User blog comment:Lost Labyrinth/The Sims 4 - Gamescom Reveal/@comment-1441666-20130821101046

I'm glad to see that the characters seem to have been made more "cartoonish" again. I was never a fan of those Sims 2 mods that gave more realistic skin tones, and frankly I get frustrated with how my Sims 3 characters always end up looking kind of the same no matter how much I edit their facial structures, which I think is partly down to the shinier skins. (I did find that Medieval improved on this, though, oddly enough.) I think Sims 2 had my favourite character design overall, and I'm glad to see that Sims 4 seems to be making improvements to this "cartoon" model rather than the slightly uncanny valley "realism" of Sims 3 characters. Kind of reminds me of the character renders for the older console versions on PS2 and GameBoy, which I always thought looked really nice, although obviously they didn't look nearly as good in game-play. As for the HUD panel - I remember when Sims 3 came out and they swore during development that needs were going to be replaced by moodlets, only to have both in the final release, so I feel that they'll probably do the same here with emotions and need panels both playing a role. (I also predict that they'll do the same overly-optimistic Spring release date that they have to put back by six months as well, but time will tell!) Overall - cautiously optimistic, I think, although I'll probably do the same as I did with Sims 3 and wait for the first few patches to come out and the price to come down a bit before I buy.