Animal Crossing Villagers used to be Mean and Rude 

The animals in older games definitely felt much more alive. I remember watching two villagers get into huge fights in City Folk all the time. The drama was amazing lol

I think so they should make the dialogues according to the friendship level,it would be nice to see a villager avoiding us when we hit them with a net (it should affect them permanently

It's not that I necessarily want the villagers in ACNH to be more rude, but I would like for their dialogue options to be at least a little more diverse. Because right now each personality type has maybe 5 lines that they keep repeating, so it gets old really quickly. Especially if you have many villager with the same personality type.

I like the older dialogue, it gave them more personality and it was kind of funny.

I honestly thought people were exaggerating when they said the villagers were mean, but this is insane

I heard they got complaints from parents who's kids villages started off with almost entirely mean villagers in games prior to New Leaf, & that the kids felt like the bullying they got at school was just continuing in the game. But you have to admit that getting villagers to slowly like you was an activity in the game that occupied your time & also served as a goal. Now people just judge villagers by their looks & try to get them to move out.

What I wish nintendo realised is that while perhaps some kids would get upset at the dialogue, for a lot of us it made the world so much more real. I remember disliking some of the cranky villagers I had and would plot revenge on them by pushing them in pitfalls and basically 'fighting back' when I was younger haha. It's similar to pokemon rivals, where your rival would be rude but you'd show them who's boss. Sadly, all that's changed now. Everyone just wants to be your friend.

It's not so much that they were mean, but that they had their own personalities and opinions. They felt like real people that were actually worth getting to know. Earning the friendship and love of a cranky or snooty villager meant something.

I just feel like in the older games the dialogue never got stale because there was always something new. I don’t remember a lot of the same dialogue getting repeated over and over again which always meant there was something different about the interacting with the villagers. Also side note, I started playing animal crossing as a child. And I LOVED Resetti

Honestly they should just make a kids mode where it has friendly villager conversations and a mode for older kids with the rude villagers

I hope Nintendo eventually integrates a setting in which you can control how fluff the dialogue is or something because I do miss the sass that came from villagers and NPCs from older games 😂 it makes them more believable imo and shows more personality

I find it very unsettling that every single villager is friendly with you all the time in NH. I'd like them to be more... Receptive of my actions

I think it's less that people literally miss the old rude villagers and more that it's the only reference we have for villagers with diverse personalities. like I absolutely love how rude everyone is when I revisit the game, but I can't remember it very much from when I was a kid I just want villagers to feel real? ACNH feels like a simulator game where I have a line-up of animated dolls I get to fill my island with and then spam through the text every time I talk to them to upkeep friendship levels

I always said they should have an option to turn on mean dialogue. At the start screen there should be a setting for child friendly/only nice villagers and teen/adult friendly variety

I also remember villagers could be super mean to each other in older games too! Like sometimes I'd listen to them talk and one would get so upset that you couldn't even try to cheer them up because they were too upset to let you

one thing i really like in animal crossing wild world was the option to have more interaction with the villagers. You talk to them and then instead of just saying something at you, they ask you a question sometimes, and how you answer affects their reaction, positive or negative. I think even that little bit of feeling like you are having a conversation made all the difference in the world

Elijah: "I wrote a very heartfelt letter." The letter: "Buy stuff from Tom Nook, or else."

I actually kinda like Resetti’s character arc. He got so stressed and angry from having to dear with OUR BS that he had to go to the doctor to get it checked out, and even after the doc tells him not to engage, as it’ll only make him mad, Resetti still does! What a power move, man, but it obviously wasted good for his health, which is why he has a lower role in New Leaf and New Horizons. Probably suffered from stress-induced headaches back in the older games, maybe he still does. He was a little harsh, especially in a world that many use for escapism, but I’m glad that he knows that what he said was wrong! Excessive stress can really hurt people, both physically and mentally, and people need to know that so that they can ask for help if they ever get into a Resetti-like situation! It’s a good lesson to learn, and what Resetti said also was a good lesson, just taught wrong. I would LOVE to see him in the next game just.. chilling out somewhere stress-free where he can live his life drinking a smoothie besides the beach or whatever! He honestly deserves it after all he’s been through.

