Why We Miss When Animal Crossing Villagers Were Mean to Us

I promise its not just me

In March of 2020 Nintendo released a game for the Switch called Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH). Like many others, I was stoked for this game—I was literally counting down the days like it was Christmas. We were all still fresh into Covid lockdown, and along comes this new addition to an iconic franchise about hanging out with your neighbours and spending time outdoors. It was perfect.

But was it?

Once the fresh glow of a new Animal Crossing game wore off, and people were starting to realize that we might be in this lockdown thing for the long haul, I started to see a pretty common critique of the game. Put simply, our cute little animal neighbours were… being too nice to us.

For those who aren’t super familiar with the Animal Crossing franchise, we’ve gotta do a quick history lesson. Nintendo released the first AC game in 2001, titled, of course, Animal Crossing. In 2005 came Animal Crossing: Wild World, and then City Folk in 2008, and the last major installment before NH was New Leaf in 2012. My first AC game was City Folk, which also means it’s the best one.

The thing all these previous titles have in common is that every now and then you’d get read to filth by a creature that my ancestors would have hunted and roasted over the fire.

As a kid playing City Folk, I had a deep beef with a pink bear named Chow for saying mean things to me and being ugly. I’d write him hate mail and smack him with my bug net and pray every single night that he’d either die in his sleep or decide that the abuse was too much to tolerate and move away.

Now, fans of the franchise have noted that the neighbours (they’re canonically called villagers but honestly I don’t know why because the game usually refers to the place you live as a town…) get progressively a little less… let’s say savage? As the games go on. Some of the things that are said to you in the original are brutal.

And we miss it, for the exact reason why I had beef with (bear), why fans speculate that Tom Nook has a criminal past, why we get invested in any media at all. Because the npcs being mean to us was a source of conflict in a conflict-less game.

Animal Crossing does not have zombies to shoot or mysteries to solve or rivals to beat. It’s about catching fish and bugs and digging up fossils, making money to decorate your house, and filling out your museum collection. It’s also about making friends with your neighbours, getting and giving gifts to them, and playing games with them.

The villagers in New Horizons are cute… but they land so flat and boring. You know how AI chat bots basically compliment the human no matter what they say? The villagers are kind of similar—they’ve always got something sweet and lighthearted and maybe funny to say, and so they don’t feel like real characters—they don’t feel like neighbours I’d want to get to know better or fight to get on their good side or become friends with so I can eventually sabotage their life, etc.

Animal Crossing is what the player makes it to be. It has always relied on the players’ imaginations. It’s kind of like playing dolls but if the dolls were little animals and spoke for themselves and also there were bugs to catch. For there to be a narrative, for there to be the kind of intrigue and drama that keeps people hooked and playing, there’s gotta be conflict. I have to like one of my neighbours more than the other, but they’re all so similarly nice, that I can’t play favourites even if I want to.

New Horizons expands significantly on the gameplay, but the heart of Animal Crossing has always been, well, the animals. When the animals fall flat, the game does too.