BY ROSA PRESTON

Animal Crossing New Horizons is unsurprisingly popular, and if you’ve read Kaine Ene’s story on one of the latest updates, you may know that there is a good reason for that. It’s fun, it allows the player to be creative, and it allows friendly interactions with adorable and/or sassy little animal characters. This is a big leap from where Animal Crossing first started in 2001. And it’s clear to many that there are a lot of changes from then to now.

One big change is the characters, which are a variety of animals, such as squirrels, rabbits, cats, dogs–the list goes on. For example, they’ve developed more hobbies and personalities to make each character feel more like an individual. But it’s not just traits, it’s dialogue. The developers of the original characters may as well have been exhausted parents venting about their kids when making this, because the NPC’s could be incredibly rude.

        (WHAT THE HECK BAARBARA!) (Uh, ok, good luck with that Fauna)

Thankfully, the dialogue has been toned down quite a bit, and the villagers now are much more friendly, and a little quirky. Speaking of toned down, while many things were added to New Horizons, there are certain things that were removed from the original games. Some were simple and easy to get over, like certain fruits you could plant or certain unpopular NPC’s. But others, the community REALLY want added into New Horizons, for example, minigames that were in the original Animal Crossing and New Leaf, such as hide and seek. Not to mention interactive items. As many know, you can get furniture items in all the animal crossing games, and in older versions of the game, villagers and NPC’s could interact with those items in a way that made the game feel more alive. But in the newest version of the game, you can still interact with items, but not as much as in the older games.

Animal Crossing New Horizons is pretty different from it’s past generations, but let’s get one thing clear. Many of those changes were well-received by the community, and some weren’t, and nothing is wrong with that. But what’s the point in complaining about things we do or don’t have in the new game? It’s better to just enjoy what we have now and the things that have returned. And soon, who knows? Maybe the developers of Animal Crossing will add much-loved features to the game, making it more (or less, for some) fun for many people.