Animal Crossing: New Horizons saw huge success through its diverse range of villagers, whose personalities made up the crux of their dialogue and actions. However, given how old the system is, Animal Crossing: New Horizons' successor could open things up even further to accommodate the sheer range of characters on offer, making them feel a bit more varied in their interactions with the player.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons featured a roster of over 400 villagers for players to potentially invite to their islands, including previous villagers seen across the series and a few new additions. Coming from Animal Crossing's first entry on GameCube to New Leaf, there were more than enough characters to accommodate fan favorites. While the sheer variation in appearance and animal type made each villager unique in their own right, their traits overlap through the series' personality system, so new archetypes are integral to ensuring these designs remain unique going forward.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Successor Could Include More Personalities
Animal Crossing: New Horizons' eight personality types differ depending on the villager's gender. Male characters can assume the cranky, lazy, smug, and jock personalities, whereas female villagers vary between normal, sisterly, snooty, and peppy. Personalities often explain a villager's behavior around the island, with animations tied to their groupings too. As such, it wasn't uncommon to see jock villagers lifting weights or peppy villagers singing along to K.K. Slider's music, as these actions were used as more overt demonstrations of their natures.
Though New Horizons made strong efforts to have villagers feel unique, including the use of certain hobbies, much of the overlap apparent through personality types felt a bit too similar. This was most notable through character dialogue. Given that over 400 villagers were spread into just eight personality categories, certain phrases would often repeat across those bearing the same archetype. If a player had duplicate personality types on their island, which was an inevitability if they made it far enough to reach the 10 villager maximum, they would often be hearing the same sentiments from different characters.
The last time new personalities were introduced was in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, where the smug and sisterly archetypes debuted. This helped to accommodate the amount of characters the player could come across, but even then New Leaf's roster was roughly 80 short of what New Horizons had to offer. New Horizons' successor will almost certainly follow in the trend, including upwards of potentially 500 villagers as both old and new additions are spotlighted. Because of this, the inclusion of more personality types may be more pertinent than ever to keep up with this scaling.
The sheer amount of dialogue present in Animal Crossing, especially New Horizons, means that adding new personalities would be no easy feat. With that said, the inclusion of two new types could make all the difference in furthering the diversity of villagers. If New Horizons' successor introduces a similar 10-villager cap for its environment, then having 10 total personality types would likely quell much of the criticisms surrounding repeat dialogue. Additionally, this would allow for the re-classing of previous Animal Crossing characters, which could work to balance out certain animal types that might skew toward a personality majority.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now for the Nintendo Switch.
