The Animal Crossing Nintendo Direct: What You Need to Know!

• We’ve been starved for so long, but it’s finally here!

At long long last, the great Nintendo gods have blessed us gamers with the best news ever: a brand new Nintendo Direct solely dedicated to Animal Crossing updates.

With the game’s launch creeping ever closer on March 20th, we’ve only seen glimpses of the game through tiny trailers, where desperate fans micro-analyze every frame for new information. (Don’t believe me? Here’s a reddit post from 4 months ago with people getting excited that the player characters were getting more detailed knees. No joke.) Now, with the Direct having taken place on February 20th, we finally got a closer look as to what the final product will look like, and with it comes a huge surplus of information to cover.

If you want to watch the whole direct, here’s a link to the official video on Nintendo’s youtube channel, but I’m here to highlight my top five new features mentioned, so let’s get into it!

Highlight #1: Choosing where you (and your villagers) place your home!

That’s right ladies and gents, we’re starting off super strong with being able to actually pick where your villagers live. This is an Animal Crossing first, and for any person who’s even remotely familiar with the series can understand the pain of an unwanted villager moving into a special spot of rare flowers, or in the way of a homemade path that you worked so tirelessly to place. This is already super revolutionary since it’s been such a long time complaint across the entire series. All you have to do is just talk to the villager, get them to hand you their tent, and set it up how and where you please! You can also move your own tent anywhere you like, wherever you like, even when you upgrade to a house! Don’t feel like living by the beach anymore? Did you get an annoying villager you don’t like and want to move them to the other side of the island so you never have to see them again? The possibilities are endless!

Highlight #2: Decorating your space just got a huge makeover!

In Animal Crossing games of old, classic players will know the struggle of having to constantly push around, put away, take out and twirl furniture manually to get it just right, whether it was for your own aesthetic purposes, or to get that premium score from the Happy Home Academy. Well, worry and fuss no more, because Animal Crossing New Horizons will be the newest main line game to receive the Happy Home Academy treatment. The HHA game was a fun spin-off that came with a whole new way to decorate and customize houses, and yes, New Leaf technically did get this as an update, but it looks so well polished in the clips shown for New Horizons that I can’t wait to become my own personal interior designer once more.

Highlight #3: Island Tours 2.0!

For those familiar with Animal Crossing New Leaf, this may sound familiar to you. In New Leaf you could pay Kapp’n a few thousand bells to go to a special island, where you could go alone or meet with people online, and catch special bugs and fish that aren’t readily available on the mainland. In New Horizons however, it certainly earns the title of 2.0. You pay with Nook Miles instead of just bells, and you go on a plane to a random island of the new dodo pilots Wilbur and Orville’s choosing (fun fact: while I was writing this I realized they named the dodo brothers after the two men who invented the airplane, and it’s absolutely adorable.). There you can explore the whole island to your hearts content, finding cool bugs and fish, buried treasure, and even other villagers that you can bring home to live on your island! And the best part: it’s never the same island twice, so it’s always a fun and fresh experience. It’s the best upgrade for a getaway from a getaway.

Highlight #4: You can change the ENTIRE STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY of your island.

Now of course, this was advertised as something further down the line gameplay wise in the Direct, so you’ll have to put in quite a few long nights to get this feature in game, but I can guarantee it’s totally worth it. Players can get a Builder’s Permit, allowing them access to tools to not only pave pathways like games of old (with a new spin of course), but also to change the layout of the island itself. You can place land and water wherever you see fit. Suddenly want to have a moat around your house? Done. Want to have a convenient river crossing, but don’t want to sink hard-earned bells into a building a bridge? Just throw down some dirt and you’re good to go! Want to make a romantic waterfall appear out of thin air? Absolutely! The world – or island I should say – is your creative oyster for you to explore and build upon – or destroy.

Highlight #5: Amiibo Support CONFIRMED!!

Now for someone who’s a causal fan or new to the Animal Crossing series, this may not seem like a big deal, but as someone who loves collecting things related to their interests and will take any and all excuses to sink more money into it, I am absolutely thrilled! The physical amiibo figures never got much love from the the game they were released with, the infamous Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival for the WiiU, but now they will hopefully take up their rightful place in the spotlight (and on my shelf for that matter). There’s also mention of the amiibo trading cards working with the game as well, but in a more familiar way. Similar to Animal Crossing New Leaf, players can build a campsite on their island, use the amiibo card according to what villager they want to appear, and then they can find them camping out and ask them to live on their island permanently! This along with the choice of where to place your fellow villagers is going to make this game a true place to live your Animal Crossing dreams.

And thus concludes my list of my top five new features mentioned in the new Nintendo Direct. What did you guys think? Did you watch the Direct already? What were your favorite and least favorite parts? Have you even decided on a name for you island yet?

Let me know in the comments below!