Witcher 3 got you covered imo
Please explain this. I haven't played the Witcher games, but I do know that Witcher 3 isn't even out yet and not slated to be out until next year sometime due to a delay. Have the developers discussed somewhere the importance of food in-game? Or is this purely conjecture on your part (which would make your post kind of irrelevant)?
The latest novel by Patrick Weekes has some good references to what you are talking about when you say the different regions or different classes eat differently.
Specifically he mentions the difference in the food in the elven alianages compared to the Imperial palance, and something called Peasant Bread is referenced. This isn't to say it will be in the games, but we at least know the writing team are aware of it.
Yes, I remember a little of that, but I don't remember any major mentions. That said, I wouldn't want descriptions of food in a book to be overbearing; it might have the effect of making me hungry or it might just bore me to tears when I'm hoping to see what happens next. But a little idea of what people eat, beyond just "peasant bread" might be nice. Again, food is important--particularly at special events (i.e. holidays--even in the real world there are certain foods that we hardly ever eat unless it's a holiday--and in some cultures it's taboo to eat certain foods outside of a holiday).
Eating animations take resources, but if it was part of enough parts of the game it could be well worth it. Like the animation to eat with a fork. You could use it in the afore-mentioned banquet, then again in a dinner date sort of thing with one or two of romances (not all of them because different characters have different ways of bonding), and then again as just some background characters eating as you pass by on your way through your kitchen. This would make it so that it was useful enough to offset the cost of putting it in. You would get important plot scenes out of it as well as a greater sense of immersion.
Yes, I'm aware that both eating animations and food as clutter would take resources. That's why I don't really expect my suggestion to make it into DA:I. But I'm hopeful that scenes with eating, or settings with meals set out, will make it into the next game, at least. Even if we can't personally interact with that food, it can give us a lot of information about who lives in a place and what kind of lifestyle they live. For instance, if you don't see food laid out on someone's dinner table, but you find a sandwich lying half-eaten on the desk in the study next to a stack of books, you can probably guess that the person is either extremely busy or that the person tends to lose track of time and eats on the fly.
It might also be relevant if you find a half-drunk glass of wine and a dead body nearby. Might the individual have been poisoned...?
Point being, food can tell stories, as well as just being nice to look at.
I've always sort of thought my ideal RPG would be something as livable as Skyrim with certain mods (not just survival, but adding in new food recipes and ~FASHION~ since both those things are pr important irl but also pr lacking in vanilla Skyrim) with characters that are as interesting as Bioware (it's very hard for me to get involved in playing Skyrim when everyone only has 10 lines, although I do realize that was the only feasible way to may such a huge game).
More food clutter would be nice, but it's also going to be very distracting if I can't interact with it and imagine a favorite food for my Inquisitor.
Well, I don't know about fashion, per se. It does have relevance culturally, I will say that, but unless you're nobility or a wealthy merchant/craftsperson in Thedas, you'd more than likely be more practical than fashionable. Fashion was long used as a way to set apart the haves from the have-nots. So, while there is such a thing as "peasant fashion," since peasantry and the poor would wear certain types of clothing, and it would often at least be dyed in some easily obtained color (green, sometimes yellow or dull red or deep brown or black--it was harder to acquire blues and purples and vibrant reds and whites)--whereas they could just as easily have gone back to wearing, for instance, togas.
I personally do not mind food clutter being distracting. I've been known to go wander around tables in Skyrim just to see what the people had there to eat, when I got bored or was dropping by a great hall to turn in a quest or enchant an item. I don't even steal the food. I just look at it, and also admire the setup. Someone had to place that stuff there, to look nice, from the developer kit. They were thinking about what should go there. So that's interesting, too.
Culture is Food, and Food is Culture, you can't expect to have a truly believable world without exploring this, so as a purely world-building tool, it's very important in my opinion.
As for food on Gameplay, I'd imagine the first thought is that there might be some redundancy with Alchemy, but is a little redundancy (If properly balanced) a good price for believability? The moment you add ramifications to food consumption in your game, it goes from prop to an actual part of your world really fast.
Again, I'm not really entirely sure I'd want food in gameplay, unless it has some measurably helpful effects, and it isn't required to survive (unless there's a toggle to say "yeah sure, make it so I die if I don't eat"--so that I, and anyone else who doesn't like that, can turn it off). A lot of food in Skyrim did not have such effects, and what did have effects, didn't have strong effects. Healing 1 health for 600 seconds isn't really all that great. It helps, but not enough that I'd prefer to use that food over a health regeneration potion. So yes, food would pretty much have to either overlap the herbalism system or it would have to provide different and distinct benefits (or drawbacks) as compared to something you could craft with herbs. Overlapping wouldn't be so terrible, since some of the herbs might be used for seasoning on the food, in the first place.
Retour en haut
I hadn't actually considered any of this, but now that you mention it - it would be pretty cool to get a couple of cutscenes at a dinner table or banquet. Maybe have a scene of Quizzy perusing the food laid out at the Orlesian Ball... A scene of him/her politely pretending to eat escargot and then spitting it out into a napkin when the other person turns their back...
