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The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy Expansion Pack is arguably one of the most complex DLCs for the game to date, introducing an elaborate Dynasty system, the first 24/7 career, shocking scandals, and much more. Crafting these intricate systems was no simple feat, which lead game designer Xènia Peña delved into during an email interview with Polygon.
The multifaceted nature of the Royalty & Legacy Expansion Pack also expands to its world of Ondarion, which features three distinct neighborhoods inspired by the nobility of Portugal, Italy, and Africa. The team wanted to embrace the fact that players would have very different expectations for what noble life means, both in terms of gameplay and aesthetics, and each area was designed with a specific narrative trope in mind.
“There’s Bellacorde for romantics and drama‑oriented players, Verdemar for adventure lovers who dream of sword‑fighting princesses, and Dambele for players who want to become fair, community‑minded monarchs,” Peña explains. When creating Dambele, they also worked closely with the Pan Africa Gaming Group (PAGG) in order to better represent the West African perspective of royalty.
When it comes to the new noble career, Peña says the team really wanted to deliver a career that felt completely different from all others. Being a royal is a full time job, literally — it’s the first time for a career path in The Sims 4 to operate outside a set schedule, while also being one of the most potentially impactful on the in-game world. Noble Sims can do things like set taxes and enact royal decrees that affect day-to-day life in the kingdom, and all their choices will impact whether a Sim is more favored by fellow nobles or commoners.
The most difficult piece of crafting the career wasn’t these intricacies, however — it was planning for all possible edge cases that players could run into during their gameplay, due to the fact that there can only be one king or queen (the top level of the career) per world.
“What happens if another noble is promoted to King? What happens if two Kings move to the same neighborhood? What happens if the King’s promised heir lives in another world? What happens if a King and a Queen from different worlds marry? The discussions and meetings were endless,” Peña says, but the team was determined to deliver, preparing for any possible scenario.
Though some of the DLC is a bit more on the realistic side, the team still made an effort to include more fairytale-esque additions as well. “I remember thinking very early on that having a Sim sit at a desk reviewing and signing documents didn’t sound like great gameplay,” Peña says. “It felt fair to assume that strict realism shouldn’t be our goal, and that we wanted some room for creative license and a touch of magic.”
These wound up taking the form of Power Shifts, where special items or events can radically alter a Sim’s trajectory. Perhaps they come across a magic mirror that can grant them success, or find love after kissing a frog. When it came to finalizing these inclusions, the team turned to the players. “After we had a list of all the princess classics,” Peña says, “we shared it with a group of players, who ranked them by interest. That feedback was incredibly helpful to understand what resonated the most…calibrating these things is so much easier when you can talk with your audience!”
Peña’s favorite part of the development process was crafting the rich lore of Royalty & Legacy, which drew from several famous families long-time fans will be familiar with. The Monty and Capp families from The Sims 2 have returned, as have descendants of the Dreamer family. A relative of Princess Cordelia Thebe also makes an appearance, a character with elaborate lore across a myriad of Build and Buy object descriptions for years.
“I felt none of the royals should be brand-new Sims who needed an introduction,” Peña explains. “They had to feel famous, like their surnames had survived generations, crossed worlds (and game installments), and naturally ring a bell for all of us.” The team utilizes a giant board mapping every Sim, labeled and linked with all their relationships, which Peña calls “enormous, but absolutely useful.”
When it came to choosing the three specific families, the fact Shakespeare’s Montagues and Capulets were part of the nobility in Verona, Italy made the Capps and Montys perfect candidates for one of the kingdoms. “The Dreamers were another great fit,” Peña says, “not only iconic in The Sims 2, but their family tree included an ancestral surname that aligned beautifully with the West African representation we were exploring. And of course, we could never forgive ourselves if we spent more than a decade talking about the legendary Princess Cordelia and didn’t make her one of the central royals!”
The idea of lasting legacies was just as important as nobility in the new DLC, which began with a clear goal: “We wanted powerful families, like the Landgraabs, to really feel powerful,” Peña says. “We brainstorm around topics such as ‘what does privilege feel like for influential people,’ ‘what dynamics emerge when so much is at stake between family members,’ or ‘what narrative tropes are popular right now.’”
“Once the vision is set, we document everything,” Peña continues. “Dynasties will need crests, ideals, the ability to declare rivals and allies, outcasts and heirs… the list grows quickly.” After so many years of DLC and updates, the team also had to spend a lot of time considering how Dynasties would fit within all the already-established features.
“Our documents and spreadsheets get extremely long!” Peña says. “And because many of us started as Sims players, we tend to be very thorough when listing things such as all activities that should fall under each Dynasty Value,” which are sets of behaviors and career choices that are approved or frowned upon within a Dynasty. A Dynasty with the jolly ideal, for example, will approve of playing games and careers like Comedian, but seriousness and boring jobs like Salaryperson could make you an outcast.
Though some fans have criticized the Dynasties system as being too similar to clubs in the Get Together Expansion, the team made a concerted effort to make it unique. “The first step was shifting the focus away from simply performing activities and towards actual groups of interactions that compose family values,” Peña says. “Values can also conflict with one another, making the choice more meaningful.”
Dynasties are also meant to feel less like a social group and more like a legacy Sims are born into. They’re much more exclusive, as Sims need to be related by family ties or marriage to be a part of one. “That also allowed us to explore the emotional side further,” Peña says, “the tension of disagreeing with your family’s ideals, the sting of being labeled an outcast, or the pride of being chosen as heir.”
Legacy challenges have been around in The Sims community since the very beginning, which the team was very conscious of when they began working on Royalty & Legacy. “We do quite a bit of social media reading, so we’re very aware that legacies, founders and heirs are a thing, Peña says. “We wanted to honor the player’s meta but also expand on the gameplay around those roles, especially the dynamic between the dynasty Head and the dynasty Heir.”
When it comes to what players get out of the Royalty & Legacy Expansion Pack, Peña’s biggest hope is to see even more types of legacy challenges emerge now that players have so many new levers to pull in their saves. Considering the community never fails to come up with unexpected and fresh ideas inspired by new DLC, it’s safe to say legacy challenges are just getting started.
