In the first Animal Crossing game, players moved to a new town with nothing to their names, and they had to learn how to get by. Fans didn't have any friends that they knew that they could look to for tips on how to adjust. They needed to do it all on their own, and get along with the locals in the meantime. Depending on which piece of dialogue the GameCube title picked at certain points, they would either be perfectly friendly, or incredibly rude. The way that villagers could be rude to the player has since been phased out over recent releases, but at least some of it deserves to come back.
Over the years, the Animal Crossing series has slowly left the theme of players moving out and being on their own to sit in the background. While this aspect of the series still remains, it tends to get overshadowed by the game's interior design elements. Games like New Horizons preferred to let players slowly build up their own town from scratch rather than let them watch as everything came together with the NPCs. This might not be a bad idea on the surface, but incidentally, it has shaped how every player can interact with their villagers over time.
Things that Animal Crossing Villagers Used to Say
Back when Animal Crossing first reached international audiences, some interesting phrases would make their way onto players' screens almost constantly. Players would be called "insufferable wimps" and would actually be yelled at for entering houses uninvited, among tons of other things. While some rude dialogue options would come from things players can't entirely help, such as being stung by bees, some of these could be provoked by the player being rude first or being mean back.
However, due to how Nintendo tends to market its games, it doesn't take much for fans to realize why this was changed. Nintendo aims to make its games suited for all ages, and while Animal Crossing was rated E back when it was first released, the ESRB has grown a bit more strict over the years. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, for instance, was rated E when it first came out but was re-rated E-10 for its Switch Online Expansion Pack rerelease. Along with possibly avoiding a higher ESRB rating, Nintendo could have also gotten reports that the rough dialogue could have been upsetting younger audiences.
What Animal Crossing Villagers Say Now
The villagers players can get in Animal Crossing: New Horizons can still be rude, but it's usually played off as a joke or is kept for when the players eavesdrop on conversations between the NPCs. They go nowhere near the level of harshness that the GameCube characters did, and some loyal players can tell just by how they smile and accept everything that the player asks for. GameCube players meanwhile had to deal with random conversations that would easily swindle players out of Bells through small mini-games almost every day.
It could be said that the way that the villagers in AC were rude to the player gave flavor to its narrative of being in a completely new place. Villagers in newer games have almost become furniture for the towns themselves through the series allowing the player to customize almost everything about them. In some ways, this is great for the interior design part of Animal Crossing, but it also serves as a reminder of how only one part of what made the games so special has seemingly taken the entire series over.
The days in which players arrive in town and are told that they have to earn their keep are gone. It's most definitely less about learning how to live in the quirky, stylized town that fans stumbled into by chance, and more about making the player feel comfortable in their perfect happy little town. This was almost heralded in by the way that the villagers in the series became nicer and more forgiving. Now instead of the players' neighbors complaining that they've ruined their morning, fans can easily get the Animal Crossing townsfolk to agree to a full remodel of their homes for the sake of the player's village.
Instead of leaving behind Animal Crossing's attitude, however, perhaps Nintendo should try to strike a balance. There may be a way to make a game where villagers aren't too rude, but they're not overly nice unless the player has a good reputation with them. With the way the GameCube villagers acted, they tended to make many players feel like they were much more human than the ACNH villagers do now. Trying to toe the line between too nice and too mean may be difficult to achieve, but if it helps paint the image that villagers are part of the town in the same way that the player is, then it might be worth trying.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now on Nintendo Switch.