Hot Take: villager conversations in this game are actually Not That Bad

[-Blue-]

Maybe everyone's experience is different, but my villagers just can't be bothered to do anything but tell me what I did, what I am wearing, or what I am holding.

I also get one liner dialogue when they exhaust the above.
'Today is already fun!'
'Everything in island tastes great, Everything!'

I don't think it's just the dialogue, because NL was always ragged on for having the worst before NH came out. They're also holding out on the villager visits, requests are hard to come by and were cut, and hide and seek was replaced with treasure hunt. Those little things actually make a lot of difference, at least to me. It gives me more reasons to interact with the villagers.

 

[Lord Citron]

I’ve said this before, but I love NH dialogue. Imo, it’s better than CF and NL, and often on par with GCN and WW (WW was peak dialogue imo).

I have a ton of screenshots (which I’ll share later!) but it amazes me how, even 430 hours in, I still get new dialogue! I love talking to my villagers and I do it every day and pretty often. I know a lot of people dislike it because it seems repetitive, but all AC games were as repetitive with their dialogue. I play the older games often as well, and the dialogue is just or even more repetitive than NH.

GCN had great (and pretty dark/mean) dialogue but also a lot of it was tutorial-ish (which popped up even when you progressed through the game) or a lot of the time it had to do with villagers asking to buy/sell/trade/take something from you. WW was less like that but also super repetitive. CF dialogue was pretty meh and NL dialogue was a mess: the entire interaction with your villagers was basically running errands for them (get me this/catch this/fish that/ etc). It was so boring.

I’ve actually laughed out loud with NH and it’s reminded me a lot of GCN dialogue for some reason.

I really appreciate what you said about the dialogue being consistently repetitive across the series, because that's always been my experience. i don't understand why people act like this is a new thing, and there is only so much they can do to solve this issue. I am sad they don't put in more effort to address some of the other things people have mentioned here. but I'm willing to accept that they can only make so many lines of dialogue and the random nature of the game code can sometimes make conversations more bland, and other more interesting. totally agree that there are some hidden gems that give GCN vibes.

Post automatically merged: Feb 6, 2021

Maybe everyone's experience is different, but my villagers just can't be bothered to do anything but tell me what I did, what I am wearing, or what I am holding.

I also get one liner dialogue when they exhaust the above.
'Today is already fun!'
'Everything in island tastes great, Everything!'

I don't think it's just the dialogue, because NL was always ragged on for having the worst before NH came out. They're also holding out on the villager visits, requests are hard to come by and were cut, and hide and seek was replaced with treasure hunt. Those little things actually make a lot of difference, at least to me. It gives me more reasons to interact with the villagers.

I totally agree that they need to bring back more things to do with villagers like more mini games, requests, and villager visits. and I'm hoping that villager visits would be given an update, because in NL the villagers would come over and just kind walk around and say stuff about your items. don't get me wrong i still enjoyed it, but I would like to get more out of villager visits if possible!!

 

[Raz]

I seen this already with my villagers. I think there is something you should know. Its the problem with the personalities. Like say if you have 4 Lazy villagers on your island they are all going to talk the same way. Also the villagers talking to each other it does happen on rare occasions but when I see it, I just seem arguing about the same stuff. Like for example. 2 of my Cranky's Apollo and Fang were talking about who is more crankier and I just told them I like them both. Then the next day they talked to each other and they were again talking about who was cranky. So there's that.

The Point I'm trying to say is that even though you seen this dialogue in different ways its the problem having too many of the same personality villagers on your island that makes it repetitive. Hence the reason why I don't bother inviting too many villagers with the same personality because I already know what they are going to say. Its sad to say this because its so predictable.

And that problem is the same in every game of the series because of how villagers are ultimately just skins for the personalities.

Knowing this, if you chose to have more than 2 villagers of the same personality (as there's just 8 personalities and 10 villagers, you're forced to have at least two personalities represented by more than one villager), then you're just making the problem worse for yourself.

Ideally, there should be 10 personalities, so one could have an island with no repeated personalities. But that's been a problem for quite a while, well before NH was even announced.