The number of times in Wild World when I accidentally didn't save and Mr Resetti would make me repeat a phase back to him and then not accept it even when it was perfect :') Also, I do miss Pelly and Phyllis because Phyllis was just funny to me as a kid and now I understand her pain lol

I like to think that with each game Resetti realized he had an anger problem and started to self improve before he went to anger management to improve his blood pressure and eventually with time and therapy got too old to keep blowing his top lol

I miss the old dialogue, because I remember it making it easy for me to feel things like friendships with the nicer villagers and rivalries with the meaner ones, that made the "social" aspect of the game so much more fun, interesting, and even a way of safely coping with and processing the bullying I was dealing with at the time as a preteen/teen. The villagers now are nice, but it feels like there is less actual range of diversity in personalities when everyone is nice, even the cranky and snooty villagers are just way too nice that it takes away from their crankiness or snootiness that made them stand out in the village, makes the villagers feel more bland, fake, and robotic than before. I think even thinking about what is best for kids, it's better to have at least a few characters who are a bit rude, because that helps to expose and desensitize kids to that kind of behavior in the first place, and learn to look past peoples' flaws even, since the villagers would become nicer over time to show that even someone who is rude isn't necessarily all bad. I think they could have kept at least a little bit of the snarkiness, because I can understand some things were really offensive like teasing mental disabilities or fat-shaming that can definitely be replaced, but most of the other things were fairly harmless teasing or banter you'd see on any kids cartoon or among good friends. In fact the old Gamecube commercial for Animal Crossing had a lot of this behavior with the actors complaining at each other or teasing each other's taste (but not going too far), in a humorous way, which is how I'd like the Cranky/Snooty villagers to be again. Like there is a difference between people who mildly annoy each other, and people who genuinely hate each other, and I think if they wanted to, they could easily balance it out so that it's not too offensive, but still a range of niceness/rudeness in the game to give more realism (which was one of their main selling points, the realism with how time worked, paying off a loan, part time jobs, etc).

In one of the older games, Rizzo and Groucho were two of my family’s villagers, and we actually grew super attached to them cause they were so rude at first but cooled down over time. It was like a character arc or something, I don’t know. We all really liked them. And then there was Rasher, who we all liked because we thought he’d be mean but he really wasn’t! And Static, who gave me a much similar experience of having a scary face so I expected a jerk but he was just fine. So yeah, I miss mean villagers. But I totally get them changing it. As a kid, I would’ve appreciated the villagers being nicer, I think. And of course, there was Mr Resetti. Who I was absolutely terrified of. I used to have nightmares about him. And it was my brother who kept quitting without saving, not me. 😅 And yeah… he made me cry sometimes.

I got called a filthy animal by HRA every day, even when I had one paper on a table. Either that or "your house is quite spacious". The most mean villager I got to know so far is Rhoda, it especially shows when she asks to plant flowers for her. Gracie with her "you look almost like a woman in this outfit! What? You're a girl?" could be an honorable mention.

What bothers me personally about the lack of rude commentary from the modern Animal Crossing villagers is that it's completely unrealistic. Nobody has friends that only ever agree with you and say nothing but nice things about you. Most people's friends love and support each other, but there are times when you or someone else will say or do something that creates conflict. It's part of the human experience. The old Animal Crossing games were all about community and developing relationships with people who literally couldn't be any more different than you if they tried. It was about moving far away from what makes you comfortable in pursuit of new and exciting experiences, just like when Katsuya Eguchi moved from Chiba to Kyoto. Nowadays the Animal Crossing games are more focused on making your own personal theme park and dictating the lives of your villagers, even down to buying and selling them in a virtual slave trade. There is no community, no personal connections, every villager is your best friend, and it makes me feel alone.

