Is New Leaf's dialogue better than New Horizons?

[Darkesque_]

I feel like the NL dialogue is better than NH, but the older games' dialogue is the best by far. The way villagers would ruthlessly insult you was amazing, and I miss that so much

 

[McRibbie]

generally confused as to how NL's dialogue, which was mercilessly criticised for being repetitive and bland for a good 6 years at least, is now somehow better than NH's, a game where eventually, eventually they made it so dialogue's less likely to repeat, and while it's not the villagers sassing you 24/7 bonanza good dialogue is to a worryingly large amount of people in the fandom (it wouldn't be, it's an all-ages game and you're the freakin' mayor), there's a lot more colour to the dialogue than the more often than not bare, functional and lifeless NL dialogue. Gone are the days when Chow'd tell me "rumours are scary, aren't they" 4 out of 5 times with the occasional bit of reminiscing about his mum giving him sweet potatoes in the autumn for sweeping the leaves or finding beetles on the trees in the summer... instead, he's more likely to be talking about being useless with technology and throwing his friend's computer in the bin, needing to get his sense of taste tested because all snowcones taste the same, talking about how to grow good bonsai trees, reminiscing about how two identical twins swapped jobs or worrying about having a robot vacuum cleaner if you've got a dirt floor... which hits all of my good AC dialogue buttons.

Admittedly, there's a couple of things where I'll go "yeah, fair enough": lack of villagers gossiping about other villagers (it's worse than it was in say, Wild World, but it's there), and lack of small-event specific dialogue (in general I think the improved selection of small event items has to be applauded, but putting them behind Nook Shopping to make them easier to get worldwide kinda sucks, because it's the Switch! I can change the region on it if I need to because thankfully, Nintendo stopped region-locking literally everything! I can get someone else to do so and we can go to their town... in particular the lack of small event dialogue hurts April Fool's Day the most, given it's usually some of the funniest dialogue in the games)

I just ultimately think that there's a load of other stuff I could go "this kinda sucks" about with regards to villagers in NH compared to NL: errands being about as rare as barreleyes, on top of having less varied errands; the fact that villagers haven't got clothing styles they dislike so they'll chuck literally anything you give them on and the lack of moving out letters.

I'm not going to lie, playing NL again and looking at my old screenshots from when I played the game the most did throw up some interesting stuff there, but I just don't get on with it as much as I do NH's dialogue. At best NL's is on par with NH's and it's still an improvement on LGTTC's horribly broken dialogue system, when it's middling it's... also on par with it, because it could still be better in a number of ways. But at worst, it's fairly vanilla dialogue and it's one of the worst things about the game.

 

[g u a v a]

i think villagers came up to you for more varied of reasons than in NH, which made the dialogue seem more vibrant. the villagers in NH feel a bit vacant

 

[airpeaches]

I also remember the dialogue being very repetitive in New Leaf. Let's face it, it's a game with conversations where you are bound to come across the same statements over and over when you play often and for long periods of time. I'm not sure if I'd truly say NH is better or worse than NL. I feel like in NL you had more tasks which felt like conversations would vary a little more, but NH as a whole probably did have more variety in terms of regular, daily conversations.

 

[danmokun]

Bruh, the dialog I be having with the wall is better than New Horizons.

 

[monsieurberry]

both new horizons and new leaf have bad dialogue in comparison to gamecube and wild world, but new horizons is objectively worse. the dialogue in nh feels a LOT more lifeless than new leaf, not to mention how disappointing the instances of nh villagers having one sentence of dialogue is.

Strongly disagree. I feel like even on a sentence level the translation team for NH is just waaay more skilled and wittier. Their adeptness with modern slang is amazing. I find New Leaf to be super prosaic coming back and feel a bit cheated buying into this narrative that it somehow had better dialogue than NH. Very surprised so many people actively playing NL don’t agree because it seems obvious to me playing them side by side.

It makes me feel bad for the writers and translators because I can tell they put so much effort into NH.

Post automatically merged: Apr 7, 2024

I feel like the villager AI is significantly worse compared to New Leaf, which for me, also effects the dialogue. The villagers feel a lil less alive, and I barely talk to them lol

They're less like villagers and more like Pokemon to me

In NL they…don’t do anything but walk around lol?

 

[Hypno KK]

It feels more repetitive to me than it does in NH but also less bland. From what I've seen, the old games really did it best I wish they'd focus more on villager interactions again.

 

[kisaker39]

certainly, however the game with the best villager dialogue must be either Wild World or the original. at least, in my opinion.

 

[monsieurberry]

It is woefully incomplete but in case anyone wanted to see dialogue from games somewhat side by side, Nookipedia has a dialogue page.

Like I said, the games aren’t evenly or throughly recorded so it’s not exactly representative of great source…but it’s pretty much the only source one can reasonably access for almost half a dozen games lol. Just FYI!

 

[McRibbie]

It is woefully incomplete but in case anyone wanted to see dialogue from games somewhat side by side, Nookipedia has a dialogue page.

Like I said, the games aren’t evenly or throughly recorded so it’s not exactly representative of great source…but it’s pretty much the only source one can reasonably access for almost half a dozen games lol. Just FYI!

That reminds me, there's an actual website (with thanks to randomacman in the Nookipedia Discord server):
NL: https://acnl-msbt-explorer.aeonsake.com/

NH: https://acnh-msbt-explorer.aeonsake.com/

 

[-Blue-]

I think both are kind of the same, but New Leaf wins over for me because when I started New Horizon, the villagers just would not shut up about the stuff I was doing the previous day. It got so repetitive in that way that I hated talking to them. They might have toned down on it, but I played the most during 2020-2021 and that is where my experience comes from.

Hearing them just talk about me digging fossils, hitting rocks, collecting seashells, shaking fruit trees, ect ect got old super fast. 'Thanks for picking up seashells my feet thank you. I hope you left us some fruit. I heard a lot of banging yesterday, were you hitting rocks? When you wear something so much it becomes part of you'

They legit said it so much that I remember the dialogue. Take NL for instance, the dialogue is repetitive, but I can't really piece together one of the more repetitive text because its geared to the personality whereas them talking about what I did was not.

 

[Introspective Onlooker]

That reminds me, there's an actual website (with thanks to randomacman in the Nookipedia Discord server):
NL: https://acnl-msbt-explorer.aeonsake.com/

NH: https://acnh-msbt-explorer.aeonsake.com/

Can't believe I'm just now learning about these sources. Thank you very much. Wonder if something similar is available for the other AC games...

 

[McRibbie]

Can't believe I'm just now learning about these sources. Thank you very much. Wonder if something similar is available for the other AC games...

Asked at the time, unfortunately there isn’t anything similar for GC, WW and LGTTC as of yet. One day, hopefully. But for now, we’re just gonna have to open up emulators and make screenshots of anything good.

 

[McRibbie]

Strongly disagree. I feel like even on a sentence level the translation team for NH is just waaay more skilled and wittier. Their adeptness with modern slang is amazing. I find New Leaf to be super prosaic coming back and feel a bit cheated buying into this narrative that it somehow had better dialogue than NH. Very surprised so many people actively playing NL don’t agree because it seems obvious to me playing them side by side.

It makes me feel bad for the writers and translators because I can tell they put so much effort into NH.

Exactly! I genuinely don't get the argument that it's worse in NH. Maybe before they fixed it, sure. Maybe before they added more dialogue.... but can I get some proof? Somebody? Some screenshots? A little description of something? Because this is the kind of thing that generally needs a bit of in-depth looking into, because how on earth do we expect things to get better if we can't properly communicate or even understand what's wrong?