Would you like if AC incorporated relationships and romance in the game?

[theplushfrog]

In my NL town, Cherry and Mitzi certainly acted like they were dating, with Julien hanging around them like a jealous ex and constantly harassed them both... Would I like it if they were actually dating? Yes. Do I think AC would probably have all the villagers be super cisheteronormative if they had dating in the game? Also yes.

So no, I don't really want dating in AC. I didn't enjoy in the past games when all the guy villagers hit on me or suggested I Liked them for just talking to them around valentines day... I just don't think the game is built to handle the idea very well. It's better left as a vague headcanon thing.

 

[~Kilza~]

No. I feel like any sort of in-game mechanic of relationships/romance goes against the spirit of Animal Crossing and wouldn't work well within the game and is more likely to hurt the game than actually improve it.

 

[ahbramey]

If they did it at all, I wouldn't want the human player to be able to date the animal villagers. It would MAYBE be cute to have the villagers date each other, but again I think it's not really what the game is about and doesn't really add anything meaningful to it. Plus like others have already said, the characters do sometimes flirt or hang out a lot anyways so you could read into it if you wanted.

 

[LynneFae]

i just feel like casual dating would be weird cuz... yknow. they're cute lil plushie animals. if they were to add other human villagers maybe it wouldnt be so weird, then again thats not really what the game is about.

 

[Darkesque_]

To be honest, I really wouldn't like it. It would make me feel weird, and it would ruin the innocence of AC.

 

[Bizhiins]

I think it would be cute and fantasize about certain villagers dating sometimes, but I don’t think it would bring the game in a good direction at all either. Reminds me more of Harvest Moon when it goes in that direction.

 

[mitfy]

it would for sure be a cute idea, lol. i imagine it wouldn't be too overt, but more like the best friend feature. you don't really know your 'status' with each character, per se. i could just see certain objects having like a "flirt" or "romance" value, y'know like if you gift a villager a rose or valentine's object they get the sense that you might like them. more you do it, the more your 'love meter' increases or whatever lol. dating a villager would involve them asking you on dates (go to museum together etc.) and interactions with them being much more frequent than other villagers. though i wouldn't think all villagers would be 'romanceable' because not all people will reciprocate feelings, already like someone else, or aren't interested in dating at all! i agree that it's not what animal crossing is about, so it wouldn't be like a huge part of the game. but i do think it would be a fun little feature for more villager interactions and relationships w villagers!

personally, i wouldn't really care. i'm aroace so..... lol. but i wouldn't be opposed to fictional romance! i simply like thinking about how completely new features would be integrated into a game.

 

[nightglow]

eh I would prefer it wouldn't simply because there would be people wanting dating and language suggesting crushes and dating between player and villagers which I wouldn't want and wouldn't have a way to opt out of it. I think what we are seeing now in the series is fine though. Such as how they did Reese and Cyrus or the suspected Flick and CJ.
I wouldn't mind it being a thing between villagers but I think the best route is to let the player make their own headcannons about that kind of stuff. Especially if they give us the ability to purchase or upgrade a villager house to have 2 villagers under one roof. That way a player can decide if they are a couple or just good friends or just siblings.
Considering all of this, I voted no simply because it needs to be done in a specific way in my own personal opinion and I would rather it be forever absent than done "wrong".

 

[Regalli]

Honestly for me the issue is how deliberately ambiguous the PC and villagers’ ages are. Cranky villagers are clearly implied to be older adults, as are sisterly and to some extent snooties. And clearly your characters are all old enough to move out on their own. But when I was a kid, I figured my character and the villagers were all 8-10ish like I was, and I could kind of gloss off any allusions to my snooty and cranky friends being Actual Adults. (While a 10-year-old with a mortgage sounds deeply dystopic to me now, and a kid that age living alone in a tiny shack horrifying, it’s not THAT out of line for a kid’s fantasy to live in a cheery town with a bunch of friendly animals and not go to school and do whatever you want, and I mean… Pokemon is right over there, saying 10-year-olds armed with fire-breathing lizards can go travel the world with no explicit survival skills.) As an adult, I look at the peppy and lazy villagers and still read them as younger, but generally as childish adults and not actual children. Not really because of changes in the script - though of course they have changed over the years - so much as the fact that the character designs where even obvious adults have big bobbleheads and the script leaving things ambiguous outside of special characters lets you project your age onto the player character, and villagers can be fairly projectable in turn. (Cranky and Sisterly villagers might be harder to read as anything but adults these days, but they’re also established as older than other personality types on the whole, so they can still be the cool adults to a bunch of preteens.)

All of which is to say, romance definitely implies a baseline age of AT LEAST early teens, at the absolute lowest any of these characters can be. When I was 8 I didn’t care about romance at all. I wouldn’t want my cute animal friends talking about dating each other, because I’m not interested and that makes it harder to ignore their comments about how they don’t want to admit how old they are this birthday that imply they’re actual adults. Some occasional gossip about how close Filbert and Tangy are is fine, and the special characters tend to have more defined ages so romance between them is fine, like Sable and Nook in Wild World or CJ and Flick now, but when self-insertion’s the name of the game and this is, ultimately, an all-ages game played at least as much by children as young adults (or at least it was pre-New Horizons,) I’d rather avoid romance to go super-vague. Plus, as mentioned, explicit romance practically guarantees heteronormativity, especially in a game Nintendo DOES still aim primarily at kids. If tiny didn’t-yet-know-asexuality-and-gayness-were-things me had no interest in romance, adult very-gay-very-ace-gender-is-very-complicated me has even less interest in exclusively hetero romances.