 

[azurill]

I like the dialogue in NH. They used to repeat more often but lately I have been getting some new dialogue. They sometimes still repeat but I don’t think it’s any worse then other games.

Spoiler: New Dialogue

https://twitter.com/x/status/1358226047964045316

 

[John Wick]

I like the dialogue in NH. They used to repeat more often but lately I have been getting some new dialogue. They sometimes still repeat but I don’t think it’s any worse then other games.

Spoiler: New Dialogue

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https://twitter.com/x/status/1358226047964045316

The Flo dialogue has always been there for me with the snooty villagers.

 

[azurill]

The Flo dialogue has always been there for me with the snooty villagers.

Thanks for letting me know. I must just not have heard it yet.

 

[Mezzanine]

Deleted

 

[ThePondGirl]

When I originally typed up this post, I was gonna say that I don’t mind the new dialogue as much as I just want more varied interactions (more pings, games like hide and seek, deliveries), but then I started thinking about the fun little pop quizzes in WW, and how quirky and meta the letters used to be, and now I’m sad, lol. I get why Nintendo toned down the villagers- Animal Crossing isn’t a niche franchise anymore, and the new target audience is in it more for the town building than the social simulator aspects- but it’s still a shame. I have hope, though. Considering how good this team in particular is at adding content post-release (in both Splatoon and AC), I think it’s possible they’ll sneak in better dialogue some day!

 

[RoxasFan25]

And that problem is the same in every game of the series because of how villagers are ultimately just skins for the personalities.

Knowing this, if you chose to have more than 2 villagers of the same personality (as there's just 8 personalities and 10 villagers, you're forced to have at least two personalities represented by more than one villager), then you're just making the problem worse for yourself.

Ideally, there should be 10 personalities, so one could have an island with no repeated personalities. But that's been a problem for quite a while, well before NH was even announced.

Yeah I agree we should have new different personalities just to mix things up. Even if I have 8 villagers with 8 different personalities its so hard to find the right balance when there are only 8 of them and you are stuck with 2 villagers that have personalities you already have.

 

[Khaelis]

The dialogue in this game is indeed pretty great. My only issue with the dialogue in this game is you need to frequently speak with them throughout the day in order for them to start speaking about more unique subjects. Some people (namely myself) do not play for extended periods of times to see this dialogue.

 

[RoxasFan25]

The dialogue in this game is indeed pretty great. My only issue with the dialogue in this game is you need to frequently speak with them throughout the day in order for them to start speaking about more unique subjects. Some people (namely myself) do not play for extended periods of times to see this dialogue.

But the issue is that when you play the next day those conversations you already had yesterday get repeated again.

 

[Bilaz]

I’ve said this before, but I love NH dialogue. Imo, it’s better than CF and NL, and often on par with GCN and WW (WW was peak dialogue imo).

I have a ton of screenshots (which I’ll share later!) but it amazes me how, even 430 hours in, I still get new dialogue! I love talking to my villagers and I do it every day and pretty often. I know a lot of people dislike it because it seems repetitive, but all AC games were as repetitive with their dialogue. I play the older games often as well, and the dialogue is just or even more repetitive than NH.

GCN had great (and pretty dark/mean) dialogue but also a lot of it was tutorial-ish (which popped up even when you progressed through the game) or a lot of the time it had to do with villagers asking to buy/sell/trade/take something from you. WW was less like that but also super repetitive. CF dialogue was pretty meh and NL dialogue was a mess: the entire interaction with your villagers was basically running errands for them (get me this/catch this/fish that/ etc). It was so boring.

I’ve actually laughed out loud with NH and it’s reminded me a lot of GCN dialogue for some reason.

We’ve talked before in threads about this, so I’m just going to say 100% agreed.

RNG dialogue is always going to be repetitive in some way or another. That’s why other games opt for different options. Stardew valley has a set number of characters which each their own storyline and the Sims uses gibberish and symbols. Animal Crossing has always done its best and has never been perfect even in the old games.

I too play all of them regularly and I agree with you ^^

 

[bam94-]

I 100% agree with you! I do understand that the dialogue can get repetitive, but that’s been the same in every AC game I’ve ever played. I actually think the NL dialogue was much more stale than the NH dialogue. I’ve played NH almost every single day since release, and I STILL occasionally find new dialogue I haven’t seen before.

