is a good start, it’s just that—a start—and that clearly there is more work to do here. The gender options being limited to just “men” and “women” being perhaps the biggest issue, though that’s one that is limited at the moment by the game’s code, not its team:
Further down the line, we’ll be able to expand this to include additional gender identities that we don’t have at this time.
I understand that there will be concerns here around the initial options being gender binary. Mechanically, non binary Sims don’t yet exist in TS4. While we made great progress in representing non binary Sims with the pronouns update, we acknowledge that pronouns are not the same thing as gender identities. We recognize that we still have a ways to go in this regard.
As for turning the feature off (and remember, this will hit for all players as part of the base game, not just anyone buying the High School expansion), well lol:
Can I turn this feature off?
No. While we try to give players the option to toggle certain gameplay features, LGBTQIA+ identities are a fact of life and not a toggle to be switched on and off.
Before we go, while this update—and much of the news surrounding it—is rightly focused on the increased options and possibilities available to your Sims, here’s a different, much funnier way of looking at it:
