The Explanation
The New Horizons Companion Guide leaves an infuriatingly exciting note on the page detailing personality types- "each resident can have one of eight personality types, each with two sub-types". It leaves you with more questions than it does answers.
I don't claim to know everything about what's going on under the hood in this game- it's 100% possible that there are additional variables that might make the sub-types relevant. In addition, the tools I used to examine the game's contents were intended for Breath of the Wild (https://zeldamods.org/wiki/Main_Page), which does end up obfuscating certain aspects of the files. @_Ninji mentions an eventual release of a fork of one of these tools specifically for ACNH, so the entire mass files will absolutely be worth reexamining in the future with more personpower- I personally do not posses the binary wizardry to go into the raw info. Alas!
With that said, I am sad to be the first on the Bell Tree to announce that the personality sub-types affect only one tree of dialogue. Thankfully, it's an interesting tree of dialogue! Here's how we know:
Each villager has a parameter called
docs.google.com
At first there wasn't much to support the theory that the NpcTalkTypes were the sub-types, but the fact that there is only one variable associated with a villager that has only two options was compelling. Now we know that NpcTalkType specifically influences dialogue, though.
Animal Crossing manages the flow of character interactions with a system created inside Nintendo called EventFlow. There's no code- it doesn't handle the randomness or the actual selection of the dialogue- but it provides a literal flowchart for the game's interactions to follow. Therefore, I don't know when exactly this dialogue will activate, but it sits directly alongside the common villager interaction dialogue trees where it picks randomly for dialogue in specific categories- asking questions, the dialogue when you first interact with a villager, when you talk to a villager and they want something in your inventory, or just the basic interactions when nothing else is of note. These specific dialogue options could be common or rare- it's something that will have to be determined via reverse-engineering the game's code. But they sure do exist.
Here's the tree influenced by the sub-type, or NpcTalkType. Your game checks if your villager's type is a 0 or a 1- in the case of a 1, the villager pulls dialogue from the 'AlwaysA' category- if it's a 0, it pulls from 'AlwaysB'.
If you're interested in exploring these differences for yourself, check out GoogleBen's visualization of the dialogue CSVs. (Spoilers from here on out!)
https://googleben.github.io/ACNHDialog/
The relevant dialogue is under
There are a couple of lines differentiating the personalities that highlight surprising differences in worldview between the sub-types... but that's about it. The dialogue specific to each sub-type is definitely there, but, again, it's a very small selection compared to the rest of the dialogue for the personality types.
The Quick Q&A
Should I plan my island around the sub-types?
I would say no- just pick the villagers you like, regardless of their NpcTalkType value. The selection of dialogue specific to each villager sub-type is pretty small. If you're the type of person that lives for unique dialogue choices, it could be worth it, but it's really just up to you and not a huge deal!
Is this the same thing as villager interests?
No. Villager interests are not the same thing and as far as I can tell do not affect dialogue. Villager interests are fun, but they are associated with activities/movement- not personality type.
Is this why some villagers love to talk about bugs/being a popstar and others don't?
As far as I can tell, no. I expect reverse-engineering the game code to reveal more about the RNG behind the "cWildCard" dialogue selection, but it seems to me that differences in this general scope are RNG confirmation bias. Don't let this ruin your perception of the villagers, though- the beauty of randomness in this context is how it generates character!
In Conclusion
This is not the game-changing feature players hoped it would be. However, it adds zest to the world and really makes you appreciate the amount of detail in the Animal Crossing franchise! There's a ton of variation in the way each villager interacts with the world, and the few unique bits of dialogue is a nice bonus.
The datamining of this game is live and ongoing. Developments can happen in the future. (ACNH YouTubers that lurk this forum: don't include this in your videos if for some reason it's ever relevant, at least until the investigation is 100% mature (you'd be doing all of us a massive favor ;_; )
Finally, all of the information I present here I present through the lens of my digging through my own files and investigations on the eventflow files, but Ninji was the one who originally brought this up offhandedly (and was kind enough to let me know that dialogue is referenced in the BFEVFLs.) Ninji does a lot of amazing work and deserves your respect! Check him out on Twitter and be nice to him if you like the inner workings of ACNH.
EDIT: New- additional observations from Stoney on Discord. Check it out: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b2rrEIeNZKnQrvoyD4JtkKSNJs2VAHobCBGKSnO2A_o/edit
Important notes include the fact that subtype-specific dialogue only appears with high friendship, and that the villagers within the subtypes will have one or two possible hobbies out of the group.
The New Horizons Companion Guide leaves an infuriatingly exciting note on the page detailing personality types- "each resident can have one of eight personality types, each with two sub-types". It leaves you with more questions than it does answers.
I don't claim to know everything about what's going on under the hood in this game- it's 100% possible that there are additional variables that might make the sub-types relevant. In addition, the tools I used to examine the game's contents were intended for Breath of the Wild (https://zeldamods.org/wiki/Main_Page), which does end up obfuscating certain aspects of the files. @_Ninji mentions an eventual release of a fork of one of these tools specifically for ACNH, so the entire mass files will absolutely be worth reexamining in the future with more personpower- I personally do not posses the binary wizardry to go into the raw info. Alas!
