New Horizons Direct, Brewster “…and more!” - My Thoughts

Well, Nintendo did the impossible. They figured out a way to make me excited about waking up at 7AM for an event. Granted, it was a Friday, and all I had to do was watch a YouTube livestream in bed quietly, so it wasn’t a huge burden. 😅

Why was I excited? Well, a few weeks ago Nintendo announced that they’d be having an Animal Crossing direct to announce a hugely requested character would be coming to the game — Brewster!

This “and more” is doing A LOT of heavy lifting, as we would find out later.

Brewster is one of my favorite special characters from the older games (I primarily know him from Animal Crossing: New Leaf). A significant part of the AC community has been crying out for him to be added to the game. So naturally, when this teaser was announced, a lot of us were hyped! Little did we know…

At first we didn’t know when the direct would be. Nintendo said the direct would be in October, with the update dropping in November. October rolled around and we found out that the direct would be on Brewster’s birthday, Oct. 15! At this point, Nintendo was super trolling us, because all I was thinking about was Brewster, and maybe a few other additions, like gyroids which were closely associated with Brewster in City Folk, and perhaps some minor quality of life updates? They did mention the direct was going to be 20 minutes long, but that seemed short to me, so I thought they’d just go over The Roost and gyroids and some other minor updates in detail. 🤷‍♀️

Having gotten my hopes up too high before, I was keeping my expectations low. At least we knew for sure The Roost would be coming to the museum, as it used to be in Wild World. That and gyroids were all I was expecting. But I also was starting to get worried that perhaps it wouldn’t be Brewster, but a younger relative of his, similar to how New Horizons got CJ, Flick, and Daisy Mae, instead of Chip, Nat, and Joan. I mean, I was really wary of being super disappointed again!

Well, anyway, Oct. 15 came around and WOW did Nintendo bury the lede… Yes, they started the direct with the expected announcement of Brewster and The Roost. We saw our favorite special characters hanging out, having coffee, and can have coffee with our friends also.

The Roost will be a cute place to hang out with friends.

But then the direct kept going, which we ultimately learned was going to walk through features of the 2.0 update. Like I said, Nintendo buried the lede!

Right after The Roost, we saw Kapp’n and his mysterious island tours, which I don’t think was exactly what people were hoping for if Kapp’n were to come back (I think people wanted the ability to go to an island to play minigames like on Tortimer’s island in New Leaf. But I like the ability to get new flora and visit islands with different seasons or times of day (star fragment/wishing island? yes, please!). 

I wonder how this will play out against the current island tours that you can take via Dodo Airlines. I don’t recall the cost for Nook Mile tickets for those tours.

These new vines and glowy weeds are a nice addition… I wonder how often we’ll get new flora from updated mysterious islands?

(As an aside, there used to be mystery islands which had hybrid flowers. These hybrid flowers made it easier to breed the more rare hybrids, like blue roses (if your native flower is roses). These special islands were removed from the game for an unknown reason. I was lucky to have visited a hybrid rose island before they disappeared. I was finally able to breed blue roses from my hybrid island orange roses. I wonder if the hybrid flower islands will be back in a form with these new mysterious island tours?)

Next was an update to Harv’s island where the roaming vendors like Saharah, Kicks, and Redd could have a permanent (?) home.

This is going to be great for Redd, as I still haven’t completed my museum’s art collection. Also, it’s just nice in general to have access (I’d assume) to the wares from all of the rotating vendors on a more regular basis. I’m not sure if I’ve completed my catalog of Saharah items yet. 

Also, newcomers to NH were introduced — Harriet (hairstyles), Reese and Cyrus (furniture customization), and Katrina, (fortune telling). 

This felt like a call-out to City Folk (maybe; I didn’t play that game much) which had a separate shopping area you could travel to. Also, there were RV visitors to Harv’s campsite in New Leaf which this could be playing off of.

I wonder how Katrina’s fortunes are going to work in New Horizons… They used to dictate your luck in New Leaf, and give you a piece of clothing (IIRC) to wear to increase your luck.

The direct kept going, touting wishlist item after wishlist item. If I had tried to play an AC direct bingo card, I probably would’ve gotten bingo, perhaps multiple times. 😆 Instead of covering everything in the direct, it’s probably better that I call out my favorite parts. In no particular order: 

Gyroids

Gyroids are back, and looking really cute. I guess the mechanic for finding them is different from New Leaf, where you randomly could dig them up after a rainy day. Now you can find gyroid fragments which can be planted and watered, harvested a day later.

It’s so cool that they can be customized!

Ordinances

W00t, ordinances are back! The “night owl” ordinance to keep stores open later was my friend for New Leaf, since I’d play after work.

