With the release of Animal Crossing New Horizons’ 2.0 update this week (and its Happy Home Paradise DLC), Nintendo has marked the end of the game’s major update support. The game will no longer receive updates that’ll bring fresh and exciting new gameplay experiences and features to your getaway island. This is certainly a sad time, especially given the fact there are still a bunch of little features and QoL improvements that would help take the game to the next level. In fact, I’m so gutted that some of these never came to fruition that I thought I’d write about them. Here are 5 features we wish had made it into New Horizons’ final update.
Upgrades for Nook’s Cranny
Features That Should Have Made it Into Animal Crossing New Horizons’ 2.0 Update
One of the exciting elements of progression we’d seen in earlier Animal Crossing games had been the upgrades that Tom Nook — and his son’s Timmy and Tommy — would make to their shop. With each upgrade, more items would be available on offer, including Harriet’s Shampoodles, though she’s set up on Harv’s island now.
Even so, it would have been a neat idea to have some element of expansion for Nook’s store. Perhaps we could buy some of Leif’s starts and seeds, have exclusive furniture roll in via updates from Nintendo for first-party franchises like a Legend of Zelda, Splatoon, or Smash Bros. set.
As it is, Nook’s shop can feel a little out of place on your island if you’ve poured hundreds or thousands of hours into completely transforming it into a thriving blob of land in the middle of the sea. After all, think of all those extortionate loans you’ve repaid!
More Museum Improvements
Features That Should Have Made it Into Animal Crossing New Horizons’ 2.0 Update
With Brewster finally returning to the museum, it feels like Nintendo could have kept running with the museum improvements here and we dearly wish they had.
Our main grievance is the fact that there’s a space opposite The Roost’s new spot up the stairs that’s been left unused (and completely throws off the symmetry of the place). In New Leaf, players could rent a museum room and decorate it however they wished. It helped make your museum feel a little more personal to you, rather than just a fancy gallery of everything you’d collected.
We’d even have been happy enough for that right wing to be occupied by a museum shop, offering up carpets, wallpapers and other geeky museum ‘artifacts’ or souvenirs that we could decorate our homes with. A fancy rock geode would look awfully great atop that sideboard, wouldn’t it?
Access Your Bank Account from Your NookPhone
Features That Should Have Made it Into Animal Crossing New Horizons’ 2.0 Update
This is more a QoL feature than anything groundbreaking, but it’d be a pretty massive feature if it added into the game. Your bank account is pretty important once you start racking up over 100,000 Bells, as those Bell bags will start taking up room in your Inventory.
However, having to go to the Town Hall every time you need to withdraw or deposit money just becomes a little bit of a pain. With the new Storage Shed proving that impossible things in our world are nothing in the world of New Horizons — I mean, how can you access your home storage from anywhere with just a storage shed? — a banking app from the NookPhone seems like a massive missed opportunity.
Sure there’s a Nook Miles Terminal on Harv’s island you can use to access your bank account, but it’d just make things all the more convenient being able to deposit and withdraw money with just a few clicks, rather than having to make an entire journey just for it.
Multiplayer Mini-Games
Features That Should Have Made it Into Animal Crossing New Horizons’ 2.0 Update
When it comes to multiplayer in New Horizons, things still feel a bit barebones. You’re left to make your own fun, and if you’re not too imaginative, or you’ve just exhausted all the various ideas online, it can grow stale pretty quickly. There’s only so many times you can show off your island before your friends realize you’re an egomaniac!
Multiplayer mini-games feel like something the community has been asking forever since the game release, mid-pandemic when socializing with friends and family through the game became a massive part of people’s COVID lives. Alas, the lockdown has ended and we’re still left with no official support for multiplayer playtime.
An actual hide-and-seek game or a treasure hunt would have been enough to at least get the ball rolling before the more creative folks over at Nintendo got to work on something else. Unfortunately, it looks like we’ll forever be stuck making our own fun in New Horizons’ multiplayer.
A Cameo for Lyle
Features That Should Have Made it Into Animal Crossing New Horizons’ 2.0 Update
Do you know who never really got any proper love in New Horizons? Former insurance salesman and now Happy Home Academy employee, Lyle. That sharp-dressing otter only ever sends us mail from the HHA nowadays, and while we’re not sure how much his insurance policies really added to the gameplay in earlier entries in the series, it was always a nice surprise whenever he did show up.
Perhaps he’s got some new insurance to sell us. What if our bridges around town could break over time and an insurance policy would help cover the cost of repairs? What if extreme weather conditions could deal damage to buildings or empty land on your island that he could help resolve? Or perhaps Lyle just came to visit your home strictly on Happy Home Academy business and you could have a little chat with him as he marked your home on its Feng Shui.
What I’m trying to say is Lyle’s been done dirty. Even Resetti’s got a cameo now thanks to the arrival of The Roost and Brewster at the museum.
#Justice4Lyle
What do you wish had made it into Animal Crossing New Horizons‘ final major update? Let us know in the comments below.
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