With that said, I am sad to be the first on the Bell Tree to announce that the personality sub-types affect only one tree of dialogue. Thankfully, it's an interesting tree of dialogue! Here's how we know:
Each villager has a parameter called
NpcTalkType- it's a boolean, so that's either a one or a zero (two states). Here's the complete readout of every single villager with every single point of data associated with them: (ggs Astro on the awesome sheet)
NmlNpcParam - ACNH
READ ME 4/21/2020,hi this is astro im the sheet owner im changing this to comment only cause theres like 70 viewers as of writing this which is scaring me LOL and the doc keeps getting weirdly sorted and its nooot something im a fan of 4/25/2020,i have a habit of reordering columns so make sure...
At first there wasn't much to support the theory that the NpcTalkTypes were the sub-types, but the fact that there is only one variable associated with a villager that has only two options was compelling. Now we know that NpcTalkType specifically influences dialogue, though.
Animal Crossing manages the flow of character interactions with a system created inside Nintendo called EventFlow. There's no code- it doesn't handle the randomness or the actual selection of the dialogue- but it provides a literal flowchart for the game's interactions to follow. Therefore, I don't know when exactly this dialogue will activate, but it sits directly alongside the common villager interaction dialogue trees where it picks randomly for dialogue in specific categories- asking questions, the dialogue when you first interact with a villager, when you talk to a villager and they want something in your inventory, or just the basic interactions when nothing else is of note. These specific dialogue options could be common or rare- it's something that will have to be determined via reverse-engineering the game's code. But they sure do exist.
Here's the tree influenced by the sub-type, or NpcTalkType. Your game checks if your villager's type is a 0 or a 1- in the case of a 1, the villager pulls dialogue from the 'AlwaysA' category- if it's a 0, it pulls from 'AlwaysB'.
If you're interested in exploring these differences for yourself, check out GoogleBen's visualization of the dialogue CSVs. (Spoilers from here on out!)
https://googleben.github.io/ACNHDialog/
The relevant dialogue is under
TalkNNpc/B1_Bo/Free/BO_FreeA_AlwaysA and TalkNNpc/B1_Bo/Free/BO_FreeA_AlwaysB, using Lazy as an example. The personalities are as follows:| Lazy: B1_Bo Jock: B2_Ge Cranky: B3_Ko Smug: B4_Zk Sweet: G1_Fu Peppy: G2_Ge Snooty: G3_Ot Big Sister: G4_An |
There are a couple of lines differentiating the personalities that highlight surprising differences in worldview between the sub-types... but that's about it. The dialogue specific to each sub-type is definitely there, but, again, it's a very small selection compared to the rest of the dialogue for the personality types.
The Quick Q&A
Should I plan my island around the sub-types?
I would say no- just pick the villagers you like, regardless of their NpcTalkType value. The selection of dialogue specific to each villager sub-type is pretty small. If you're the type of person that lives for unique dialogue choices, it could be worth it, but it's really just up to you and not a huge deal!
Is this the same thing as villager interests?
No. Villager interests are not the same thing and as far as I can tell do not affect dialogue. Villager interests are fun, but they are associated with activities/movement- not personality type.
Is this why some villagers love to talk about bugs/being a popstar and others don't?
As far as I can tell, no. I expect reverse-engineering the game code to reveal more about the RNG behind the "cWildCard" dialogue selection, but it seems to me that differences in this general scope are RNG confirmation bias. Don't let this ruin your perception of the villagers, though- the beauty of randomness in this context is how it generates character!
In Conclusion
This is not the game-changing feature players hoped it would be. However, it adds zest to the world and really makes you appreciate the amount of detail in the Animal Crossing franchise! There's a ton of variation in the way each villager interacts with the world, and the few unique bits of dialogue is a nice bonus.
The datamining of this game is live and ongoing. Developments can happen in the future. (ACNH YouTubers that lurk this forum: don't include this in your videos if for some reason it's ever relevant, at least until the investigation is 100% mature (you'd be doing all of us a massive favor ;_; )
Finally, all of the information I present here I present through the lens of my digging through my own files and investigations on the eventflow files, but Ninji was the one who originally brought this up offhandedly (and was kind enough to let me know that dialogue is referenced in the BFEVFLs.) Ninji does a lot of amazing work and deserves your respect! Check him out on Twitter and be nice to him if you like the inner workings of ACNH.
EDIT: New- additional observations from Stoney on Discord. Check it out: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b2rrEIeNZKnQrvoyD4JtkKSNJs2VAHobCBGKSnO2A_o/edit
Important notes include the fact that subtype-specific dialogue only appears with high friendship, and that the villagers within the subtypes will have one or two possible hobbies out of the group.
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