Sims 2 Lore - Shakespeare in Veronaville: Much Ado About Nothing

[@msnorringtonsims6536]

“Oh look! It’s your personal agency… never mind, it’s gone.” 😂😂

[@nothagrid]

Yet another great video!! I love that you brought up Hero’s death and brought up multiple theories (and the original myth) to explain it. I never thought much about her death, so I find it interesting that it could have more detail behind it. This really could’ve been fleshed out and made Veronaville much spicier and less vague. It really sucks that we don’t know what it is an oversight and what is an intentional, story making decision. Really makes me want to find the people in charge of storytelling and ask them about every single decision made during the game’s making lol As always, great video! And thank you for putting subtitles!!

[@letomills]

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed! Yeah, the fact that Veronaville's lore is so vague gives a lot of room for the imagination but I do wish we had more concrete clues too. The "is this an oversight or is this a piece of evidence" question definitely comes up a lot. I've never researched interviews or statements made by the devs about storytelling in the Sims 2, but I am curious as well. That could be an idea for a future video ^^ It's nice to know that the subtitles are useful!

[@BellaDovah]

Omg your theories on Hero’s death gave me chills! I had never given it much thought but I have no idea why its not as speculated and talked about as Bella’s disappearance! I struggled to think about how it should affect my current Veronaville save, having Benedick go into a career of paranormal, law, law enforcement or SCIA, was the best I got! Its actually made me quite happy how things are turning out though, I’m glad I’ve allowed the feud to die down as its so unlikely a Capp murdered her. I loved the theory of him being in love with a Capp and Hero being in love with Claudio. Once again, fantastic fascinating video and thank you for all the effort put into it👏

[@letomills]

Having Benedick's career choice be influenced by Hero's death is a great idea! And yeah I think it's really sweet that your Beatrice wound up with Tybalt, I don't think she would have any reasons to hate the Capps personally. The fact that your Tybalt and Romeo autonomously started hating each other again right before you filmed your Veronaville tour is pretty fitting though. You might know already but in Romeo and Juliet, Romeo kills Tybalt after Tybalt killed Mercutio, who was Romeo's friend. If two sims in Veronaville are meant to have irreconcilable differences, it's probably these two. I can't wait to see the rest of your Veronaville ^^

[@BellaDovah]

@@letomills aw thank you! Thats so lovely to hear🥰 Yeah I definitely think Tybalt just has it out for Romeo & Mercutio and not the entire Capp family! So its all coming together nicely. I can’t wait to see more episodes of this series, especially Romeo & Juliette and Midsummer Night’s Dream!

[@letomills]

@@BellaDovah Yeah those two plays are definitely coming up. They're the two I most want to get right. Animating them is probably going to be quite challenging, I'm not sure how I'm gonna stage a sword fight for example, but I'll find a way.

[@mikantsumiki3329]

I just want to say I love your theory about Hero's death so much I went into SimPE and edited their memories just to back it up. Thank you.

[@AniBats]

I remember reading this play for Uni once and really enjoying it, it's really funny and I particularly enjoyed Beatrice and Benedick in it. I never got this deep into it though, so it was awesome to see how it all connects to the sims as well. I've thought it an odd choice to make them twins in the past, but with your explanation it makes a lot of sense. It's so fascinating that there's this grand mystery of what happened to Hero, but this is the first I hear of it. I guess I never paid much attention to the character biographies before playing Veronaville. This video was epic, I really loved it, thank you so much for putting it together ❤ Your attention to detail is really inspiring

[@letomills]

Thank you for watching! Your comments always make my day ^^ When I was younger I didn't pay attention to the bios either, for the longest time I didn't even know Hero existed. I still had lots of fun playing, but now that I'm older I really appreciate that the devs included all these story threads that we can pick up if we want to.

[@peachymunmagenta]

Benedick and Beatrice feel like acearo icons just 4 minutes in

[@tistoaries1931]

Another very interesting video, thanks ! :) and I loved the little bonus at the very end hehe. Memories in Veronaville are quite messy, however I think Maxis was consistent and determined with one thing : in a purpose to amplify the feud storyline and family ties among Montys and Capps respectively, developers gave death memories only to sims from the same family... "family" in its broadest sense... it kinda adds more confusion and players can't tell which "clan" is the most hostile because there is no (or a few) clear evidence. Since Romeo and Juliet is the main inspiration for this hood, I like to think that poisoning is involved so either Olivia or Claudio (or both) have been murdered this way (apparently they died by starvation and i know that illness/poisoning can be a cause of death in TS2 base game... well I think this is just one more oversight by Maxis). Hero probably killed herself by drinking a poison or something like that, but drowning is also possible.

[@letomills]

I'm glad you liked it! And yeah, the developers definitely succeeded in giving little clear evidence so we can go off with imagining theories indefinitely lol. There is one sim that remembers the death of a sim from the rival family: Bianca Monty remembers Contessa Capp's death. But Contessa died of old age so it's probably no indication that Bianca killed her. I didn't think of poisoning as a cause of death, it would be in theme with Romeo and Juliet for sure. Hero killing herself by drinking poison after Claudio's death would be a very Juliet-esque thing to do, it would make sense ^^

[@StoriesNStrategy]

With all this background information Veronaville is getting more and more interesting if I ever decided to play that neighbourhood. (Oaken Valley is way higher on my wishlist though 😉) Really nice series. Also, I really appreciate your to the point intros and dry sense of humor. 😊

[@letomills]

Thanks! I do try to keep things fairly tight and informative, I'm glad it isn't a turn-off ^^

[@Simish]

Toujours très instructif ! Je n'avais pas pensé à cette théorie pour Héro ! C'est super intéressant !

