I know way too much about The Sims franchise, and now it is your problem
This week in the Arts and Entertainment section, I present a case for why all games, regardless of age range, genre, or play style, can create intriguing lore, through the scope of The Sims franchise.
For the sake of at least perceived brevity, the scope of this article is rather narrow: the deep dive will explain the ins and outs of the lore surrounding one of the franchise’s most notable and recurrent aristocratic families: The Goths—Bella Goth, the matriarch, in particular.
The first canonical game in which these families appeared was in The Sims, released in 2000. Timeline details regarding this family become notably messy, though: for example The Sims 3 is officially seen as a prequel to The Sims 2 and, due to the occurrences that happen in the Goth family during these first three games, The Sims 4 must take place in an alternate or parallel reality to those of the previous games.
Initially, the Goth family was a family of three, with parents Mortimer and Bella and their daughter Cassandra. The aesthetics of the Goth family are self-explanatory for the most part, with them living in a large Victorian-style mansion in all iterations of the canonical game, with Mortimer typically wearing an all-black suit or more formal clothing. Bella is particularly notable for her classic red dress that she has had since the beginning, and is now a staple of The Sims games. Cassandra’s look has changed quite a bit through the games, but in the most recent one, she sports an all-black reimagining of a typical “school girl” look and starts off the game as a teenager. Also worth noting is that all members of the Goth family members are implied to have black hair.
The Goth family saw an unexpected addition with the release of The Sims 2 with Alexander Goth, the family’s youngest canonical child. He typically sports red and black outfits and adorns the same black hair that all other family members have.
The largest piece of lore surrounding the Goth family is a supposed mystery about Bella Goth and a disappearance that occurred after she rejected a different time-tested Non-Playable-Characters (NPC), Don Lothario, during the original games and lasted until the release of the Strangetown expansion pack. Many players have speculated about why exactly Bella Goth disappeared and if it is a coincidence that Alexander was introduced with the disappearance of Bella, with some fans suspecting an affair that the Goths attempted to keep under wraps.
There are three outstanding theories as to why Bella Goth disappears: she is killed by Don Lothario in a rejection-induced rage, she is killed by Mortimer after he finds out that she only married him for the money, and that aliens abducted her and then ran away to Strangetown to live a Mortimer-less life of secrecy.
Let’s be real: the first two theories are self-explanatory and not nearly unhinged enough for my liking, so we will dive into the third and most brain-rotting theory—that aliens abducted Bella Goth. Throughout The Sims franchise, particularly in the first and fourth games, it is not weird for player characters to get abducted by aliens. In the original game, it occurred during the use of the telescope object, and in the latest, it is an occurrence tied into the scientist career track in the Get to Work expansion pack.
After the disappearance of Bella, you can ask the different townies—the common term for the start game, developer-made NPCs—about what they know about Bella Goth’s last known whereabouts. Through this, you can discover the fight that occurred with Don Lothario, and that she was last seen using the telescope on his porch.
This information is enough to be able to draw that conclusion, but there are two other pieces of damning evidence that I think strengthen this argument. One is that you can find Bella Goth within The Sims 2 game in the expansion Strangetown. In this expansion, you can come across the townie Bella, though some have speculated it is not really Bella Goth but a doppelganger. Upon gaining a close enough friendship status with her, Bella will say that aliens abducted her; she then ran away from them, escaping to Strangetown, where she decided to live the rest of her life.
This piece of lore, though, becomes questionable and seemingly unreliable when the Bella Goth lore of The Sims 3 is brought to light. This is canonically a precursor to the game that came before it in the canonical line-up, so in the town of Sunset Valley, you can meet Bella Bachelor (her family name from another notable family in the franchise) as a child. While this fact alone confirms that the game does take place before the previous two, this is, at the very least, shaken by the Lunar Lakes expansion pack. Lunar Lakes in The Sims 3 is another planet with a town and environment similar to Sunset Valley in the default game. The big difference is the inclusion of aliens and one perplexing complication: a townie in Lunar Lakes named Mathilde Goth.
If a player were to pull Mathilde Goth up in Create a Sim (CAS) or marry her, they would be able to see that she is Bella Goth’s direct descendent. The game developers say that this is because Lunar Lakes takes place in the future, but not all Simmers are convinced by the exclusion of Mathilde in the latest games.
This is compounded by discovering Bella Goth’s grave in the Lunar Lakes graveyard. This addition has some fans theorizing that aliens have infiltrated the canonical worlds of The Sims franchise in an attempt to “right” the occurrences in the first two Sims games. This would mean that Bella from Strangetown could or could not be a doppelganger. She could have also just been re-abducted, but that Bella Bachelor in The Sims 3 most certainly is.
While I do not have time to get into all the theories surrounding time travel in The Sims franchise, I hope this has served as a fun little anecdote and entry point into a game I find deeply nostalgic and lovable. Also, gamer purists who feel femme-dominated games aren’t real games— take this: Simmers are just as obsessed as any Persona or Elder Scrolls fan.