Now villagers are pretty much only: “bugs are my friends” “I’m a gymbro time to work out” “I’m a pop star” “I have no personality”

I still remember one time playing wild world and idk if I just misremember it, but in the german version, Resetti once said to me he's gonna meet his friend who is a boxer and train with him, and it was somewhat implied he was gonna beat me up

I wish that the villagers had more diverse dialogue definitely. I'd like it if they had to 'warm up' to you. I wouldn't say that I want them to be "mean", necessarily. I mean some sass is fine, but I don't wanna be bullied while I'm just trying to relax and play a cozy game

I miss the ”mean“ villagers, they were so funny to me even as a kid. And also we og animal crossing players are old enough for villagers to be rude or say something out of pocket.. it would love it

The older Animal Crossing games had villagers that were more diverse in their personalities and dialogues. Honestly, I miss those old personalities. Sure, the villagers may come off as rude sometimes, but that just adds to the pure beauty of the game. New Leaf, while improving on many aspects of its predecessors, did not feel engaging enough. The biggest culprit is the lack of diverse dialogue from the villagers. The villagers feel too nice to the point where the creators had to limit specific lines to make the villagers appear as friendly as possible.

i miss when they were mean bc it made them feel more rounded and it was funny how they would straight up insult you out of nowhere

As a big critic of New Horizons, what I've noticed is that the villagers will say the most generic quick little lines the first time you talk to them on a given day. "Great weather we're having!" or whatever. They won't go into somewhat better dialogue unless you really insist on talking. Since most people probably play once a day and only talk to them to quickly greet them when they see them, I'm guessing those generic lines is all they ever see so they feel like there's no personality and lose any motivation to talk more. But I've chuckled and seen a bunch of different lines so the dialogue is there, including snooty villagers being sassy and shady while referring to other villagers, it's just that they tend to say the generic stuff first.

Them getting mad at badly written letters was hilarious after I found out you can fill the whole letter with gibberish as long as it's FULL. If you use every character available they freaking love it. And on the Tom Nook uniform in the GameCube, one of the villagers gave me a new outfit for a reward and I got all excited but forgot to change back into the uniform before going back to Nook 😅 I loved going on with my hip hipness!

I think in future games they could ask what age group you are before you start the game so that they can optimise the dialogues based on if the player can handle mean villagers

It’s not just the villagers. I miss the shop keeps and other unique npcs being rude to you. I remember in wild world I pissed off Lyle and he bit my character. I was worried my character was gonna get rabies 😂

10:08 He does make you type a sentence on wild world, it happened to me after I got soft locked.

I miss the mini stories in Wild World.

i kinda wish they had an option in the current game to set the villager dialogue a certain way, so that if a kid or someone who doesn’t really like the old style of personality is playing, they can set it to be more tame. if someone likes the snarky responses and more complex personalities, they can set it to such and enjoy that

As much as I love New Horizons, it feels like all of the islanders basically kiss your ass. The pleasant vibes are nice, but the first three AC games had so much personality. One of the few left that don't immediately rush to you with open arms is Sabel who is pretty quiet and reserved, even a bit shy. She starts of basically ignoring you until she starts to come out of her shell if you talk to her every day. I love the effort you have to put in. It feels like one of the few realistic bonds you can build in NH. Her and Mabel have been my favorite characters for years. I'd love a balance of rude, indifferent and kind villagers/islanders. I could go on and on, but I already made this enough of an essay. Loool!

Then again they're probably scared of causing a scene and loosing their package in the new horizons since you basically run the place

honestly the current state of villagers makes them feel more like accessories on your island rather than neighbors who live alongside you

Personally I thought it was entertaining how they'd freak out, and also true to reality since a lot of people are rude and overreactive.

I remember as a kid, I used to actually enjoy seeing Phyllis. She, Redd and Resetti were my favs! :)

The thing is, rude villagers are necessary. I mean it reflects how real life is, most people are nice but there are a lot of mean people out there and it would make the game feel more realistic if it reflected this.

Honestly, it was better when villagers were more diverse ans had different personalities. I remember on New Leaf I had one neighbor that was always grumpy, but he was the neighbor that never moved. I grew to like having him around lol. His grumpiness was relatable at times.

I kind of miss having an arch nemesis in Animal Crossing, hasn’t happened since Maelle destroyed my hybrid garden in New Leaf or when in New Leaf Truffles moved into my town and then started bringing in all her pig friends.

