Highlights

  • Animal Crossing: New Horizons prioritizes customization, allowing players to design their ideal appearance and environment.
  • Customizable villagers could be the next big step for Animal Crossing, offering even more player choice and self-expression.
  • Introducing custom-made villagers should be done with caution, though, balancing player control with the appeal of familiar characters.

Animal Crossing has continued to establish itself as a staple of Nintendo's library. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is one of the best-selling titles on the Nintendo Switch, with the series continuing its longstanding appeal as a cozy getaway to town management. One of the most powerful tools in Animal Crossing's arsenal is customization, and this feature has only gained more depth over time.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons features arguably more customization than ever before, and the next Animal Crossing game is likely to continue this trend. However, despite each game adding more and more features to customize the player character and the world they inhabit, there's still one major boundary the series has yet to cross. The next Animal Crossing game may have the perfect opportunity to finally bridge that gap by introducing custom-made villagers.

Animal Crossing Blathers and Character
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Animal Crossing Could Finally Introduce Customizable Villagers

Animal Crossing: New Horizons Prioritized Customization

One primary AC feature that has diversified the experience of players is character customization. Players are allowed to design their unique appearance, and have gained more and more ways to change how they dress as well. This has allowed Animal Crossing to fully adopt self-expression as one of its primary focuses.

However, players are able to customize much more than their own appearance. Animal Crossing: New Horizons continued series trends of broadening a player's ability to mold their own experience. New Horizons introduced terraforming to Animal Crossing, which allowed players to customize the town they were managing more than ever before.

While players had previously been made to focus on decorating the town they had inhabited, now they could change the very shape of the island itself. Of course, character customization was as big of a priority as ever, with players allowed to create and adorn custom designs. In general, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was designed to bust plenty of doors wide open, but one major step has yet to be taken.

Custom Villagers Would be a Huge Step for Animal Crossing

Animal Crossing players have been primarily led to focus on customizing their own player character. As much as recent titles have improved a player's ability to customize their environment, the player isn't the only person inhabiting the town they manage. In fact, Animal Crossing's villagers are as synonymous with the series as paying off debt.

Villagers are the charming NPCs that serve as the civilians of the player's town. They come with all sorts of characteristics that make each one unique: style, species, and personality. New Horizons allows the player to let their villagers wear custom clothing styles. However, the other two aspects are just as important to a villager's identity, and are currently impossible to change.

Players already have all the power they need to customize their own characters. Allowing players to customize their very own villagers would be the next big step in making every player's experience entirely unique. Not only would they be able to create custom character designs, they could also apply one of the game's existing personality types, and make these custom NPCs come to life.

The Case For and Against Custom Villagers in Animal Crossing

One could argue that the existing villagers in Animal Crossing are a huge part of the series' appeal, and this is a fairly solid argument. After all, players have a much greater ability to get to know a character they didn't create themselves. Likewise, some players may simply not want to be in full control of all aspects of creation.

Not only may some players not want to have to craft characters from scratch, it would be disappointing to miss out on the return of fan-favorite villagers. For this reason, any experiment with customizable villagers should be implemented with a decent amount of caution. If a new Animal Crossing were to take the step towards players creating their own villagers, it should retain the villagers of previous games. This would be the greatest compromise that would ultimately lead to the greatest amount of player choice.

Animal Crossing has made multiple advancements in character customization throughout previous entries, and the series shows no signs of stopping at the moment. The next Animal Crossing game could be the perfect time to expand character customization even further by allowing players to create their own villagers. While there may be reason to tread carefully on such a feature, the character concepts invented by Animal Crossing's community show there is plenty of demand for such a feature.