The Animal Crossing franchise has always been about player freedom and customization. Whether you prefer to spend your time meticulously decorating your house, tweaking your town/island itself or ‘choosing’ the perfect ten villagers over the course of many Mystery Tours (and/or Amiibo cards), the experience can be entirely tailored to each player’s preferences.
Sadly, while Animal Crossing: New Horizons was very generous with customization options, the series has taken a long time to get to that point. The original 2001 GameCube release had a lot to learn in that area, being very restrictive when it came to simple options like tweaking the player character’s face to gamers’ liking. Here’s the lowdown on faces in Animal Crossing.
10 Animal Crossing Customization: The Old Way
Titles like Final Fantasy XIV offer robust suites of character creation options. There’s scope to make truly elaborate and unique protagonists here. Or to leave most options at default as it’s too much hassle; that’s a common choice too. Animal Crossing, meanwhile, doesn’t tend to go to very much trouble there.
In New Horizons, the player can choose from a few pre-set options for their avatar’s facial features (and skin tone, finally). It’s very basic stuff, but franchise fans were grateful, nonetheless. Previously, there was no making a direct choice like this.
9 There Was Limited Control Over How A Character’s Face Turned Out
In some games, such as the Monster Hunter or Dark Souls series, fans can create elaborate builds for their characters, even incorporating their design and backstory into a sort of role play. Perhaps they’ll even have a distinctive scar, which was (in the player’s mind) caused by a notable fight this person had before the game began.
All of this despite the fact that armor, equipment and other gear will usually entirely obscure the character’s face. In contrast, though, Animal Crossing’s player characters are front and center at all times, meaning that it’s important the player is happy with whoever they’re staring at for hundreds of hours of fishing, fossil collecting and the like. Why couldn’t players simply choose how they looked prior to New Horizons, then, Nintendo?
8 The Player Will Be Quizzed To Determine Their Appearance On Their Journey To Town
How were a player’s facial features determined, then? By Rover on the first fateful trip to the town, that’s how. In Animal Crossing, Animal Crossing: City Folk and Animal Crossing: New Leaf, a curious cat named Rover will ask the player a series of questions (through a first-person point of view, as there is no player character yet).
These may seem like throwaway questions on Rover’s part (Kapp’n quizzes the player instead in New Leaf), but your combination of multiple-choice answers will determine much more than you might think.
7 The Questions
In the original Animal Crossing, Rover approaches on the train ride to town and asks several questions. Firstly, he confirms the time and date, the player’s name and town name, then it’s “So, tell me, why are you going to (town’s name)?” He then follows this up with “So where are you going to be living?” His last query is, “You have money, right?”
Again, this may seem unimportant. Just the player’s first encounter with one of the bizarre, adorable, anthropomorphic animals that call this series home. You might want to think about your answers and consult the all-knowing Internet before giving your responses, though.
6 Your Answers Determine Which Face ‘Type’ You Get And Where Your House Is Situated
Rover’s questions aren’t exactly the most probing, and your possible answers aren’t the most illuminating. When asked “So, you mind if I sit here?”, for instance, the player can answer “Please!” or “No way!” Still, as can be seen in this Animal Crossing GameCube face guide from JVGS, it’s all more meaningful that you may think.
Your unique combination of answers to the four key questions (outlined above) defines how the player’s face will look. There are eight different face styles, each requiring a combination like “Please!”, “I’m moving!”, “Leave me alone!” and “Just a little!” If that sounds a little complicated, the guide will instantly clear things up.
5 Your Last Answer Can Invalidate The Rest
Of these queries, the last can be a bit of a trick question. If players have their hearts set on a specific face in the fantastic GameCube original, they’ll have to be very careful to answer Rover’s last question, “You have money, right?” with “Just a little.”
Oddly, responding with “Oh, yeah!” here will cause the game to cancel the face that your combination of answers would otherwise have given you and select one at random instead. There’s really no indication that this is the case, making the whole process even more complicated than it already was.
4 Starting Outfits Are Randomized
Without consulting a guide, then, there was really no way to know how a player’s avatar was going to look. This could be super frustrating for those gamers who like to tinker with and perfect every little aspect of their protagonists in games.
Further compounding this problem was the fact that the outfit players’ brand-new villager start with is also random, regardless of the answers given to Rover. There were limited options available to change into in the first game, too, with only shirts essentially being available.
3 Emotions (Now Reactions) Were Villager-Exclusive
Once a player has finally gotten the face they wanted, they may be disappointed to find that they can’t really use said face to express themselves.
Sadly, Emotions (which have been renamed Reactions in New Horizons) were exclusive to Villagers and could not be used by the player character. This feature was huge for the town residents, giving them a personality that was really lacking in the first game (great as some of its villagers were/still are), but it’s a shame that player avatars couldn’t make use of them too. Still, at least some of the original crop of Villagers were true icons.
2 All Of The Features That ‘Made’ Emotions Were Missing Too
Naturally, the lack of player Emotions/Reactions also meant the lack of certain features that go hand-in-hand with them. New Horizons fans will be familiar with that warm fuzzy feeling that comes when a favorite adorable villager hurries over, sporting a new Reaction for the player to learn, but this wasn’t possible in the GameCube game.
The mysterious Dr. Shrunk, who had the role of teaching Emotions earlier in the series, was absent too. What could the player do with that cute face they’d painstakingly chosen? When all’s said and done, not very much.
1 It’s A Permanent Decision
It may seem as though all of this is too much thought to put into a simple decision like the appearance of the player’s face, but fans will want to be sure that they’re happy with how their character looks. There’s no way of changing this in the game.
Later titles provided options such as hairstyling at Shampoodles and eye color changes, but there’s very little the player can do to change their appearance in the GameCube game. With the limited clothing options, even simply covering it wasn’t much of an option.
NEXT: Animal Crossing: 10 Ways Villagers Have Changed Since The GameCube Original
