We've heard a few out-of-left-field stories about Dragon's Dogma 2 recently, like GTA 5's role in inspiring game director Hideaki Itsuno. But the secret behind some oddly appetising mystery meat has to take the cake.
Over the last day, I've spent more time than I'd like to admit watching countless videos showcasing the cooking animations in Dragon's Dogma 2, painstakingly trying to figure out how Capcom managed to make the meat look so realistic and delicious.
When you're not slaying monsters and traipsing around the wilderness, you may choose to rest and recuperate by cooking up a tasty meal. Watching the screen fade to black and then focusing the camera on some of the most realistic cuts of meat I'd ever seen in a game was kind of jarring, but I can rest easy now that we know the source of the mystery meat.
"The meat grilled at the camp is a live-action [video]," Itsuno said in an interview with 4Gamer. For several months, we had been holding a 'meeting about what's so interesting about camping' with the camping enthusiasts on our team, and one of them said, 'You can watch as many pictures as you want of people grilling meat.' This led to its introduction into the game."
This is a rather obvious answer to my existential struggle to find out how on earth Capcom managed to get the meat to look so realistic, but that doesn't make it any less impressive or entertaining. Everything looks even more appealing now that I know Capcom decided to use real food.
"It's okay to use expensive CG to represent meat, but we decided to spend the same amount of money on better quality meat, so we decided on the current format," Itsuno explained. Each type of meat you can get in the game has a different image when grilled." The different hunks of meat shown before and after cooking should have probably tipped me off to the truth.
The cooking sequences aren't the only aspect of Dragon's Dogma 2 that we're looking forward to. The open-world setting immediately captured our senior editor, Wes Fenlon, during the demo. "After picking up a few quests, I proceeded to completely ignore them for the three hours I spent absorbed in traipsing across just a tiny portion of the vast open world."
You'll be able to start gallivanting around the world on March 22, but just remember to take a rest, stock up on supplies, and have a hearty meal in between all the action—you should never fight on an empty stomach.
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