I first got into Animal Crossing with New Leaf before moving to New Horizons and I honestly really miss Don Resetti, it made it feel like there was actual consequences for not saving and he sure did help remind me TO save my game

I kinda wish they kept the rudeness for NH. But have the player keep talking to the villagers and get to know the better and the villager would be nicer and nicer. But I can understand why they took the meaness out. Kids don't like to be yelled at, and people with depression, and at worst PTSD, wanna just relax and play, and not be screamed at by a pile of pixels that's named Dobbie.

I didn't like how everyone was so instantly nice and bland and .......perfect right off the bat. I LIKED how it took time to get everyone to like you. Now? A villager moves in and they're your best friend the second you talk to them. I liked how salty and sassy the villagers were. I LIKED how the criticised your clothes and asked you to change the town tune every now and then. Now they're just......bland, vanilla and mary-sue perfect.

I can't be the only one who likes the villagers being nice, right? I would love more varied and dynamic dialogue for villagers, but I don't think making them mean again is the right answer. Especially since, contrary to what everyone else is saying, in the original game they didn't actually get much nicer as you increased friendship with them. I know plenty of kids didn't mind, but personally, as a kid (like, 6-7) playing the Gamecube game I eventually just stopped talking to my villagers at all because it felt pointless if they were just going to be jerks no matter what. It was really upsetting when I was little.

I miss the old personalities. Everything feels bot-like when you talk to *the newer versions.

They didnt change anything. Its just that the translation was made more accurate.

I don’t want them to be like this and rob me like in the old games but even I can tell from New Leaf when I started playing AC to New Horizons how watered down everything got. I think they should start neutral and depending on your actions they grow to dislike and be mean to you or become close friends and nice to you. That seems like a fair compensation for both ends of the spectrum on character’s personalities. I was severely bullied the moment I started school to the point where it became physical and I had my clothes ripped off me and beaten until I was bloody and bruised as well as humiliated as I started puberty early in just one case as an example. It got the point where I was showing signs of depression at 9 and planned to not make it to 13. I am not soft and if I had to pick I’ll take bland and nice any day in my AC games over being bullied and even robbed by nasty characters.

I don’t want mean villagers to come back. I want villagers that have depth to them.

I remember GC was kinda mean, but I don't remember Wild World being bad. As long as you didn't abuse them, most villagers at worst had a mild quip to offer, but I also grew up with the early internet and bullies who both had far worse to say to me. Besides, if a villager got you heated, a consistent week of cold shoulder would send them packing.

WW villagers were genuinely a joy to talk to as a kid-i’ve always been really sensitive but for some reason i loved those mean ass villagers LMAOOO portia was my bestie cause I slowly won her over and the arc was everything 😭💖

You call it rude, I call it character. :P

Thank you for an excellent video and some doggone good memories. I loved the dialogue that the villagers had in previous games. I felt and still fel like it should be an option to be able to choose if we want it in the game or not just as choosing to build the Reset Center or not in ACNL. If it were an option, those of us who like the older dialogue in the game could choose a setting to have them where those who didn’t want it, parents or players could choose to opt out of the mean dialogue. That way we could all have it the way we like it in our game.

Thank you so much for this video! I enjoy watching and listening to your content while doing something else

Lol I remember annoying the hell out of Tutu, because I always used to get her in my town a lot for some reason 😂

i just bought one of the older AC games for my DS, excited to play it for the mean villagers haha

The older dialog was a lot better. Honestly, the funniest line I've seen so far is "I don't care who moves in! Just as long as they're really SUPER HOT, (catchphrase)! I'm talkn' HuNkAlIcIoUs! >:DD" xD

I want this rudeness to return

Bring. Back. Mean. Villagers!!! I need it. I NEED IT!!!

I got Chief in my Wild World town a few years ago. The first thing he said to me was how he wanted to mug Tom Nook, and he was generally just rude to me for a while, but he then started to warm up and even started saying things that could be taken as _flirting_ with me. I miss the old villagers. I dropped ACNH fairly quickly because the villager interactions are just terrible. Even ACNL had better interactions.

Back in the game cube days my friend and I would play the original for hours and one thing we loved was the villagers could be absolute jerks. To us, it was hilarious. We use to crack up at the dialogue. In new horizons everyone just seems so uninteresting and bland. Definitely felt that there was more depth with original villagers aside from the jerkiness.

