The situation is completely different. They didn‘t break conventions by intent (like the Zelda team did with both Skyward Sword and Botw) and since many people are wanting better villager personalities, resetti and things like that back (not to forget that the old and the new formula aren’t mutually exclusive).
Aren't they? The new formula's basically "you're pretty much instantaneously given dominion over the Animal Crossing world and encouraged to do what you like with the place", which doesn't feel compatible with the idea of having villagers warm up to you imo. That's more of a "you're a newcomer to an existing village that you have no power over, you're one of them at best" type thing.
I'd also say that they broke with conventions with intent in both NL
and NH,
there's a GDC talk from 2014 where NL's director alludes to BOTW doing the same thing to Zelda as they were trying to do with NL as well as a
couple of NH-era interviews where they basically say similar. I think NL and NH are essentially the AC equivalents to BOTW in their own ways in that they're trying to reinvent stuff after a massive Wii-era failure, and despite the fact I think in some ways NL is a better executed take on the Wii game, it's a massive reinvention of the series in many ways and it weirded me out during the NH Discourse Storm to see people treating it as basically just The Next Iteration Of AC (where certain things have changed for Some Reason I'm Not Gonna Look Into) rather than the "actually, this game is called New Leaf for a reason" it actually is.
(also Team Animal Crossing Hourly Soundtracks Should Not Have Synths, they’re distracting me from my peaceful daily life no matter how good they are, Nintendo).
Hard disagree, I don't think Animal Crossing's soundtrack should be purely Relaxing Acoustic Music To Chill To, because it ends up feeling generic to me (and stuff like HHD and Pocket Camp's soundtrack feels like they've just gone for a Generically Cute AC Sound.
It needs to at the very least be
jazzy and certain hours generally need a bit of
funk in them (6PM in GC and WW are both quite funky, as they should be! It's the hour a lot of people get home from work, time to relax!), and I also feel that the Roland 808's presence in the first couple of soundtracks gives it a little bit of a hip hop-style groove.
I generally don't think that Animal Crossing's music should be
predominantly synthy, but I think it should be using a wide range of instruments to give it a more robust and interesting sound instead of just "here's 24 hours of easy-listening music", and on top of stuff like guitars, pianos and electric pianos (but please god, if it's anything like 2PM NL or the house design from HHD, no Yamaha electric piano), woodwinds, strings, and world percussion instruments like the cuica and berimbau, yes, that includes synths. GC has that SC-88 cheese saw, WW's got plenty of synth bass and bleepy sounds in its hourly soundtrack, and NL's got that Wonderful Christmastime-type synth most prominently heard in 10PM... so I find this "no synths in my AC soundtrack!" stance kind of bizarre, tbh. They're synths! They're a very versatile instument, capable of being ambient and funky in equal measure. They absolutely belong in the soundtrack.
we used to have Full Immersion in Animal Crossing
staging an intervention for people talking about villager dialogue, because it's been
one week over ten years and people are still
only talking about mean villagers. Talk about something else, for crying out loud! There's lots more to talk about, and it ultimately sells your argument a lot better than just "villager not mean anymore, WHYYYYY" constantly because you're, y'know, actually giving examples of Good AC Dialogue. Weird letters from people like Hayseed Hilda and The Singing Bug Boy! Implied other locations like the desert Saharah's from or Boondox,
the scam to fund luxury goods for Tortimer town you send money to so that they can have stuff like food and arcades! The "these cute characters have actually had really shitty lives" backstory moments both WW and LGTTC had! Quirkier takes on familiar, real life stuff! This is all stuff
begging for a deep dive analysis to be done, but no, 7 million mean villiager compilations and the same tired takes wheeled out again and again (isn't it ironic?)
Could AI technology be utilized to give unique dialogue each time? Or is that beyond the scope for Nintendo?
Look, there's a load of things ultimately affecting AC dialogue. The fact there's now 8 personalities instead of 6, the fact that a good portion of dialogue now has to be "hey, look, furniture item, nice!" or "hey mayor, I love being forced to get up at 6AM now!", the fact that you can't really release a game like Animal Crossing in different years in different regions anymore like you could on the GameCube (or it gets spoilt in its entirety like NL did, a factor I'm pretty sure led to them using updates for NH).
I don't think using AI is the answer to them, because it's ultimately the lazy way out there.
I fear the discourse surrounding the next AC game will be as bad as TOTK’s
When it uses updates again (but now we're waiting for stuff that's in NH already), I fear hell will break loose. If it goes back to being a pure life sim (with some kind of hook) but now villagers move out on their own, they can move wherever they like and there's no ordinances whatsoever, but now villagers feel more rounded, I will feel validated but a different kind of hell will break loose.
