Chronos314_XD
Most Likely to Die First in a Horror Movie
I know this type of discussion about Animal Crossing's writing has been done to death for a while now so if you're sick of seeing it I completely understand, but I feel like discussing about this for a minute cause it's something that's been recently on my mind after revisiting the older games like the first game and Wild World.
I feel like most people know what flanderization is at this point so skip this part if you already know, but for the uninformed, it's simply the act of when a peice of media goes on for so long and how a lot of elements of it over time are over-simplified or written to try to appeal to a more wider audience. This often leads to a lot of elements of things that had more depth and were interesting, into becoming bland archetypes of themselves that often miss the point of what the original intentions of that thing or character were supposed to be. While flanderization can be used to criticize the media as a whole, it is most commonly used in regard to things like characters and their personalities since when the term was made it was obviously used in regard of Ned Flanders from The Simpsons.
Obviously when something goes on for so long it's not like it's going to stay the exact same forever, and there's nothing wrong with trying something new or maybe trying to fix things that didn't work earlier on or didn't age well. Staying the exact same is how audiences get bored of your series. I mean, Animal Crossing litteraly had this happen before with the release of City Folk in 2008, where many people felt it was far too derivative of the previous games, especially Wild World. In short, is just wasn't able to stand on its own very well, causing a lot of fans of the previous games to get tired of the series, this major flaw eventually led to the next games in the series, New Leaf and New Horizons, trying to strive to do something different and unique for every new major entry going forward, and it paid off as New Leaf is considered the best game in the series, and New Horizons, despite having more flaws than the previous, is still a very highly rated game and is currently the best-selling game in the series with a still fairly large community around it. However, despite the fact that NL and NH are very well received, they have had one major issue that the previous games hadn't really had before, and it's the fact that the dialouge, one of the most biggest thing about the series especially considering the fact that the game mostly takes place in a town with characters that are essentially just dialouge boxes with a cute disguise, just are really not written as interestingly as they once were. With people saying the dialouge is just too bland and repetitive in recent titles.
Now personally speaking as someone who is a more recent fan who started getting into the series around 2020 with New Leaf and New Horizons, this didn't exactly bother me at first since I was unaware of the writing of the previous games and I was far more invested with the gameplay and collecting elements of the games rather than the character dialouge, but after playing all the mainline games in the series, I noticed a major difference about how the characters are written, not just the villagers but also a lot of the special characters as well, and it seems a lot of other people noticed as well considering as I stated earlier, this is one of the biggest criticisms I see for the later entries, not just from fans of the old games but fans of the later games as well.
I will mention that im not going to be referring to any characters who were introduced in either NL and NH, as unlike others they haven't had much time in the spoghtlight and haven't been around long enough to really have any noticeable changes, this also includes villagers in the smug and sisterly personality types.
Anyway, the main argument about the dialouge in the modern entries is the fact that villagers are far too nice and almost always talk about the same exact couple of topics depending on the villager's personality type, whereas villagers in older games despite already being based off of very simple character archetypes, they were able to be far more engaging and interesting. Now it's not like you can't write a nice character to be interesting, and it's not like you can't write a character who is obsessed with only a couple things to be interesting, but the reason New Leaf and New Horizons falls flat is simply due to the fact that they simplified basic archetypes into stereotypes of those archetypes. For example, lazy villagers used to be characterized as somewhat childish, slightly oblivious, and occasionally unintentionally insensitive characters, but they still usually meant well and usually just like to spend most of the day hanging around without a care in the world. However in later entries, they are now characterized into just being downright stupid and unhygienic, with the only things they really talk about at nauseum is food and bugs. Or for another example with normal/motherly villagers, who we're originally presented as caring and loving, and who would always try to be helpful and see the good in people, but that doesn't mean they were entirely docile and never stood up for themselves. Whereas in NL and NH, they are presented as overly friendly blocks of wood who only are interested in talking about baking and drinking tea.
