Oh, Animal Crossing: New Horizons – I’m so grateful for how you kept me and my wife sane for so many hours while we’ve been locked inside during the pandemic. What’s more, you’ve created opportunities to connect with my fellow ACNH-playing friends online.

While I’m aware that there have been many entries in the series, the first (and last) Animal Crossing game I played was the original on the GameCube. This was way back in 2003 – the GameCube being the first video game system I purchased with my own, hard-earned money.

Despite almost two decades passing, ACNH has retained the core attributes that made the original fun: gathering, collecting, decorating, and community-building. Obviously, there have been a great deal of improvements in gameplay and graphics. Unfortunately, there are some user-experience frustrations which remain.

Sure, players will often gripe about the antiquated nature of ACNH’s travel system (which has some frustratingly anachronistic quirks in the era of always-connected online play). However, I’ve got a different axe to grind today: how often we players spend mashing the A+B buttons to get NPCs to SHUT UP ALREADY.

A lot of the gameplay user interface for ACNH occurs through conversation with NPCs, which is rather unfortunate – because the niceties of polite conversation do not make for efficient interaction (as some of the neurodivergent among us will already tell you). When you’re trying to get a task done quickly – for any reason: needing to get back to real life; wanting to make way for other players during co-op play – characters who are chatty can make gameplay excruciatingly unpleasant.

So, if you can handle the irony of reading an over-long article calling out Animal Crossing’s most loquacious gasbags, then dear reader, you’re come to the right place.

Isabelle

Isabelle is one of ACNH’s more likeable NPC’s, coming across as sweet and hard-working. Admittedly, when Isabelle forgets herself and starts “prattling on about her favourite TV shows” (her own admission) as part of the morning announcements, the entire interaction only takes eight screens of dialogue. It’s relatively short – the problem, rather, is that you need to get through the announcements every single day you play.

The worst part is that you become so accustomed to button-mashing your way through Isabelle’s soliloquies that when the rare occasion arrives that she actually had something useful to say, you miss it entirely.

It’s a bit confusing that such an efficient, together-seeming individual such as Isabelle would decide that daily announcements are compulsory despite the fact that the majority of time she’s got nothing to say (see also: mandatory meetings) thus allowing her stream-of-consciousness to broadcast over the PA for the whole island to hear.

Verdict: Up to 8 screens of dialogue (daily)

Orville

*“You can help by reordering all of these dialogue choices… effective a year ago.”*

Orville at the Dodo Airlines counter ties into the broader problems with “travelling” and co-op play in ACNH. Like Isabelle, he’s also eminently likeable all on his own – cheerful and ostensibly capable – and certainly not as verbose as some of the entries on this list.

But also like Isabelle, his annoyingness is about frequency over time. Every time the player wants to visit a friend online (because if you’re using local play during a pandemic, what’s wrong with you?) they have to sit through at least nine screens, several of which require selecting the right response and providing confirmation. Why Nintendo couldn’t have patched “Online play” as the default answer early in 2020 is beyond me.

Nine screens also assumes that only one of your friends has their gate open, and that when you attempt to travel there isn’t interference – otherwise you’ll be spending more time talking to your old pal Orville.

Verdict: At least 9 screens of dialogue (whenever you want to visit a friend)

Blathers

Poor Blathers – His name implies that he’s the biggest blabbermouth in the game, but he’s not even close. What’s more, sometimes he’s just trying to teach you something (though when the lesson is about an insect some of his conclusions are… suspect).

If you’re providing a new donation and decide you want to hear about what you’ve donated, you’ll be going through fifteen screens, but you can whittle that down to eleven if you skip the lesson.

But Blathers isn’t innocent: his worst crime is making you sit through ten screens of dialogue every single day when you want to get your daily fossils assessed. You see, he’s tempted to acquire said fossils for his personal collection, but he must resist… for reasons…

Verdict: At least 10 screens of dialogue (daily, if you dig up and assess your fossils daily)

The Wisp

No matter how many times you talk to the wisp (or whether you slowly approach him from the front, in full view) your interaction is always the same. They mistake you for a ghost; they freak out; their spirit pieces go everywhere. Would you go get them, pretty please? After all the effort, you assume you’ll get something exotic, which usually turns out to be something mundane like a litterbox or purple-dotted wallpaper.