New horizons definitely toned down the dialogues but the villagers still have some funny dialogue, especially with each other. I just wanted to share what I heard the other day It was between a sisterly and grumpy villager (Muffy and Apollo in my case) and it was just Muffy asking if Apollo was having any issues with his phone. He goes on to explain that he was taking pictures and can't get the film out of his phone. Muffy ended the conversation with "But there's no... Oh yeah, it's in there alright. Let's get you a rock."

the mean villagers built character

Man, I still remember how Lobo became my favourite. He called me snail-like because snails are cool, slow and snaily.

I stopped talking to my villagers because all the animals in acnh feel the same. Their assigned personalities don't even really make them feel different. They repeat the same thing and have the same animations. A Lazy villager will be just as energetic as a peppy villager. A cranky villager will happily wave. I choose where they live, when they can leave and even home they decorate their homes. I miss the unpredictable elements of animal crossing.

I feel like the newer ones have more canned dialogue that isn't unique. But the old ones did insult you for no good reason at all.

when i was a kid my pirated version of wild world would get stuck in the saving screen and end up not saving sometimes and i would have to deal with resetti treating me like i committed crimes…. it was stressing me out so much i even had a nightmare that he took me underground to the mole world

I miss the mean villagers too, but as a middle ground maybe they don't have to be mean but they have to be more interesting than the stale cardboard we have now.

4:12 "I think we both can agree you clearly don't deserve it. So, why don't you give it to ME instead?" Takes me back to wars for Raymond

I vaguely remember some things about City Folk, but the Tom Nook and not having the work uniform on was a blast from the past. I used to never wear the uniform mainly because the first time he got mad. And me being a little, "prankster", would do it when I started a new game just to see the dialogue.

The first first time I played animal crossing, it was wild world. It was sorta something gave me joy. Until I like lost my ds. I remember how rude resseti. The second one I played was the one for the wii.. I remember going to a flea market I remember getting all these games were nice . I sorta forgot all about these rude dialogs. It made me smile. I also played the game cube.. when I got my hands on one later this year .

I actually had a conversation with a villager in New Horizons that reminded me of the older games. So I feel like its still there but in different ways.

he absolutely did make you type sentences in wild world if you reset enough times. I was stuck apologizing to resetti for like 15 minutes 😭

I think it might work out if the villagers said something mean like they’re just upset without reason. BUT after they snap at you they apologize for snapping. Maybe even tell a tip on how to handle anger and have a meaningful end after the meanness. I think that would be great especially since children like the games and aren’t fully capable of controlling their anger too. It may teach them some ways to handle anger and how to make a meaningful apology for their actions, words, and deeds in their own lives. It gives us the witty depth of older dialogue while also providing cushion for those who may feel hurt.

During my GameCube animal crossing days, I time skipped to the point where I got to the end of Resetti's rants. He began to repeat his last few rants. But it got to the point where when I did save and play normally, he'd still show up! My all time favorite character

Personally as someone who's played the GameCube Animal Crossing for years and comparing it to the other games. I probably have an unpopular opinion in some circles since eventually some of the rude Dialogue can get annoying especially if you're running errands for one of the Villagers and just get insulted and do roll my eyes when that part of the game is held up the way it is in parts of the community especially since it's not like the Villagers can still be rude to each other during certain conversations just not towards you Personally

Resetti did make you type sentences in Wild World. I remember having to copy his dialogue, but there was also one where he forced me to write him an apology and he kept deeming it not sincere enough and making me redo it. I remember this because I ended up running to my parents room crying for help lmao. I miss that 😆

I just miss when villagers felt real, like a random stranger isn't going to just instantly love you, and they don't immediately love you in animal crossing for gamecube, but they sure do in new horizons. If an animal crossing villager just loves me from the beginning I'm not going to see that as friendship, i'm going to see that as an npc programmed to automatically love me and worship me. The best parts I remember about animal crossing is meeting a rude villager who was mean to me and actually gaining their friendship, I never experienced that with new horizons

Those OG AC days were incredible 😂 I might have to whip out the GameCube and see how my nasty neighbors are doing!

