Animal Crossing: New Horizons will allow villagers to change their skin color and facial features at any poin𝔉t in the game for the first time.
Animal Crossing has always sort of been like The Sims, on🐻ly instead of being surrounded by people you’re surrounded by anthropomorphized animals. Which some people prefer, judging by the wild success the franchise has enjoyed over the past two decades.
The latest entry into the Animal Crossing series, New Horizons,♓ arrives early next year with a number of improvements. There’s a new crafting system that will allow players to make new furniture items and tools, there will be a new in-game currency that allows the player to purchase premium items, and for the first time ever, the player can be something other than startlingly white.
That’s right: you can now change your skin tone in Animal Crossing.
In an interview with game director Aya Kyogoku at E3, learned that New Horizons will have untold levels of player customiza♕b🎃ility.
“Right from the start, you’ll be able to choose the way you want to look,” Kyogoku said. “All the facial parts or hairstyles ♎are all gender-free. So you can select from a pool of hairstyles and facial features and then they’re also changeable at any point in the game. So if you feel like a certain way one day, then you can make that change pretty easily.”
Customizable player facets include hair and eye color, hairstyles, clothing, facial features, and the aforementioned skin tone. This means you could play a gender-fluid multiracial villager that goes around town helping out a bunch of animal people. This is the future that l🌞iberals want, a⛦nd Nintendo is unashamedly providing it.
It’s also interesting that Nintendo has a much better handle on trans acceptance than Cyberpunk 2077, a game about transhumanism a𒁃nd features trans characters (or at leꦆast, ) but still locks the player into the same male/female dichotomy.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons shows up on Nintendo Switch March 20, 2020.