Yeah, I ultimately think that the next game in the series is gonna be a tough one to come up with.
They're obviously in a better starting position with the next game than they were with NH, given there's now HD-quality models for all the villagers and NPCs, as well as a ton of furniture models, so we're more likely to get something that's more feature-heavy from the get-go... but I honestly don't know what those features are, or what the direction of the next game's going to be, because NH has simultaneously been the most popular and the most polarizing entry in the series.
We've gone as far as we possibly can with decoration, given if you're given too much control over things, it a) kinda makes the game very easy to just drop and avoid for ages on end, b) just ends up with a lot of people having the same villagers and the same themes, and c) at its very worst, kinda waters down what Animal Crossing is, as people keep building vast worlds of their own theme instead of using the tools to enhance the theme that's already there, as well as the simple fact that having villagers who are in some way subservient to you kind of inhibits their agency (as they now can't even leave without your express permission) AND their character (as they end up just having to praise whatever you're doing, no matter how ugly and overcomplicated it is, and generally suck up to you, their leader)... but on the other hand, I'd also think completely getting rid of it'd be INCREDIBLY rash, because it done well, a) enhances the world of AC and b) allows you to reflect yourself and share that with other people, in the spirit of interpersonal communication that AC is based around.
I don't think it should revolve around a city either, except if that city's a secondary location within the game (and even then, I don't want it to be a weirdly cramped and tiny location full of the NPCs that'd ordinarily visit you in other games. I want it to be a reasonably vast location predominantly full of brand new characters, or at the very least, characters that have a function that feels like it fits in a city), and I definitely don't want biomes, because to me, Animal Crossing is a rural village in a land that's ambiguously (or less ambiguously, depending on the version) Japan that functions in real time, not just "you move into a place where cute animals live!". That's the kind of thing an AC knockoff does, and if done in actual AC, smacks of being so desperate to innovate you kind of forget what the point of your game is (seriously, city and biome people, what about the fish and bugs and fossils?). Biomes just sound like, once again, we're trying to avoid the real-time feature of the game, which as a fan of real time clocks in games, pains me (seriously, to both AC devs and AC fans, could you stop undermining this pls?)
But at the same time, I don't want it to treat NH as a failure, either. I don't want it to just seem like a rehash of an older game with a little extra added, I don't want it to just be a tribute act to every other AC game in existence, and I definitely don't want to just brute-force implement features from NH into older games with no consideration for if they belong or not (yes, having utter dominion over your village, its inhabitants and terrain and how it works and having villagers be mean to you constantly are totally compatible concepts, please tell me more about how Nintendo should listen to AC fandom more!)
That's why I'm just gonna take a back seat for a while and wait to see what happens. The next AC game isn't too far off, imo, and I'll inevitably get sucked into yet another extremely polarised debate about it where everything is treated as bad about it when that happens
They're obviously in a better starting position with the next game than they were with NH, given there's now HD-quality models for all the villagers and NPCs, as well as a ton of furniture models, so we're more likely to get something that's more feature-heavy from the get-go... but I honestly don't know what those features are, or what the direction of the next game's going to be, because NH has simultaneously been the most popular and the most polarizing entry in the series.
We've gone as far as we possibly can with decoration, given if you're given too much control over things, it a) kinda makes the game very easy to just drop and avoid for ages on end, b) just ends up with a lot of people having the same villagers and the same themes, and c) at its very worst, kinda waters down what Animal Crossing is, as people keep building vast worlds of their own theme instead of using the tools to enhance the theme that's already there, as well as the simple fact that having villagers who are in some way subservient to you kind of inhibits their agency (as they now can't even leave without your express permission) AND their character (as they end up just having to praise whatever you're doing, no matter how ugly and overcomplicated it is, and generally suck up to you, their leader)... but on the other hand, I'd also think completely getting rid of it'd be INCREDIBLY rash, because it done well, a) enhances the world of AC and b) allows you to reflect yourself and share that with other people, in the spirit of interpersonal communication that AC is based around.
I don't think it should revolve around a city either, except if that city's a secondary location within the game (and even then, I don't want it to be a weirdly cramped and tiny location full of the NPCs that'd ordinarily visit you in other games. I want it to be a reasonably vast location predominantly full of brand new characters, or at the very least, characters that have a function that feels like it fits in a city), and I definitely don't want biomes, because to me, Animal Crossing is a rural village in a land that's ambiguously (or less ambiguously, depending on the version) Japan that functions in real time, not just "you move into a place where cute animals live!". That's the kind of thing an AC knockoff does, and if done in actual AC, smacks of being so desperate to innovate you kind of forget what the point of your game is (seriously, city and biome people, what about the fish and bugs and fossils?). Biomes just sound like, once again, we're trying to avoid the real-time feature of the game, which as a fan of real time clocks in games, pains me (seriously, to both AC devs and AC fans, could you stop undermining this pls?)
But at the same time, I don't want it to treat NH as a failure, either. I don't want it to just seem like a rehash of an older game with a little extra added, I don't want it to just be a tribute act to every other AC game in existence, and I definitely don't want to just brute-force implement features from NH into older games with no consideration for if they belong or not (yes, having utter dominion over your village, its inhabitants and terrain and how it works and having villagers be mean to you constantly are totally compatible concepts, please tell me more about how Nintendo should listen to AC fandom more!)
That's why I'm just gonna take a back seat for a while and wait to see what happens. The next AC game isn't too far off, imo, and I'll inevitably get sucked into yet another extremely polarised debate about it where everything is treated as bad about it when that happens
