Without a doubt, one of the most-requested features in The Sims 4 was for the developers to bring back family trees, which allowed players to track their family history and easily see charted relationships. It was a must-have for plenty of hardcore legacy players and casual fans alike, who all wanted to see their family history after several generations had passed. The studio confirmed the feature wouldn't be in the base game months ago, but they just announced a new Sims 4 feature called Genealogy, which is actually just a retitled version of the family tree.

Prior to the release of the game, family trees weren't the only feature developer The Sims Studio dropped. They also removed toddlers and pools so that they could focus on other areas of the game. Of course, pools were added to the game post-release, which gave fans hope the same would eventually happen for family trees.

While it's a good thing the developers are bringing one of the most popular features back, it's questionable whether the delayed inclusion of these features is worth celebration or shaming. Sure, the pools and family trees are free updates - but some may assume that they were temporarily removed from the game so Maxis could release an incomplete game faster. Those players would also argue that this is content that should have been in the base game from the very start. We questioned the initial lack of content in our review, but in the end, we're happy The Sims Studio is re-including these features for free .

The genealogy interface itself can be reached by hitting the Simology Panel in Live Mode, where a new family tree button appears. Clicking it will show the House Genealogy, and features all the relationship information, which now includes step-siblings and half-siblings. Identifying these relationships will help reduce confusion in family trees, especially in situations where some Sims may have the same name. Now, players can quickly see which hypothetical Sim is Stepfather Steve, Brother Steve, and Lover Steve in a few quick seconds - and in situations like that, you really don't want to get the wrong Steve.

The Genealogy feature can supposedly track, in some occasions, existing Sims all the way up to their great-great-grandparents, so players can see the history of people who join their household and what kind of family relationships already exist for them. The game-generated  history is a nice touch, and will give players plenty of additional backstory and, perhaps, more drama.

What do you think about genealogy in The Sims 4, Ranters? Do you think they falsely removed features so that they could launch the game earlier?

The update is already live, so fans can download it right away and check it out!

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Source: The Sims