Coming up on its third anniversary, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has 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 by Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
Despite its status as one of the best-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. While Animal Crossing: New Horizons was overall a step in the right direction, there's still a lot to improve and iterate upon in a future title.
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 older Animal Crossing titles with new features for modern platforms. A move like this could help fill the gap between Animal Crossing: New Horizons and 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 older Animal Crossing games had a greater emphasis on unique villager identities.
Great candidates for remakes would be the original Animal Crossing from the GameCube and Animal Crossing: Wild World from the Nintendo DS. Both of these titles may seem rudimentary compared to Animal 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 like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Pokemon Scarlet and Violet bringing their respective franchises into the genre. While it may seem counterintuitive for a series all about settling down and building a town like Animal Crossing to become open world, the groundwork has already been laid for the franchise to go this route. The ongoing mobile title Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and the Shopping Plaza on Harv's Island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons both hint at how an open world might be implemented.
A future Animal Crossing game 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 past Animal Crossing games, while improving on the exploration aspect of Mystery Island Tours in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. With the prominence of campers as the vehicle of choice in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and on Harv'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 Horizons is available now on Nintendo Switch.