23-02-2004 08:26									#1
	Food in Video Games. Tired of ads?

I was playing through a demo of Sacred, an upcomming 'adventure/rpg' along the lines of Dungeon Siege. (they want to compare it to Diablo, but it is far closer to DS)

Whilst working my way around the world, I stumbled across a scroll that was labled 'Book of Recipes vol I'. Knowing the kind of game it was, I opened it expecting to find some combination of items that would allow some new spell or weapon. Instead, I was pleased to see I had discovered some rather interesting easter egg in the game as it contained RL recipe for a campfire lemon chicken/pheasant. I'm going to try to track down some of the ingredients in-game and see if there is a double-purpose to it.

This got me to thinking of the utility and use of food in games.

First you have the strategy games:

'The army marches on it's stomach'

Food is near universal in determining numbers of troops in a wide variety of strategy games. It is unlikely to really change any time in the near future, and we are assured that food will always have it's place in strategy gaming.

However, I wanted to get a list of any games that utilized food in a unique method:

"eat the peasants, my pet."

Come on, you can't tell me any of you who played Black and White didn't, at some point, feed your pathetic followers to that wicked little wolf pet of yours....(anyone to tell me they only ever played good will be instantly terminated by my completely evil wolf that is still on the hard drive)

"If I eat one more magic mushroom I'm gonna puke!"

Darkstone, a fairly obscure Diablo clone, instituted a full fledged hunger/thirst system that I personally have only seen in MUDs elsewhere. Complete with hunger meter and penalties for being too hungry and even the ability to starve to death (though rather unrealistically fast). Warriors could scavenge for food/springs, spellcasters could conjure mushrooms/water on demand. Bad food could poison you, especially good food could heal (probably not a good idea to eat that goblin arm you just hacked off). While interesting at first, it soon became a little tiresome to fill one's pack with food just to complete one single quest.

"Give a man a fish..."

Not a full fledged food system, but the Breath of Fire series instituted fishing in a number of their games. The fish, once caught, are treated just like any old potion and will have varying effects. I probably spent more time fishing than playing during that rental, frankly...

Anyway, lets hear what you all come up with.

	24-02-2004 03:52									#2
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Donky kong. Lots of food. Pac Man... oh boy, looks like I am dating myself here..... shuting up now.

	24-02-2004 04:13									#3
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When I was still playing Star Wars Galaxies, one of the professions you could choose was Chef. The food itself was incredibly useful, and it was extra fun tromping around the galaxy looking for rare spices and ingredients and searching out the perfect recipes Too bad the rest of the game was pretty annoying...

	05-03-2004 10:46									#4
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UO's food wasn't -necessary- (although many theories that you gained better when full/starving/eaten but not full were all around). The whole reason food was in there was from way back in Ultima 6 (1991), you didn't just have generic 'food' anymore, but legs of lamb, muffins, cake, bread, grapes, cheese, butter, heck you could even milk cows to make the butter The next games added even more foods, and you could make bread! OK, so I'm over impressed, but it was abig thing back then Totally not needed to finish the game, but they wanted the world to feel real. So UO's cooking started from simply baking bread, to other pastries and fish and such, and the idea is what became both Asheron's Call & SWG's food-that-isn't-needed-but-it-sure-helps.

* Makahlua is a quasi-expert on virtual food in Ultimas (lol)

And yes you can fish in UO too I play on a player-run shard, and have actually fleshed out a cooking system with more foods, but it has yet to make it past being scripted. But everything is all in-character for the Ultima world, so help me I actually replayed the older games to research it

I was rather dissapointed in the lack of cooking in Morrowind, although it's alchemy and enchanting was quite nice.

Oooh, I forgot Star Ocean the Second Story, with it's cooking that could replenish HP/MP,and on disk 2 in Energy Nede, a full out, Iron Chef style battle arena called 'Cooking Master'. Forget ending the game, I just spent time in there untill I won enough to go up against the runner of it and won the special food cooking kit. Good times! ^^

Last edited by Makahlua on 05-03-2004 at 11:00

	05-03-2004 20:33									#5
	Suffering from ads?

More on the Sacred demo:

I have found that some weapons come with a special mod allowing you to actually hunt animals. There is no experience points awarded for doing so, and no real reward immediatly visable.

I've killed the 3 chickens listed in the recipe I found, but to no avail. It mentions a spear to cook them, so I'll try to find a spear that will allow hunting and try to kill them with that....

I also found a second recipe for a lamb, but there are not lambs in the demo to kill...

Game will be out in a few weeks...perhaps the full version will have more on this in the instructions.