Now onto the special characters/NPCs, while their flanderization wasn't as bad as the villagers as they were already fairly simple anyway since they were usually just tied to specific buildings or special events that usually served only a couple purposes, that doesn't mean they haven't had a noticeable change and that doesn't mean it's not an issue. While yes we wouldn't get a ton of background on special characters in older games we would always get small bits and peices that made them more interesting to learn about, whereas a lot of special characters now are just glorified menus made to fulfill the bare minimum purposes they are supposed to fulfill. With a lot of them nowadays just being seen as safe blank slate mascots and not actual characters. Really the only NPCs I don't think were super heavily flanderized were Tom Nook, Sable, and maybe Brewster, but that's all I'm able to remember as a lot of the other ones just never seemed as interesting as before. Also, in Wild World, sometimes certain special NPCs would have tasks where you deliver items to other special characters and not just your villagers, it at least made them seem like they had some sort of life outside of their job, whereas now they are as already stated earlier, glorified menus who are made to fulfill one purpose and one purpose only.
There's a lot of reasons as to why Nintendo may have made the decision to make characters more basic, but the big reason I think as to why is because of Resetii. I don't think I need to explain Resetii to people on here but in short, because of the way he was written to be very cruel as he was made to be a punishment for abusing reseting, it led to a lot of parents getting angry because of him and how he would treat the player, which is why in City Folk there was a warning about him in the manual, then in New Leaf where he was entirely optional, then in New Horizons where he's used for the rescue service which is a feature that I have never seen a single person need to use before, and because NH introduced auto saves, that means resetting or savestate abuse wasn't an issue anymore, and I think because of how infamous Resetii was it led to Nintendo being scared of any of the characters potentially scaring away or alienating an audience meaning they cut down most of the NPCs and villagers down to their bare essential traits, and made the writers write them in a way that is so incredibly safe that it wouldn't lead to them causing another controversy with overly sensitive parents like Resetii did back then.
I don't really know how to end this cause I think I got all my points down, so uh thanks for reading this if you read the whole thing for some reason and I want to say while I was very critical, New Leaf and New Horizons are still great games (New Leaf is also still one of my favorite games of all time lol) and I'm not trying to make it seem like the developers and especially the writers are untalented cause like I speculated earlier I feel like it was more of a descision of the company and the writers were just far too restricted to do anything interesting within them. Anyways I'm tired of typing and if I missed anything or made a mistake just reply with a comment and I'll see it probably, but if you just disagree with what I said and prefer NL and NH's versions of the characters then that's fine, I really don't mind.
I feel like most people know what flanderization is at this point so skip this part if you already know, but for the uninformed, it's simply the act of when a peice of media goes on for so long and how a lot of elements of it over time are over-simplified or written to try to appeal to a more wider audience. This often leads to a lot of elements of things that had more depth and were interesting, into becoming bland archetypes of themselves that often miss the point of what the original intentions of that thing or character were supposed to be. While flanderization can be used to criticize the media as a whole, it is most commonly used in regard to things like characters and their personalities since when the term was made it was obviously used in regard of Ned Flanders from The Simpsons.
Obviously when something goes on for so long it's not like it's going to stay the exact same forever, and there's nothing wrong with trying something new or maybe trying to fix things that didn't work earlier on or didn't age well. Staying the exact same is how audiences get bored of your series. I mean, Animal Crossing litteraly had this happen before with the release of City Folk in 2008, where many people felt it was far too derivative of the previous games, especially Wild World. In short, is just wasn't able to stand on its own very well, causing a lot of fans of the previous games to get tired of the series, this major flaw eventually led to the next games in the series, New Leaf and New Horizons, trying to strive to do something different and unique for every new major entry going forward, and it paid off as New Leaf is considered the best game in the series, and New Horizons, despite having more flaws than the previous, is still a very highly rated game and is currently the best-selling game in the series with a still fairly large community around it. However, despite the fact that NL and NH are very well received, they have had one major issue that the previous games hadn't really had before, and it's the fact that the dialouge, one of the most biggest thing about the series especially considering the fact that the game mostly takes place in a town with characters that are essentially just dialouge boxes with a cute disguise, just are really not written as interestingly as they once were. With people saying the dialouge is just too bland and repetitive in recent titles.