It takes eighteen screens to start the quest, and another fifteen to end it. Was it worth it? You be the judge.

Verdict: 33 screens of dialogue (weekly-ish)

Gulliver/Gullivar

Are these the same guy? They say they’re not, but I find this assertion highly dubious. In any case, I understand why my friends often choose to leave “the hungover seagull” languishing on their beaches. Because just waking him up is a chore. I’ve taken to hitting him with a net to provide a little catharsis as I accomplish that first part. Nevertheless, it still takes six screens.

When the trash-bird finally stumbles to his feet, you’re stuck sitting through twenty-two screens of dialogue (with various anxious reactions interspersed) before you can even begin the quest. To turn in, it’s another nine screens. And until we can prove that – just as Clark Kent is merely Superman with glasses – Gulliver and Gullivarr are one in the same, you’ll be doing his work twice as often as most NPCs.

Verdict: 37 screens of dialogue (weekly-ish)

Sahara

*“So I give you all my money and THEN I get to see what I bought? Sure, seems legit.”*

Anyone who has spent time in Able Sisters knows that ACNH sometimes seems to have something against players buying things in bulk (like every colour of that fancy new dress you’ve never seen before). Likewise, when Sahara arrives on your island, if you wish to buy everything she’s got, be prepared to sacrifice a solid chunk of your time and sanity.

Every time you talk to Sahara, she feels that it’s necessary for her to explain how her purchasing system works, how her tickets work, and how lucky you are to be her customer. Just buying ONE rug requires getting through SEVEN screens. Like the windy sandstorm, her oratory goes on and on, abrading away your life force one grain of sand at a time.

I won’t bore you with the rest of the math, but it you want to buy everything on offer, and use your tickets, you need to get through forty-two screens of somewhat-uncomfortable-stereotype broken English. It’s a chore – but if you want all those crazy rugs, wallpapers, and flooring designs, you’ll need to ENDURE Sahara quite regularly. This is what makes Sahara one of ACNH’s worst blabbermouths. But not the worst…

Verdict: 42 screens of dialogue (every 10-ish days, if you buy everything)

Which leads us to the worst offender:

Zipper

*“Zippity-zoopity, drumpety-droll! Come a little closer, so I can eat your soull!”*

Is it any surprise that the worst of Animal Crossing’s chatterboxes is also undisputedly its most-loathed character? Yes, it’s none other than Zipper – the deeply-cursed Bunny Day rabbit (Or rather, the unknown-entity-likely-wearing-a-rabbit’s-flayed-hide-as-a-skin-suit).

I don’t know if Zipper (who I imagine as having the voice of Iraq war veteran Todd Jacobson from Community) is meant to be intentionally creepy or annoying, but his propensity for rhyme drastically amplifies the wordiness of his dialogue.

Since I avoid time-travelling, I had to rely on YouTube gameplay videos to count dialogue screens. That said, what I saw was damning for Zipper. His introduction alone clocks in at twenty-six screens. Turning in a bunch of eggs for an item? Seventeen screens. Unlocking every item on Bunny Day requires several trade-ins. So, in total, you could easily be button-mashing your way through well over a hundred screens of creepy-rabbit-rhymes on Bunny Day.

Zipper’s only saving grace is that you only need to interact with him once or twice a year (he shows up the week before Bunny Day to introduce himself).

Verdict: More than 100 screens of cursed dialogue (one season a year, mercifully)

I haven’t played a full year of ACNH yet, so there may be worse offenders. If you feel I’ve missed someone who belongs on the Animal Crossing Blabbermouth Hall of Shame, hit me up on social media and I will gladly consider other contenders.

Notes: I didn’t count Tom Nook, since interacting with him is mostly restricted to early gameplay actions and tutorials – a lot of conversations you’ll likely only need to have once. All the counts above assume you walk up to the character and begin talking to them for the first time that day.

Special thanks to Andrea for helping me gather screenshots.

The Biggest Blabbermouths of Animal Crossing New Horizons