By Shayna Josi
Every Sims neighborhood has been controlled by one family, despite their criminal past, and The Sims 5 is the perfect time for payback.
There are several iconic families featured across The Sims franchise, and perhaps none more iconic than the Landgraabs. The wealthiest family in The Sims, the Landgraabs ostensibly made their fortune through lucky property deals, but it's implied through the lore that their wealth was actually gathered through less-than-scrupulous means.
The first mention of the Landgraabs came in 1999's SimCity 3000, where their name was featured on billboards across the city. Members of the family itself made their first appearance in The Sims Medieval: Pirates and Nobles, with Demetrius and Dacian Landgraab possibly being ancestors to the family that would appear in The Sims 3 and 4. While players might be concerned about how to make money in The Sims without resorting to cheats, the Landgraabs almost certainly took shortcuts to become the wealthiest family in the franchise.
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The Landgraabs' Dark Secret
The Landgraab family members who players would be most familiar with are Nancy Landgraab, her husband Geoffrey, and their son Malcolm. Other than their rivalry with the Altos, the Landgraabs in The Sims 3 are fairly harmless, leaving drama to another famous family in The Sims, the Goths. The Landgraab family's appearance in The Sims 4, however, is another story.
The Sims 4 is a parallel universe, and in this world Nancy Landgraab is a professional criminal, meanwhile her husband is a secret agent. Their teenage son, Malcolm, has the Evil trait in contrast to his Good trait from The Sims 3. Their family bio references a secret that threatens to tear the family apart, which could be a reference to their differing career paths, but it could also reference another Sim in the world of Oasis Springs: Johnny Zest. Johnny is a Young Adult Sim who lives alone and aspires to be a comedian. He has no one else on his family tree, but looking at his bio it's revealed that he is the biological son of Nancy and Geoffrey; disowned by his parents, cut off from the family fortune, and left to fend for himself because of his chosen career path.
While The Sims 4's Landgraabs aren't afraid of cutting off family, it also appears they accumulated their wealth through the exploitation of others, the monopolization of Sim estate and business, and ventures into the world of crime. Given the Landgraab name pops up every time a Sim family's bill goes unpaid and their electricity or water gets shut off, this is another reminder of the iron grip that the Landgraabs have over the lives of ordinary Sims.
Meanwhile, the Landgraabs continue living in mansions while hoarding wealth with no social repercussions. The Altos, their rival family in The Sims 3, don't appear in The Sims 4's parallel universe to act as an opposing force. The Sims 5 has the opportunity to correct this imbalance and give the Landgraabs the comeuppance they've deserved for well-over two decades of unchecked crime.
How The Sims 5 Could Balance The Scales
One of the ways The Sims 5 could address the power imbalance is by bringing back the Altos. Some competition could bring out the Landgraab family's more altruistic side. As their counterparts in The Sims 3 have different traits and career paths, such as Good instead of Evil and Business instead of Criminal, there's only one perspective to consider in The Sims 4.
If The Sims 5 is a sequel or another parallel universe, another option would be to remove the Landgraabs' wealth entirely, possibly through poor decisions on Nancy's part, to see some retribution as they experience the other end of the social ladder. Perhaps another family could rise to take their place, or perhaps the world of The Sims could finally achieve an equal and classless society without the Landgraabs controlling every major industry.
The Sims 5 is in development.
