|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Soup du Jour
By: Miles Cressman
(Disclaimer: There are spoilers in this editorial for past and upcoming games. Read at your own risk)
I think everyone enjoys soup every once in a while, am I right? When you’re sick, when you’re lazy, or even when it was the cheapest item to buy at the supermarket and you know it would be easy to make. It’s pretty hard to turn down tomato soup after a hard day.
You don’t really see much of a mention of soup in games because, simply put, no game can master the greatness of soup. Think about it, when’s the last time you saw soup used effectively in a game? Did it ever have much importance? I can think of a few examples, but it’s really sad that soup doesn’t have a much more revered history in games, especially RPGs. You’d think a genre that touts itself as “role-playing” would have some soup to eat!
In the SNES RPG Chrono Trigger, soup plays a somewhat minor role but its presence is there all the same. When the main characters travel to 65,000,000 BC for the first time, in search of the rare Dreamstone needed to forge the Masamune, Ayla offers Crono to drink bowls of soup. This minigame is more of a button-masher and the goal is to beat Ayla in downing many bowls of soup. It’s entirely similar to a minigame earlier, back in Leene Square but instead it was pints of soda. One thing this soup event causes is that the main characters wake up really late the next morning to find their Gate Key missing. Connection perhaps? Too much soup makes you lose Gate Keys, folks.
The Tales of… series has been known to incorporate cooking-based mechanics into their regular gameplay. These concoctions are almost always beneficial to a character or to the party as a whole, depending on the food. 2004’s Tales of Symphonia had two different types of soup, mistranslated as stew:
- Miso Soup
- Cream Soup
Miso Soup restores a large amount of health and mana, while Cream Soup cures status effects of the entire group. Isn’t that helpful? The main problem with these soups is that, while being helpful, they are very hard to make. Soup shouldn’t be difficult to make! I mean, come on, it’s soup.
However, for a long time soup had not been a very important element in a game’s plotline. It could be due to its liquid texture, its sweet aroma, or other such characteristics… who knows? This all changes with the upcoming release of Lost Odyssey, slated for an early 2008 release in the US. A fifteen-minute intro released through an obscure website called Gamersyde (I posted a news article about it the same day I heard about it) showed a large quantity of beginning cutscenes. One cutscene in particular shows Tolten, one of the game’s nine playable characters, eating soup. At this point in the game he seems to be of nobility and even then he comes off as cowardly. Before he is able to take a sip, a guard rushes in and knocks the plate out of his hands. He then places a rat on the ground which runs over and begins to eat the soup. The rat then turns into a mutated, plant-like creature which is later burned by a fire spell from the guard. Poisoned soup relating to the main storyline of infected soil? Surely a progressive event for soup!
I believe that soup is so damn good that it should be included in many more RPGs to come. It could be a weapon, a plot element, or just an awesome item that the characters can drink to refill health. It’s few and far between that such a delectable food gets screen time in a game, and an RPG is the perfect medium for soup to come into its own. Bon appetit!
-- Miles Cressman
|
|
|
|
|
Advertisement
| |
|
|
|
|
Home
