After captivating the world with free seasonally-themed updates for an entire year, Nintendo has become suspiciously reluctant to talk about new what's next for Animal Crossing: New Horizons in recent months. For many Switch owners, the game has remained a shining beacon of escapism during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and demand for new activities and content subsequently remains high. To Nintendo's credit, the publisher appears to be fully aware of the positive impact it's had, and has repeatedly moved to reassure island owners that New Horizons will receive more updates in 2021.
And after many requests from vehement fans, there have been hints within Animal Crossing: New Horizon's code that point to what might be in store for a long time now. While there's credibility to these leaks, it's still important to keep in mind that nothing is confirmed to be set in stone. Thanks to repeated data-mines though, it appears that a significant update could drop at some point in the future that contains the return of fan-favorite NPC, Brewster. With the pigeon's island excursion and cafe potentially on the horizon, there's plenty of details fans should be aware of in case his arrival becomes reality.
Brewster's Animal Crossing History
First introduced to the series in 2005 via the Nintendo DS' Animal Crossing: Wild World, the blunt manner in which Brewster always initially addresses the player has helped establish the avian NPC as a popular aspect of subsequent installments. As his portmanteau name suggests, the pigeon's love for brewing drinks forms an integral aspect of his charm within the five games he's so far appeared in. So, it's no surprise that his passion has also informed the wider role he takes up within the Animal Crossing universe, with Brewster famously having opened up his own coffee shop within the player's village in each of those appearances.
Located at all hours of the day from then on within The Roost Cafe, which either becomes a separate building or the basement of his friend Blathers' museum, the services that Brewster offers have subtly developed over the years. What's remained constant is his ability to serve the player a cup of coffee each day, for the relatively cheap asking price of 200 Bells. Up until Animal Crossing: New Leaf, his desire for the player to share in his passion was so intense, that those drinks had to always be consumed on the spot. However, with repeated visits, this could change as Brewster's softening personality served as a reward for building a relationship with him over time.
With the arrival of the Wii's Animal Crossing: City Folk, Brewster received an additional character trait, in the form of a deep love for collecting Gyroids. If players managed to drink seven cups of coffee in a row without them cooling off in that game, the pigeon would offer to store the sentient totem-like creatures within The Roost. While the same option to convert the shop into a storage bank was eventually removed in New Leaf, players could instead take up a part-time barista job after consuming six drinks. Offering a fun mini-game that involved serving drinks to villagers, this distraction proved to be popular amongst players thanks to the Cafe Series furniture rewards that were included.
Brewster's New Horizons Hints
All of that storied history within the franchise still wasn't enough to prevent Nintendo from launching Animal Crossing: New Horizons last year without Brewster and his famous cafe. As disappointing as that was for fans, there's been plenty of hints since the game came out that this wasn't always the publisher's intention. That's because as early as April 2020, players have been uncovering subtle dialogue hints with their villagers that directly reference the pigeon and his coffee knowledge. What's even more indicative of Brewster's return is the fact that dataminers also uncovered a line of code referencing a "MuseumCafe" within the first couple of weeks of New Horizons starting its march to world domination.
With extensive updates having hit New Horizons in the year and a half since then, the number of internal code references that can be linked directly to Brewster has continued to grow and develop exponentially. As recently as the summer 1.11 update released in the final few days of July, dataminers have continued to find new evidence that suggests the cafe is actively being built into the basement of Blathers' Museum by Nintendo. Even more encouraging is the fact that these same dataminers have been able to track the progress of certain construction aspects over several patches. Considering the amount of time that continues to be poured into Brewster's shop, there's a decent chance that the pigeon will finally be ready to make his return to Animal Crossing in the near future.
Brewster's Future in New Horizons
Considering that Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a life sim built around seasonal holidays, but the ongoing pandemic has caused many development studios, including Nintendo, to hit constraints. Getting put to the backburner could still work out in Brewster's favor in the long run though, with his potential implementation being more feature complete as a result. The ability to order drinks and work the cafe seems like safe gameplay and there's also a chance that returning features like the Gyroids could come back at the same time. It seems highly suspicious after all that at times during 2020, their presence has been noted within the game's code in close proximity to Brewster.
While these leaks are still far from confirmed, it's important to remember that features like Dream Islands, swimming, and diving, were all discovered in the same manner ahead of their official implementation in-game. Of all the features that have been discovered within New Horizon's code so far, Brewster and his cafe remain the biggest and most consistently referenced that have yet to be implemented into the game. All of which bodes well for Animal Crossing's most popular pigeon.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now for the Nintendo Switch.