In March 2020 the latest title in the Animal Crossing series, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, was released. I wrote an article extensively covering characters and features which were absent or had been added to New Horizons compared to other titles. Since then, many missing features have been added to the game, culminating in the most recent update last Thursday.

The Nov. 5 update brought several missing characters back to New Horizons, while also adding new features to the game. On the second page of this article, I will be cataloging and discussing each change in the update, but on this page I’ll focus on my main point: what took them so long?

Many parts of this update brought back Animal Crossing: New Leaf features and characters that players have been begging for since day one. Kapp’n and Brewster, the gyroids and the mechanic where villagers will visit your house all fit perfectly into the game, but they fit too perfectly. Kapp’n just happens to park his boat at the dock that’s been on the island since the game was released? The gyroids can be dug up just as naturally as they were in New Leaf? The ordinance mechanic just perfectly slots into the main game with no problem? Heck, why did it take them so long to put Froggy Chair back in the game?

While some of the new features (such as the Co-Op) clearly took time to create and implement, there are many features that were missing from the original New Horizons that seem like they were an easy job to put back in. It’s obvious some of these features were being held on to, delayed for a later release. But why?

When New Horizons was released, Nintendo announced that it would release new updates for the game over the course of a few years. This drip-feeding update process forced players to wait for certain events – in other words, they couldn’t time-travel to November to play the Turkey Day event, they had to wait for the Turkey Day update to release in November of 2020. The benefits of this slow release method are debatable.

Slowly releasing pieces of the game ensures that players will hang onto the game for longer. If you’re a completionist who wants to get every single item in the game, you’ll play until all the updates come out so you can get every item. If you’re like me and you only pick up the game when there’s a major update, that still works – after all, you’re still picking up the game. But it also means waiting for months for parts of the game to be playable.

Most video games can be played in one sitting, depending on your stamina level. If I had the time and energy I could probably play through all of Yakuza 0 in one go without having to wait for updates. But after playing New Horizons for almost two years, it’s clear that the game just doesn’t work that way. New Horizons is a game with such repetitive dialogue and gameplay that you’re almost punished for playing daily. I’m sure those of us who played the game from day one can remember when we first hit the burnout point after playing daily for months. (For me, it was mid-July.)

I’m glad to finally have the missing content back, and I’m still finding new and interesting things in the new update. But I do feel a little slighted to have been forced to wait more than a year just to play the complete game.

Students and faculty who play New Horizons are invited to submit one in-game screenshot of them enjoying the update to heraldopinion1921@gmail.com. Please include your full name and (if a student) your year, major and hometown. You may also include a Dream Code for your island if you like. Submissions will be posted in a Flickr gallery on the Photo section of this website.

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Categories: Opinion

Tags: animal crossing, animal crossing new horizons, Article, Opinion, update