 

[DrewAC]

I think an issue for some, which is causing some to say that NH has ”poor villager dialogue” is the initial small talk you get when you speak to a villager for the first time in a day. The small talk is quite repetitive and, as it is true to the name of being small talk, there is little depth behind it. @TheDuke55 quoted 2 of the small talk dialogues I’m referring to if anyone needs an example.

Once you talk to them again, the conversation gets more interesting. I can understand the frustration behind it, though I still feel having small talk is necessary and realistic, as when we first talk to someone in real life, we don’t immediately go to the interesting parts of conversation. It feels far more natural to have small talk in the game. A bit of adjusting could improve it a lot though, perhaps through adding more small talk dialogue and ensuring villagers get to the interesting parts of their dialogue faster.

I recently played New Leaf again specifically to test out the dialogue and compare it to New Horizons. From my experience of revisiting the game, speaking to villagers in New Leaf would 95% of the time result in me being asked to do them a favor, fetch fruit, make a delivery, or schedule a visit. I don’t mind any of these things at all, however, it can feel a bit overwhelming when all I truly wanted to do was chat with them. It also makes it harder to bond with villagers when all I’m being asked to do are favors for them. The ones that did not ask for a favor would flat out repeat the same exact, lengthy dialogue numerous times, back to back.

 

[moon_child]

I still play my NL town from time to time and compared to NL, I like the dialogues in NH better. It’s no match for the older iterations of the game ofc (they really tamed it down since NL) but definitely to me, NH dialogue is better than NL in both in the sense of repetition and progression. My NL villagers still tell me how to take screenshots. It’s 2021. It makes me feel like we haven’t progressed at all in terms of friendship as opposed to NH where the villagers actually have memories. Maybe it’s just me but I’d rather have a villager repeat to me what I did yesterday than tell me a tutorial dialogue after years of playing. But then again, maybe I’m lucky because the dialogues I get from my NH villagers are crazy funny and rarely repeats so that’s why I’m in the minority in this debate. I do have the whole spectrum of personalities and subtypes though and I’m bffs with all of them so maybe that’s a factor.

 

[Bilaz]

I recently played New Leaf again specifically to test out the dialogue and compare it to New Horizons. From my experience of revisiting the game, speaking to villagers in New Leaf would 95% of the time result in me being asked to do them a favor, fetch fruit, make a delivery, or schedule a visit. I don’t mind any of these things at all, however, it can feel a bit overwhelming when all I truly wanted to do was chat with them. It also makes it harder to bond with villagers when all I’m being asked to do are favors for them. The ones that did not ask for a favor would flat out repeat the same exact, lengthy dialogue numerous times, back to back.

I did the same thing and got the same results in New Leaf :/ 4 times the same line, and the rest was favors and tutorial dialogue
Yes I've been playing since launch, yes I know I can build different sized snowmen

 

[Manah]

I have maximum friendship with six of my villagers. 5 out of 6 times they talk about things I've done or other context things like nearby furniture or visitors. And clicking through that doesn't help either when they get tired of talking before any interesting dialogue even has the chance to come up.

Yeah, maybe that's my fault for having more than one character, but better dialogue existing doesn't mean much if having more than one character essentially locks you out of accessing it.

 

[moonlights]

someone said it before me, but they absolutely butchered lazy villager's dialogue. literally any time I talk to a lazy, they say something related to the bugs in their floor. I don't like how they're portrayed as disgusting in this game lol.

but otherwise I agree with you, I'm always discovering new dialogue from my villagers, even if it's after I sift through the usual HHA/'today is already fun!' talk. I also think NH dialogue is miles ahead of NL, if anything both are equally as repetitive but in NH there's more variety.

also, the conversations between villagers can be really entertaining and funny, it'd be nice if my villagers would speak to eachother more often.

 

[nightglow]

I wonder if TT effects it.

 

[shiniki]

Personally, I enjoy how much the smugs and jocks compliment me. I get down on myself a lot and it just helps.