Coming up on its third anniversary,Animal Crossing: New Horizonshas gone without a significant content update since November 2021. The game broke franchise sales records when it released in March 2020, and in the year following received consistent updates providing players with new content and features to give the game greater staying power. However, now that the feed of content has dried up, questions linger regarding the future of the series and where a new game can take the successful formula established byAnimal Crossing: New Horizons.
Despite its status as one of thebest-selling Nintendo Switch games, there are still aspects of the game that felt lacking where a sequel could improve upon. Villager interactions are a lot less varied than they were in past entries and personalities tend to be very shallow and one note. Aside from issues with villagers, traveling to random islands via Mystery Island Tours was a great new addition, but felt too convoluted to use frequently, like when trying to hunt for specific villagers to invite back to a player’s island. WhileAnimal Crossing: New Horizonswas overall a step in the right direction, there’s still a lot to improve and iterate upon in a future title.
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Nintendo Could Remake an Older Entry in the Franchise
While it would be unprecedented for the series, Nintendo could follow the popular industry trend and remake one of the olderAnimal Crossingtitles with new featuresfor modern platforms. A move like this could help fill the gap betweenAnimal Crossing: New Horizonsand a brand-new entry while giving players who missed some of the older aspects the franchise in recent entries a chance to relive them. Depending on how faithful a remake like this is, it could serve to address the complaints about lack of villager personality depth, as olderAnimal Crossinggames had a greater emphasis on unique villager identities.
Great candidates for remakes would be the originalAnimal Crossingfrom the GameCubeandAnimal Crossing: Wild Worldfrom the Nintendo DS. Both of these titles may seem rudimentary compared toAnimal Crossing: New Horizons, but they were many fans' introduction to the series and carry a certain nostalgia because of that. If they were remade to include updated visuals and modern quality of life mechanics, either of these games could have the potential to be very successful at holding fans over until a full-fledged sequel is released.
Animal Crossing Could Go Open World
The latest trend in the industry seems to be giving franchises the open world treatment with examples likeThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the WildandPokemon Scarlet and Violetbringing their respective franchises into the genre. While it may seem counterintuitive for a series all about settling down and building a town likeAnimal Crossingto become open world, the groundwork has already been laid for the franchise to go this route. The ongoing mobile titleAnimal Crossing: Pocket Campand the Shopping Plaza on Harv’s Island inAnimal Crossing: New Horizonsboth hint at how an open world might be implemented.
A futureAnimal Crossinggame could see players traveling the world in a camper, exploring new locations and recruiting villagers to settle back at their home village. A game like this could combine the traditional town-building structure of pastAnimal Crossinggames, while improving on the exploration aspect of Mystery Island Tours inAnimal Crossing: New Horizons.With the prominence of campers as the vehicle of choice inAnimal Crossing: Pocket Campand onHarv’s Island, it seems very likely that Nintendo will find further use for these vehicles in future entries, potentially setting up the franchise to go open world with its next title.
Animal Crossing: New Horizonsis available now on Nintendo Switch.
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