Animal Crossing: New Horizons might have been the most important game of 2020 because of what the world looked like when it was released. There was so much uncertainty, stress, and worry in the early days of the continuing global pandemic, but New Horizons was able to be a pocket-sized getaway to an island resort full of relaxation and destressing. Since its release, the game has continued to grow thanks to the many seasonal updates that Nintendo has released, and the upcoming addition of Brewster and his museum-side cafe, The Roost, has fans excited to return to their islands once more.
While it's nice to see that Brewster is returning to the franchise, as he was a fan-favorite character in previous entries, his addition feels a little too late for Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It's been over a year and a half since the game whisked players away to their own personalized resorts, and most fans of the game have since moved on to other ventures. As the Animal Crossing Direct that's going to showcase what's coming to the game alongside The Roost hasn't happened yet, there's still the possibility that it could draw fans back to the game, but many can't help but wonder if the content would have been better served with the launch of New Horizons in March of 2020.
The Potential in Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Brewster Update
It's worth pointing out that, even if it is coming far too late, there's a lot of potential in Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Brewster update. When The Roost was first introduced in Animal Crossing: Wild World, there wasn't much to do in it other than to drink some coffee and listen to K.K. Slider play his sets on the weekends. Since then, however, Brewster and The Roost have become highlights of every game, with the most recent entry before New Horizons, New Leaf, allowing the player to get a part-time job at the cafe and serve their villagers their favorite drinks.
New Horizons' version of The Roost will likely have similar features, hopefully expanding on the cafe even more, too. Players might be able to get a part-time job there once again, but instead of being confined to the insides of the coffee shop, they could be making timed deliveries across town before the coffee gets too cold. While K.K. Slider has a new venue for his concerts in New Horizons, he might still show up to play at The Roost again from time to time. If he does, then hopefully there's a difference between his intimate coffee shop shows and the more crowded town square ones. There might even be a minigame or two that has the player participating in performances with the musically talented terrier, though these are just some of the fun possibilities.
Brewster is Coming Far Too Late to New Horizons
It's clear that there are a lot of places for Nintendo to take The Roost and the activities that it could bring to the game, but it's just happening far too late in Animal Crossing's life. While there are still plenty of fans who are regularly checking in on their games, most players who were escaping the harsh reality of 2020 to their island abodes have moved on to playing other games. Even if the upcoming Animal Crossing Direct reveals some pretty exciting new content for the title, it likely won't bring back the number of players who were active when New Horizons first launched.
It made sense for Nintendo to dole out updates for Animal Crossing: New Horizons as the seasons changed in real life, but most of the updates were pretty small and not too content-rich. Players had sunk a lot of time into New Horizons when it launched, but soon realized that weren't many reasons to continue coming back to the game once they had gotten their fill. Plenty of critiques of Animal Crossing call it a "chore simulator" in reference to the fact that much of the game's primary loop consists of doing simple tasks like cleaning up the island each day and reorganizing furniture. As such, having something like The Roost included in the game when it came out could have done a lot to break up the gameplay and slow down the process of the game losing its initial shine.
There's still a chance for the upcoming update to really wow fans and bring them right back into Animal Crossing: New Horizons, even if many of the updates that have come to the game haven't added a whole lot to it. The possibilities for what could come to the latest Animal Crossing alongside Brewster and The Roost are pretty open-ended, but previous updates seem to suggest that it might also be light on content. If that's the case, then many fans will be wondering why The Roost wasn't just included in New Horizons when it launched.
If there's not much to it other than being another place for players to hang out, drink coffee, and potentially play a small coffee shop minigame, then there's not enough in the update to bring a significant amount of players back to the game. That said, if the same content was included in the original release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, then far more players would have engaged with it than its current rollout as a relatively small update. While it could completely change the game and bring players flocking back to the life-sim, there's nothing to suggest that this update will be much different from the rest.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available exclusively on Nintendo Switch.