[@letomills]

Je suis contente que ça t'ait plu ! Essayer de connecter le mythe, la pièce et les indices donnés dans le jeu est plutôt fun ^^

[@user-hw3yq2hp1o]

I think that death from starvation could have been counted as death from poisoned food. I think it make sence for Monty who is into culinary. I have no Idea how it can be related to Hero though. I think she died during the Monty family party. But her death was forced by one of ancestors from Capps, maybe Cornwall, who is already dead with no memories saved so those secret has went to the grave. Thank you fot this video. Regards Vic

[@letomills]

Death by poisoning would make sense yes! Maybe that's what Maxis meant to convey. Cornwall Capp, Regan's husband, is still alive in a fresh Veronaville though, did you mean someone else? I'm glad you enjoyed the video ^^

[@user-hw3yq2hp1o]

@@letomills might be not Cornwall himself but his wife. I suppose Hero's killer is around Antonio's enemies. This is the most evident theory.

[@letomills]

@@user-hw3yq2hp1o Yep definitely.

[@psychogarden1122]

Wow, this is the first video of yours I'm watching, fantastic work! Loved the reenactment of the play in the sims (also old man Antonio(?) shooting hearts at Claudio??? staaahp 😂)

[@solanita222]

Awesome video, just like the others in this series I've watched. I've always been interested in the lore of Veronaville and what can be read into the characters based on their names and behaviour in relation to Shakespeare and history. I like that Maxis didn't copy the storylines of Shakespeare, I like that they made their own take on it, I like the ambiguity. I'm looking forward to watch the rest of the videos in this series, and I greatly admire your work and the effort you've put into this. It's fun to see someone else sharing your interest in the lore of Veronaville, but even more fun since this person (you) actually do a proper investigation and thoroughly studies on both the plays and the sims, and share it in a way that's both interesting and entertaining as well as easy to follow. As for my own theories, I believe that Hero and Claudio had a history together, at least. My take is that they used to be lovers or something, and then something happened between them, maybe Claudio accused her of being unfaithful when she actually wasn’t, and then Claudio went on to marry Olivia, and Antonio, unaware of the history between his brother and Hero, married Hero. It could also be that Claudio and Hero took up their romantic relationship later in life, when Claudio was married to Olivia and Antonio to Hero. The mystery surrounding Hero’s death sort of makes sense if you ask me. It can be interpreted as suicide, as staged death, as a murder or accident or just about anything. I like the ambiguous setting here, not knowing what happened and the fact that Antonio and the kids haven’t really gotten a closure as to what happened to Hero. I don’t really think that Antonio and Olivia had a thing together, but it’s an interesting take nonetheless. Reading Antonio’s bio: “Committed to his children, Antonio is determined to get to the bottom of his wife Hero's death. And what will be his role in the family feud that may have cost him his one true love?” I get the feeling that by digging into the mystery of Hero’s death, ugly things will be revealed and he will discover that she wasn’t who he thought she was. His role in the family feud could be “the naïve husband and brother who was unaware of the tension between his wife and brother”, or possibly even “the deceived husband and brother”, or maybe just “the deceived one” or “the betrayed one”, I don’t know. He could have been betrayed in another sense, or rather deceived, deceived to believe that everything was fine between him and Hero when in reality Hero was so unhappy that she committed suicide. Maybe Antonio saw that she was in a bad place mentally, and asked her to open up about it, but she refused because she didn’t want to burden him or want him to know about her history with Claudio, and ultimately, she killed herself, leaving Antonio devastated and determined to get to the bottom of why she was unhappy. Benedick’s bio is one I find very interesting. I also think that the has some repressed memories of his mother, but exactly what these memories consist of, I’m not sure. Did he overhear something? Did he see her have a mental breakdown about the whole thing? Did he see her with Claudio but was too young to comprehend the situation? Either way, I agree with you that Benedick seems to be very emotionally affected by his mother’s death.

[@letomills]

This is very cool to read, thank for sharing! I really like the theory that Hero was carrying a weight that she wouldn't share with Antonio and which led to her eventual suicide. Something that Benedick could have some insight on, but he's struggling to put the pieces together because he was, and still is, so young.

[@Jane155-x6d]

When I was younger my crack theory was that Bianca, the only one without a memory of Hero's death, was her in disguise. Of course, it's hard to believe given everyone's previous memories with her (which would bring the question, where is the real Bianca, and why is Hero so eager to pretend she's her husband's sister instead of reuniting with him) but I guess it opened up fun storylines.

[@letomills]

That's a fun one, I never thought of that ^^

[@meganrogers3244]

This was fantastic! Loved the bit about Hero's mystery. I found myself just glued to the screen. You did such a good job recreating a captivating story but then also analyzing and comparing it to the sims 2.

[@pinkcatacombs]

I rlly love the theory that Antonio was in love w Cordelia

[@gachahorror7925]

Yep because they realized a bit too late what really going on,has Hero was suppose to be dead after their accusations but seem all well that end well in the end.