In my first ever Wild World town i had this Yellow Rabbit with an ugly mustache and a rude personnality, but after playing enough he became nicer and i started liking him because of that, had i been playing the more recent ACs i likely would've just ignored him until he moved out to try and get a cooler / cuter villager. I love New Leaf and New Horizons but since talking to villagers is the only thing i always do consistently every time i play i wish they'd put more thought / effort into it.

Oh god, as an Autistic kid who was generally very well behaved and had constant power outages, resetti made me cry so much that my parent’s threatened to take the game back to the store due to how much of a meltdown I’d go into when the breakers in our house were overloaded (which at the time was constantly). Finally whenever he did that fake reset it made me realize he wouldn’t actually do anything to your save files and I calmed down exponentially. Funny part; you can reset while he’s chewing you out and I wanna say 85% of the time his dialogue would recognize the reset mid-chew out. I’ll never forget my fave villagers from the GameCube game- Lobo and Kitt ❤️! I really wish the dialogue was a bit more varied in the newer games, I wouldn’t even mind resetti now that I’m older lol.

The GameCube version of Resetti scared me so badly when I was younger that I genuinely couldn't look at the screen or I'd cry due to how scary he was. Definitely pressured me into forever always saving my game.

If I remember correctly, if you tell Resetti your DS died, he takes pity on you. He still chews you out for being irresponsible, but he's certainly less unhinged

I started out playing new leaf a few years ago, and I wish I could've played the games with the deep/sad lore and drama but oh well... I can choose the villagers' tones when they talk, so Robin will always be mean to me in new horizons lol

They should bring back rude villagers. The dialogue would feel so much less flat. NH just feels like a snore fest when I talk to the animals. When I was a kid playing the gamecube version I was always excited to see what theyd say but now it feels like a chore to talk to them.

I found Resetti funny for the most part when I was a kid. The only time I got annoyed by him was when the power went put while playing and I got yelled at by him for it. "I didn't do it!" But on the whole, the brief amount I played the original AC I did not reset much at all. Honesty I think I expiranced his ragging lectures though watching my brother play mostly. I think the power outage might have been the only time he chewed me out, and sense it was his first lecture to me, it was his softest one. XD I mess him, he had great life lessons, and was a great character.

6:00 this sounds like a sibling fight always pull out the you "deserved it" card

And one thing I noticed is that the villagers won’t handle rejections well but in new leaf they toned it down

You did have to type sentences for Resetti in WW! It was hell for me when I got that dialogue because as a young kid I couldn't spell very well, let alone remember what he was saying. I remember taking my DS to my mom to get her to help me.

When i was a kid it happend so often that i've forgot to turn off my ds because of my adhd or and other stuff. I remeber TO THIS DAY this one situation where i got this repeat the sentence he said before with text. The thing is that i had big problems with writing and remembering stuff (i got my Diagnosis very late in life). So i sat there half an hour trying to type in this phrase he said before and just always failing. I was almost crying when i turned off the ds and took another lecture of this digital mole instead of staying in this limbo. Every time i see this mole i have to remember that day of 15 years ago lmao. I think he gave me lowkey PTSD

I miss when villagers used to get into fights

The game can't remember anything you did in your last session if you quit without saving, but it can remember that you quit without saving? This is concerning

its especially rude with the older games and their snooty and cranky villagers and its absolutely so sweet when they are actually your friends and they get so nice to you but only you, me and my boy apollo fr besties

Back when Villagers can stand up for them self. What an animal they are! Even Normal/Sweet villagers are savage: "You are so passive-aggressive. Get some therapy!" 11:02 Damn straight! This is what AC is all about! And that's okay to make mistake! It's life! 15:31 My favorite NPC. Her thinking dialogue is hilarious. Her french is Elisabec. Cranky and Snooty are my favorites personality type.

I recently played Animal crossing gamecube and i got shocked, i NEVER tought the wholesome game Animal Crossing is considereded nowdays used to have such dark tone ☠️ but honestly i wish they kept some of the mean if you did something bad like hit them with a net or something, it would give more life to the characters.

The dialogue you talked about, actually really upset me I don't want to be verbally harrassed in video games, as well as real life