Dragon’s Dogma 2 Director Reveals Interesting Fact About the Game’s Cooking Scenes

gamerant.com:

Dragon’s Dogma 2’s director Hideaki Itsuno has recently revealed that the upcoming open-world RPG will use live-action scenes of cooking meat instead of CGI. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is set to be one of 2024’s most exciting games, and it seems like steak enthusiasts will have a special reason to look forward to it.

Originally announced last year and set to be released on March 22, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is among the most eagerly expected games of 2024. The game is not even out yet, and Dragon’s Dogma 2 managed to become a Steam best-seller last year due to pre-orders.

Now, Itsuno has revealed that instead of creating CGI animations of meat being prepared, the Dragon’s Dogma 2 team decided to just record them. According to Siliconera (via 4Gamer), the director explained that “We could have spent money on CGI for the meat, but we figured that if we were going to spend money anyway, we might as well spend it on real, good meat”. The idea appeared during brainstorming, as the developers were discussing the camping sections of the game, and the team’s camping enthusiasts considered that meat cooking was one of the most important aspects of the experience.

By recording live-action videos of the meat, the team ensured that each steak had a distinct, good-looking animation that would probably look better than CGI-rendered ones. Dragon’s Dogma 2 will have an uncapped framerate and will likely look very good, so cooking meat that stands out will certainly add to the realism of the experience.

We could have spent money on CGI for the meat, but we figured that if we were going to spend money anyway, we might as well spend it on real, good meat.

This is not the first time that Hideaki Itsuno has come up with very curious details about the development of Dragon’s Dogma 2. Last year, the director revealed that some of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s best ideas were inspired by lack of sleep. As the team often worked late multiple times during the week, they would eventually have some pretty hilarious ideas