The Upcoming Animal Crossing Update is a Huge Deal

Just as players had given up on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Nintendo rocked the fandom with some major announcements at the recent Nintendo Direct.

The news came in two parts: An upcoming paid DLC and a large (and final) free update to the game, available to players on November 5.

The DLC, Happy Home Paradise, positions the player as the lead designer of vacation homes on an island. This will allow players to fully customize the homes of villagers, a feature that is not available in the base game.

The announcement of Happy Home Paradise has garnered mixed reactions from the player base, with many unhappy with the $25 price tag. However, the game is a clear successor to the 3DS title Happy Home Designer which was released as a standalone game. Happy Home Designer still retails at around $30, so the price of Happy Home Paradise is somewhat unsurprising.

But beyond the DLC, Nintendo announced some massive updates to the base game. The changes are so thorough that the company is calling this update New Horizons 2.0.

This might be Nintendo’s smartest move yet regarding the Animal Crossing franchise, as players are already flocking back to the game in preparation for the update only days after the announcement.

Beloved Brewster

Fans of the franchise have long been asking for Nintendo to bring several beloved NPCs from past games into New Horizons, and they’re finally getting their wish.

Fan-favorite barista pigeon Brewster will join the roster of permanent characters on the island, along with the likes of Tom Nook, Isabelle, Blathers, and others.

Brewster’s first appearance was in 2005’s Wild World and has appeared in every main-title entry of the series since. In the upcoming update, Brewster will return to his café “The Roost” that’s often located inside the museum. Certain games have also featured a coffee-serving

minigame inside of The Roost, and fans remain hopeful that something similar will be implemented into New Horizons.

Players were disappointed at Brewster’s absence when New Horizons was released, and this announcement has been met with overwhelming positivity.

Gathering Gyroids

Gyroids have been a staple of the franchise since the original game. However, New Horizons featured only one: Lloid, the gyroid who collects monetary donations for community projects like bridges and ramps.

These partially-sentient statues look a bit like fire hydrants. Their main purpose in the games has been to sing, dance, and generally look silly and cute as a decoration.

In past games, there have been a huge variety of unique gyroids to collect, which players can do by digging them out of the ground. But upon New Horizons’ release, long-time fans of the series were disappointed at their absence.

For players who love the collection aspect of the game, it’s likely that they have found every bug, fish, and fossil available. The addition of gyroid collecting adds one more thing for players to find and catalog, giving players more tasks to do day-to-day in the game.

Finally Farming

While every Animal Crossing game features gardening in the form of growing and watering flowers, farming is a new gameplay mechanic coming to New Horizons.

The 2020 fall update gave players their first taste of farming, allowing them to plant and harvest pumpkins, but that was the only crop available. But the 2.0 update is bringing more crops to players' farms. Several vegetables appeared in the Direct, but there is no confirmed list of new crops as of yet.

Players will also be able to cook with the produce they grow, another brand-new feature to the series. This was not available with the pumpkins, which were only usable as crafting materials once harvested.

What we currently know about cooking is that you can cook, eat, and gift different recipes, but again, very little has been confirmed.

These additions were the obvious next steps for the game’s development. Many fans of the “cozy games” genre have turned away from Animal Crossing and toward games like Stardew Valley and Story of Seasons. The new mechanics will probably be the biggest reason players will return to the game—at least to give it a try.

The Nintendo Direct announced many more updates, including new villagers, new interactions, new (and returning) furniture sets, and much more.

This update is the biggest the game has had yet, and Nintendo is making it very clear that this will also be the game’s final free update.

For a lot of players, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a great respite in the early days of COVID-19. But it also quickly grew repetitive and stale.

The fandom has been expressing complaints for well over a year now, concerned about missing NPCs, the removal of certain gameplay aspects, and a simple lack of variety in the story and interactions with characters.

It’s clear that Nintendo has at least heard some of these complaints and is attempting to bring back players who have abandoned the game.

But this update also begs the question: shouldn’t many of these “new” features have been inside the game from day one? Many fans agreed early on that New Horizons felt unfinished.

Regardless of whether or not this was a strategic release or simply backtracking, players are still excited to finally get the content they’ve been hoping for.

As players who hadn’t picked up the game in months now rush to reset or remodel their islands, it’s clear that the 2.0 update is doing something right.