A standing friendship mechanic between villagers would be neat, but I wonder how hard it would be to code and how it would grow if you tend to miss villagers chatting with each other. They can do it with the player obviously, but there are plenty of ways for the player to actively increase friendship that you can’t really do with two NPCs the same way. I’d definitely like the next game to emphasize the social aspect a bit more again, but that particular mechanic seems like it could be REALLY tricky to do well with all of the factors in play there.

 

[Calysis]

I think if done well, this would be a pretty cute addition (imagine the cute coffee dates, the cute museum dates!!!). In the Animal Crossing movie, it was said that Whitney had dated Apollo, so dating (even between different species!) is something not unheard of in this universe. I liked this idea a lot:

I think it would be fun if it were like tomodachi life where you need to either confirm or deny the relationships. Someone could have a heart thought bubble and ask if they should start dating a certain villager. Then we could put the wedding items to good use and have villagers move in together maybe??

If we had it like this then people could choose whether to let villagers date or not. Just imagine seeing 2 villagers walk around holding hands with dialogue like "it's a beautiful day to take a walk by the sea with someone you love"

Breaking them up could also be as simple as one or both of them walking around sad or angry, them talking about their troubles when you speak to them, and you giving advice on whether they should work through their problems together or break it off. Could be something that occurs as often as villagers asking to move out (about once every two weeks?).

I don't know how I feel about villagers dating the player character, though. I suppose it wouldn't really matter since, as the movie implied, the villagers don't seem to care about species when dating. When I was a kid and playing Wild World everyday, I was dating Kid Cat in my head, so there's that. lmao.

 

[imorileo]

I actually voted no initially, but then seeing your description of it seems kind of cute! Like if villagers would ask you to give gifts to another villager they like. Cute valentines events! Kind of like Stardew Valley but just for the villagers would be so cute.

 

[Croconaw]

I also think this would give the wedding items more of a use. I imagine villagers asking you to design them a date night outside or in one of their homes, and you’d be able to help them out. A date night meaning with food, because we can cook now, and a few items to set the mood, if you will. Maybe you can suggest a type of movie they’d both like based on their personalities? It could work if implemented right and it weren’t such a prominent part of the game. I’d prefer it as just a small, but fun feature.

 

[Girlyliondragon]

Yes, lemme date Apollo or Sasha gdi.

Also I find people using the "they're animals" excuse odd because, well these characters are not even feral so it doesn't have the gross connotations they're suggesting, they're basically adult chibi furries (Even Lazy and Peppy villagers are, at worst, childish adults, I'm pretty childish myself and I'm in my mid-20s because screw growing up ). Like to each your own, but I've seen weirder. It's not like Nintendo has to make the PC and the villager they're dating kiss.

And frankly if it'll expand the NPC relationships between each other it'd be really cute as well. Imagine playing matchmaker with a pair of villagers for instance. One of them is too shy to give the other a present to show they like them so they ask for your help. Technically we DO have stuff like that but it's not in a romantic context. Or maybe even you come across them in convo and one or both of them are rather flustered around eachother. Unrequited crushes, mentions of them going way back ala maybe Childhood Friends-to-Lovers, all that cute stuff.

Alongside expanding friendship levels in general, let's be real the villagers are capable of romance as well, so let them show it ya know? Be it either major or minor.
"AC isn't about romance". Yes, but having a romance aspect in the game doesn't mean that's ALL it is gonna be if it was in the game. You can still develop close friendships with your villagers and be attached that way. Romance is always a SMALL subset of the relationships in these games that don't focus on it. It can be included without focusing too much on it. Hell, who says you gotta pair them up if they're crushin' ya know? Can always leave them be.
For friendships, maybe someone can ask ya to come with them to the cafe, have a coffee together and chat, maybe museum visits together, hanging out. It can apply to dates too like someone above mentioned, but for friendship stuff it can apply too. lemme go to more places with my villagers that aren't just their house!

Anyways PLEASE lemme date Apollo/Sasha.

 

[~ Shannice ~]

Nooo I love it the way it is!

 

[neoratz]

i'm not really interested in animal crossing having romance besides stuff like what we have with the special NPCs. something i find interesting though is the DS game that is heavily based on inspired by animal crossing, magician's quest, does allow you to date your classmates! @/windloft mentioned it on page 2. i read you can even date characters of the same gender! i never played enough to experience the feature, but for some reason romance feels like it fits better in that game than in animal crossing. maybe because magician's quest has more wacky/experimental features in general?

(speaking of which i would REALLY like to get into magician's quest, maybe i'll finally have some time to really dig into it and learn how to play over the summer)

 

[Lady Timpani]

Not really! There are other social sim games for stuff like that (Story of Seasons, Stardew Valley, etc.), I don't see the need to introduce it.

 

[Bok_Choy]

I actually used to ship Shari and Pietro- the monochrome/colorful type thing lol

 

[Nummles]

I don't think necessary dating would fit how the villagers act - however, I think of like a "best friend" scenario would be okay. Same kind of way you get like photos of the villagers we become the closest with.

 

[kusariyaro]

I’m not referring to anything dirty, just casual dating. I was thinking what it’d be like if villagers referenced dating or having feelings for another villager, or if villagers could develop crushes on the human character or other villagers.

Would you like if Animal Crossing incorporated dating in this game? I think it would be interesting and it could work if done correctly. What do you think?

i love games where u can date and romance is an option however i dont think it would fit animal crossing at all u.u

 

[Hypno KK]

I wouldn't want this because I don't think it would fit the game's tone, but I'd love a more complex friendship system. It would be awesome to be able to invite villagers to hang out with you or really feel like you're best friends with some villagers.