Hey Nerds!
Happy Thanksgiving! Although I don’t celebrate the history of it, I do enjoy spending time with the family. This holiday is mostly about the food though. And then when you think about food, I started to think about how food is becoming more of use in video games. This is evident in games like Genshin Impact and Breath of the wild.
This seems to be a recent development in RPGs as some of the older ones didn’t really have an option for cooking to restore energy or health. From what I’ve seen there are two options, cooking as a skill you can actively work on, or just food available for consumption for your character. Let’s check out some games where cooking is a helpful addition to the gameplay.
Breath of the Wild (Legend of Zelda)
Most Legend of Zelda games lacked a cooking mechanic, but it didn’t take away from the overall story or gameplay. It’s not as surprising that games would move to using more realistic means to gain energy and skill. Of the games I’ve played, I enjoy cooking in Breath of the Wild the most. You gather your ingredients from the wild, or you can buy from certain shops or traveling vendors. Link can use up to 5 ingredients to make a dish. The dishes can be made for health, stamina, attack, and defense. You can also make dishes that can aid you when Link is in the sweltering Gerudo Desert or in the freezing Hebra Mountains. I enjoyed cooking with Link because you could just pick random things to add together to see if it made a decent dish. You can even cook monster parts, which I thought was super helpful because what am I going to do with all these monster guts that I get after fighting swarms of Bokoblins???? I thought it was always funny seeing Link make a questionable monster dish. This was also a replacement for the “alchemy station” that you find in most RPGs since Link can make elixirs through cooking as well. The one thing I would add is a way to save your recipes or at least your favorite ones. It was super frustrating to try to remember what ingredients I used to make a recipe I really liked or that was really helpful in battle. I hope that this addition of cooking will be a continue game mechanic for more LoZ games to come.
Skyrim
I wanted to include these two games together because the cooking feature is very similar. What I like about Skyrim is all characters know all the recipes. So you don’t have to worry about collecting and saving recipes. There is no skill it’s only for consumption, but you can make dishes for health and stamina. This is closely contrasted to alchemy as once players level up their alchemy skill you tend to get more points to your health than from cooking. Cooking isn’t so mind-blowing that it’s that memorable, but it’s there and it can help as you’re starting out in the world of Skyrim.
Genshin Impact
I can’t talk about cooking and not mention cooking. This cooking mechanic is just as entertaining as Breath of the Wild’s version. This is a little more involved as you can be a different character while you cook. It’s not limited to only one character like Link. Each character has a special dish they can make that is enhance off of base dish. I love how it includes all of the characters and they each have an opportunity to make something special. There is also a ranking similar to BotW where you can have a moderate to perfect dish. There are also characters like Barbara and Diona who on certain dishes allow you a chance of getting double the product. I also enjoy the different dishes you can make and how they are geared towards the different regions.
Final Fantasy XV
The one game that I could think of that has cooking as a skill was Final Fantasy XV. Ignis is responsible for the cooking and each time you cook while you’re at a campsite his skill improves. Once you cook a meal those additional stats are kept till the end of your battle or if you return to the camp/haven and make a new dish. In this game the recipes are stored as you learn them so you don’t have to remember certain combinations of ingredients to get a desired result. And Ignis can learn various recipes through reading books, signs, fishing and defeating certain enemies. I like how Final Fantasy XV decided to only have one character focus on the cooking skill. Each of the other guys, Noctis, Prompto, and Gladius all have their own skills fishing, photography and survival respectively. Out of the 4, Ignis made the most sense when it came to preparing meals to sustain the group. I enjoyed cooking and finding the right recipes that gave me the most health hahaha. I don’t know if I’m the only person who focuses on increase health, but that is literally all I want when it comes to cooking. Which one is going to give me the most health though?? Because I need to survive! And in Final Fantasy XV, these monsters were serious and freaking huge. But that’s a story for another time.
Since today was filled with many types of food, I just wanted to give a little appreciation to some of out favorite games that have the option to cook. I can imagine Link or Ignis making a great Thanksgiving dinner with their resources pulled together. Although Ignis my feel a little put off by Link’s cooking methods. But let me know in the comments what game you enjoy cooking in the most! And keep nerding out!
