How ACNH 2.0 Could Improve Turkey Day | Screen Rant
November is right around the corner which means that Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ Turkey Day is coming soon as well. Last year’s event involved finding ingredients to help villagers create dishes for the main Turkey Day feast. Also coming to the game is the 2.0 update that is adding quite a few new things to New Horizons, including cooking and farming. With the huge update that 2.0 is going to be, there is a great opportunity to take Turkey Day to the next level.
The previous year's Turkey Day event in Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a cute and fun way to spend a few hours. It was cool to see villagers cooking and wearing absolutely adorable chef outfits, but the player was a pretty passive participant in the celebration itself, functioning mostly as an errand boy running around to find ingredients dotted across ACNH's island. While that was just fine last year, in order to make Turkey Day more fun in 2021 there need to be some changes. Fortunately, the 2.0 update provides the means to do just that.
On November 5th, players will be able to plant various crops and learn how to cook in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The Direct showed a little peek at what the process will look like and that there will be quite a few recipes to choose from. From what has been announced so far, players will be able to plant tomatoes, carrots, sugarcane, potatoes, and wheat as well as pumpkins. Just these six ingredients combined with fish and fruit can be combined to make all sorts of things, but the wording used in the Direct suggests that New Horizons may be getting an even wider variety of crops that could potentially show up in an upcoming Turkey Day event. All these new Animal Crossing recipes and ingredients already have the potential to make Turkey Day even better. There could even be special Turkey Day recipes and ingredients players could learn and receive through the event that would not be available otherwise. This would be a spin on the usual formula for New Horizons’ events, which usually provide DIY recipes, but for Turkey Day, cooking recipes just make more sense.
The fact that cooking and farming are coming to the game just before Turkey Day does suggest that players will get to have a more active role in the event. It may be possible that this year, the feast will be the player’s responsibility. Instead of helping find ingredients for villagers, they might need to seek out their help creating the meal. Players could do favors for their villagers in exchange for special ingredients and even recipes. That way there would be more to the gameplay for the event than just cooking. Having the villagers provide ingredients would also be helpful for those who aren’t as interested in farming.
The 2.0 update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons will bring more than just cooking. Quite a few NPCs from previous titles are finally coming back, to much excitement from the community. What better way to incorporate these characters than to invite them to the Turkey Day celebrations? These NPCs hardly ever get to leave their storefronts, so it would be really nice to have everyone join in for the feast. The 2.0 update has already shown these characters getting more involved in the island’s daily activities like with Isabel stopping by the Roost for some coffee, and Brewster doing some stretching in the plaza with the island’s residents. Turkey Day is about gathering with friends and loved ones to share a meal, and it would be a much more meaningful and enjoyable experience if everyone was included. Besides, that opens up the opportunity for new interactions and dialogue with many beloved Animal Crossing characters.
Another way to better include villagers and special characters would be to make them their favorite dishes. Something that is so great about Animal Crossing is how individual its characters are. They all have their favorite hobbies and activities and even clothing styles. It would make perfect sense, then, for them to also have a favorite food or dish that would reflect their personality. One of the objectives of the Turkey Day event could be to find out what these favorite dishes are and then make them. The player could even present the dish directly to the character. Because there are so many characters in New Horizons now, it simply wouldn’t be possible to make a dish for everyone, so the event could focus either on characters like Blathers and Isabel who have been working tirelessly for the island for over a year or on the new special characters to welcome them to the community.
Another new feature the update on November 5th is adding to New Horizons is villager visits. In older Animal Crossing titles, villagers could stop in and visit the player’s house, often unannounced. Now that these visits are coming to New Horizons, they could be useful for Turkey Day. Last year, the feast was held in the plaza, but maybe this year it could be held in the player’s own New Horizons home. Villagers could either stop by one by one or in groups to visit the player’s own home and to enjoy the food they have made after having gathered the necessary ingredients. It could also be cute if they would bring their own dishes to add to the feast like people do for real during the actual Thanksgiving holiday. Even if they don’t stay to eat in the house, villagers could still drop by to lend a hand with the cooking, or to possibly even drop off some ingredients.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is also set to receive its first paid DLC called Happy Home Paradise. This DLC will have quite a few characters staying at a vacation resort where they will be able to relax and enjoy a few facilities like a restaurant and a cafe. While this may be a stretch, it would be really cool to have some Turkey Day festivities on this island, too. After all, there will be a functioning restaurant that could provide the perfect space and opportunity to create a huge Turkey Day feast. Players could potentially have to coordinate the meal for the resort’s guests. That way, they would be responsible for gathering the necessary ingredients and recipes and ensuring the kitchen is in working order. They would also need to make sure that the restaurant has enough seating for the guests and enough staff to keep everything running smoothly.
While there was no mention of Turkey Day in the latest Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct, there still could be at least some changes made to the event. There was quite a bit of information the Direct had to cover, after all. The new features both the free update and the paid DLC add to the game fit perfectly with Turkey Day and could make the day even more special and memorable and could really provide that holiday feel.