Highlights

• A recent The Sims 5 leak raised questions among fans about the game’s art style and overall direction.
• A newly emerged image showed a pair of heavily stylized characters that some fans have described as way too cartooney for their liking.
• A portion of the fandom blamed the art style on the fact that EA and Maxis are planning to make The Sims 5 playable on mobile devices, as characters with exaggerated features would be more easily discernible on smaller screens.

A recently emerged The Sims 5 leak has raised questions among the fandom about what Electronic Arts and Maxis have in store for the game. Among other things, some fans are concerned about the art style and general direction of the next entry in The Sims franchise.

EA officially announced the fifth mainline The Sims game as Project Rene in October 2022. Aside from that codename, the occasion also saw the company share a few glimpses of furniture customization from an alpha build of the game. While not much else has been officially revealed ever since, Project Rene, tentatively dubbed The Sims 5, has been the subject of multiple leaks over the past 18 months. That’s ostensibly because Maxis has been playtesting it in closed alpha throughout this period, thus widening the pool of potential leakers.

The Sims 5 Leak Raises Concerns Over Cartooney Art Style

The latest such unofficial look at the game arrived in the form of a cropped screenshot (which could be taken down at any moment with a copyright claim) that started making the rounds on social media in March. The image features a two-person portrait that’s said to be present in The Sims 5. Although the picture is clearly not rendered in real time and instead appears to be some kind of auxiliary artwork, a vocal section of the series’ fandom has already taken issue with the fact that the two characters depicted in it are heavily stylized. Those fans are all hoping that The Sims 5 will have a more realistic art style, but the cartooney portraits featured in the new leak seem to point in the opposite direction.

Fans Are Worried The Sims 5 Will Suffer From Being on Mobile

The discussion emerging from this leak saw some fans speculate that the heavily exaggerated character features seen in the screenshot could be the result of The Sims 5 being a multi-platform title meant to run on everything from mobile devices to PC and consoles. EA already confirmed as much back in 2022, having even showcased some footage of furniture customization on a smartphone in order to substantiate its claim that the game will play the same across all devices.

According to those fan theories, the developer possibly opted for a more cartooney art style with exaggerated features that are easier to discern on mobile screens. This train of thought, combined with the art style complaints aimed at the leaked The Sims 5 screenshot, gave rise to concerns that the overall game could suffer from being on mobile devices.

And while it remains to be seen whether that ends up being the case, what’s already certain is that The Sims 5 will be a free-to-play title from day one, unlike its predecessor, which only went F2P eight years into its release. EA has also previously pledged that Project Rene won’t replace The Sims 4 but exist side-by-side with it, suggesting the 2014 game might continue receiving expansion packs even after its successor hits the market.