As Lauren wrote yesterday, Disney Dreamlight Valley is easy to get addicted to. The game’s building tools, art style, and seemingly endless quests and activities really make it feel like it’s the Animal Crossing on PC we’ve been waiting for.
I’m not a Disney fan and I’ve never played Animal Crossing, but here I am, spending hours in Disney Dreamlight Valley. Last night I looked at the clock around 1am and realized I was fighting to stay awake simply because I urgently needed to show Wall-E how to give a carrot to a squirrel. I’m an adult who hasn’t seen a Disney animated movie in years, and didn’t even like it as a kid, and somehow it was more important to me to show a garbage robot how to feed a rodent than to sleep.
I’m not saying I hate Disney, I just don’t have any personal or emotional connection to his movies or characters. Growing up, my main interest was Star Wars (which Disney owns now, of course), so meeting Han Solo or Luke Skywalker would have been my wish, not hanging out with Donald Duck or Buzz Lightyear. But I’m still probably going to spend all weekend making sure Maui likes the house I just built for him and having Scrooge McDuck swimming in coins like a feathered Jeff Bezos.
While I enjoy some of the characters in Dreamlight Valley, such as Moana, and I can tolerate Mickey and Merlin and that rat chief long enough to complete tasks for them or raise their friendship level, I’ve slowly come to realize that I deeply dislike to Mal. The first hour or so of Dreamlight Valley is heavily loaded with Goofy as he teaches you to fish and runs the seed stall where you can sell your collected junk for coins. Every time I hang out with Goofy, I like him a little less, and even if I don’t hang out with him specifically, he manages to annoy me.
Look, I get it, he’s a friendly dope, but he just has so much energy it feels like he’s sucking mine out. Yes, Goofy, I just bought some carrot seeds from you, but it’s not an event where you have to wave your arms and grin excitedly in my face from three millimeters away. You don’t have to dance just because I sold you 14 pieces of earth that took up space in my inventory. Calm guest.
My dislike goes beyond his personality. Even when I can’t see him, his presence can almost always be felt in Dreamlight Valley. He is often fishing noisily and constantly making off-screen hyucks and yulps and others various overload sounds while trying to land a catch. Besides, I’ve been there watching him fishing and the dude never catches anything, which somehow makes his boisterous efforts even more annoying.
Worse, when I’m fishing, he sprints up to him to look, usually in the right spot to block my view of the fish gauge, so I have to move the camera. When I catch something, he celebrates by jumping about an inch in front of my face. Everyone in Stardew Valley jumps, but step back, bruv. And because of what I suspect is an early access glitch, Goofy constantly notes that it’s raining when it’s not raining, and in the hour I played last night where it’s literally pouring, he didn’t say a word about it. Brace yourself, Goofy.
And I think this should be asked: is Goofy really a celebrity big enough for a major Disney video game? Disney now owns so much pop culture that there were definitely better choices. I’m not saying that Goofy isn’t famous, just that his star has long faded. He’s had two feature films, the last of which was “An Extremely Goofy Movie” way back in 2000. After that, all I see as star vehicles on his resume is a six-minute 2007 film called “How to Hook Up Your Home Theater”. “- wow, that sounds great – and then some short cutscenes about Goofy staying home during the pandemic. Yikes. How quickly did Mickey pass those projects along? Elsa would fire her agent for even pitching them. Goofy isn’t the first name on anyone’s phone book these days.
So why do I have to suffer from his incessant play? Why can’t I cross the peaceful, idyllic meadow without hearing his guttural, tense growls as he tries and fails to pull a fish out of the pond? Captain Hook could have taught me how to fish. Eeyore could run the seed stall. But no, I’m stuck with a humanoid dog that has the personality of a car dealer’s hot air balloon.
I’ve never played Animal Crossing, but I understand it’s possible to kick a character off your island, apparently by hitting them repeatedly with a butterfly net. As annoying as I find him, Goofy is a good natured guy and I really don’t want to hit him with anything. But if I could escort him to Moana’s canoe, push him gently into the sea with my foot, and watch him float slowly over the horizon, his hyyuks and yulps getting weaker and weaker, I’d be very happy about that. I might even play hooky for a while.
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