Now personally speaking as someone who is a more recent fan who started getting into the series around 2020 with New Leaf and New Horizons, this didn't exactly bother me at first since I was unaware of the writing of the previous games and I was far more invested with the gameplay and collecting elements of the games rather than the character dialouge, but after playing all the mainline games in the series, I noticed a major difference about how the characters are written, not just the villagers but also a lot of the special characters as well, and it seems a lot of other people noticed as well considering as I stated earlier, this is one of the biggest criticisms I see for the later entries, not just from fans of the old games but fans of the later games as well.
I will mention that im not going to be referring to any characters who were introduced in either NL and NH, as unlike others they haven't had much time in the spoghtlight and haven't been around long enough to really have any noticeable changes, this also includes villagers in the smug and sisterly personality types.
Anyway, the main argument about the dialouge in the modern entries is the fact that villagers are far too nice and almost always talk about the same exact couple of topics depending on the villager's personality type, whereas villagers in older games despite already being based off of very simple character archetypes, they were able to be far more engaging and interesting. Now it's not like you can't write a nice character to be interesting, and it's not like you can't write a character who is obsessed with only a couple things to be interesting, but the reason New Leaf and New Horizons falls flat is simply due to the fact that they simplified basic archetypes into stereotypes of those archetypes. For example, lazy villagers used to be characterized as somewhat childish, slightly oblivious, and occasionally unintentionally insensitive characters, but they still usually meant well and usually just like to spend most of the day hanging around without a care in the world. However in later entries, they are now characterized into just being downright stupid and unhygienic, with the only things they really talk about at nauseum is food and bugs. Or for another example with normal/motherly villagers, who we're originally presented as caring and loving, and who would always try to be helpful and see the good in people, but that doesn't mean they were entirely docile and never stood up for themselves. Whereas in NL and NH, they are presented as overly friendly blocks of wood who only are interested in talking about baking and drinking tea.
Now onto the special characters/NPCs, while their flanderization wasn't as bad as the villagers as they were already fairly simple anyway since they were usually just tied to specific buildings or special events that usually served only a couple purposes, that doesn't mean they haven't had a noticeable change and that doesn't mean it's not an issue. While yes we wouldn't get a ton of background on special characters in older games we would always get small bits and peices that made them more interesting to learn about, whereas a lot of special characters now are just glorified menus made to fulfill the bare minimum purposes they are supposed to fulfill. With a lot of them nowadays just being seen as safe blank slate mascots and not actual characters. Really the only NPCs I don't think were super heavily flanderized were Tom Nook, Sable, and maybe Brewster, but that's all I'm able to remember as a lot of the other ones just never seemed as interesting as before. Also, in Wild World, sometimes certain special NPCs would have tasks where you deliver items to other special characters and not just your villagers, it at least made them seem like they had some sort of life outside of their job, whereas now they are as already stated earlier, glorified menus who are made to fulfill one purpose and one purpose only.
There's a lot of reasons as to why Nintendo may have made the decision to make characters more basic, but the big reason I think as to why is because of Resetii. I don't think I need to explain Resetii to people on here but in short, because of the way he was written to be very cruel as he was made to be a punishment for abusing reseting, it led to a lot of parents getting angry because of him and how he would treat the player, which is why in City Folk there was a warning about him in the manual, then in New Leaf where he was entirely optional, then in New Horizons where he's used for the rescue service which is a feature that I have never seen a single person need to use before, and because NH introduced auto saves, that means resetting or savestate abuse wasn't an issue anymore, and I think because of how infamous Resetii was it led to Nintendo being scared of any of the characters potentially scaring away or alienating an audience meaning they cut down most of the NPCs and villagers down to their bare essential traits, and made the writers write them in a way that is so incredibly safe that it wouldn't lead to them causing another controversy with overly sensitive parents like Resetii did back then.
I don't really know how to end this cause I think I got all my points down, so uh thanks for reading this if you read the whole thing for some reason and I want to say while I was very critical, New Leaf and New Horizons are still great games (New Leaf is also still one of my favorite games of all time lol) and I'm not trying to make it seem like the developers and especially the writers are untalented cause like I speculated earlier I feel like it was more of a descision of the company and the writers were just far too restricted to do anything interesting within them. Anyways I'm tired of typing and if I missed anything or made a mistake just reply with a comment and I'll see it probably, but if you just disagree with what I said and prefer NL and NH's versions of the characters then that's fine, I really don't mind.
