Overthinking Games: Final Fantasy XV’s love of food

0 DAVID GODSTIME January 15, 2019

Overthinking Games runs every other Monday, and is an opportunity for Malindy Hetfeld to take something about a game and think about it too much. To kick off, it’s the boys of Final Fantasy XV and their good, good food.

For the sake of snappy videogame design, eating is often the first thing that falls by the wayside. After all, food and all the associated processes take time, time that in most games is better spent elsewhere. Just like in real life, having to hunt around for food in the middle of an adventure often tampers with the pacing.

There are exceptions, but food prep tends to either take up a large portion of a game, the way it does in Battle Chef Brigade or VA-11 HALL-A, or none at all. You hunt down weapon parts or shoot animals to turn them into fashion, but food somehow hasn’t become a side activity of equal value. Food intake is often reduced to drinking; downing a quick potion has been established as an acceptable shorthand for eating something to regain health. As an alternative, some games use snack items such as granola bars and assorted sweets. This choice is of course also down to animation speed – if you want to give players a way to heal through food without slowing down the action during a fight, you can’t have them sit down to enjoy a leisurely slow cooked stew. But Final Fantasy XV represents an important peak in videogame design: an actual roast.

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