The other ordinance I liked, and instituted in my New Leaf town before I sadly stopped playing, was the “beautiful town” (or something like that) ordinance that prevented weeds from overtaking, and kept flowers alive. However, given how flowers don’t die in New Horizons, and rampant flower growth is kind of a problem when islands are left unattended, I’d love an option to keep flowers to a minimum…

Furniture Sets

Looks like a lot (all?) of the older furniture sets are coming back. The direct video showed rococo, sleek, and a patchwork-looking set which I’m not sure if is a new set or what. It kind of reminds me of a set of cozy furniture in Pocket Camp… 🤔

(I’m still hoping that over time, some items from Pocket Camp could make their way to New Horizons… 🤞)

The sleek set got a nice glow up for New Horizons… I didn’t really like how it looked in New Leaf. 😛

Here’s the patchwork sofa (futon?) which I am not sure whether it’s new. Also, the famed froggy chair makes one of its appearances here, showing that it can be customized. 🐸

I hope the sweets series makes a return! There are a lot of Gracie furniture sets that would be interesting, like the card set. 

Polishing

Related to furniture, in the Happy Home Paradise DLC, there’s an option for polishing furniture items to add animated flourishes to them:

There are plenty of old game callbacks like the stretching exercises in the plaza…

…and new features like added crops and cooking DIYs…

…that were packed into the direct. But what didn’t we see? 

We didn’t see a return of the barista mini-game, where villagers, special characters, and random characters from other towns would come in to order coffee, requiring you to remember each characters’ preferences. We also didn’t see the Brewster gyroids which you could earn by doing a great job at your barista job. 

We didn’t see quality-of-life updates, like the ability to craft items in bulk, buy multiple items from the dressing room in Able Sisters, or more streamlined special character dialog (i.e. talking to the dodo birds to fly somewhere), all of which would be great for improving user experience. 

There was no mention of possible expansions to Nook’s Cranny, nor did we see any sign of Gracie (who used to be on the top floor of Nook’s in New Leaf). 

I would argue that we didn’t see more about The Roost because this is something they want players to discover as they continue to interact with Brewster (as New Leaf players discovered). 

We probably didn’t see much about quality-of-life updates because they’re minor things that would kind of bog down the narrative of the rest of the direct livestream. I definitely expect that they’re coming with the 2.0 update, if not immediately, then over time. It’s not like the dev team doesn’t know that players have been complaining about this. 

And as for an expansion to Nook’s Cranny, it might still come, but may not be considered a “major update”. But I’m not too worried about this one, as the expansion to Harv’s island may address this.

Wrap-up

Well! This was a lot. Before I wrap up, I want to give recognition to the New Horizons developer team. Based on the huge drop of features discussed in the direct, it’s clear they weren’t slacking after the game was released, despite people complaining that the game was “abandoned” or “dead”. It is clear the dev team were aware of and working on the community’s complaints and requests, as a lot of the wishlist items will be part of the 2.0 update, in addition to new features. I really hope the AC community shows more kindness to the dev team from now on, as they are working in and through the pandemic just like the rest of us. And they’re still putting a ton of care into their updates, as true fans of the game would. #ThanksACDevTeam

Back to the wrap-up: I know this is a super long post. And I didn’t even cover all of the new features mentioned, or many details about the Happy Home Paradise DLC which was also announced in the direct. 

I’m definitely buying the DLC, since it will unlock more gameplay, more furniture, and ultimately more decorating functionality on our islands. 

I bought the Happy Home Designer spin-off game for the DS, but I didn’t play it much. And in general, while I greatly admire all the elaborate interior (and exterior) decorating that other players do, I tend to be a lot simpler with my decorating. That’s why I didn’t really talk about the newer features for decorating like partition walls, pillars, and accent walls, even though they are great additions.

It will definitely be fun to do some designing for our islanders and other characters. It’s something new to do in the game which will unlock more furniture (you can earn “Poki” currency to buy furniture not available on your island) and abilities. 

Oh yeah, I can’t end this post without mentioning the series 5 Amiibo card set that’s also going to be released at the same time as ACNH 2.0… There will be 48 cards in the set, including new islanders we’ve never seen before!

I hope Nintendo makes a $&*^-ton of these cards, because I do not want to have to fight annoying scalpers to try to complete the set. I already have 4 other series of Amiibo cards which I haven’t completed. 😒

Well, I hope this was an interesting recap/commentary of the latest Animal Crossing direct. I wholeheartedly recommend checking it out yourself (I’ve already watched it several times to absorb the content 😅). I look forward to seeing everyone’s reactions once the update drops. At least for a little while, a lot of lapsed players (including me) will be back and active, enjoying this major update. Unfortunately Nintendo said that it is the last major free update for New Horizons.

It remains to be seen what that really means for the game, but I think it’s a positive sign that Happy Home Paradise is a full-featured, paid DLC. Perhaps we will still see major updates to New Horizons over the next few years, but they’ll be paid instead of free. Given all the work that goes into the development, I have no problem paying if it means we continue to get significant updates on a regular or semi-regular basis in the years to come. ✌️