clever, very clever.

Creating a recipe in Final Fantasy XV involved several development team members. According to Hasegawa, the process begins in the art department, where the dish’s ingredients and desired appearance are planned out. Another team takes it from there — takes it outside, specifically, to actually cook on a camp stove. “Our team members took out their gear and went camping to cook outdoors. You know how even the simplest foods can taste really delicious when you’re out camping? We wanted to focus on that same feeling while we created them.” Ignis serves up some very fancy-looking meals in the Coleman-branded camp dishware in the game, but it’s believable due to this detailed care in their creation. You can buy that the dedicated outdoor chef could make a beautiful croque madame at a campsite — because a team of dedicated outdoor chefs in Japan actually did the real-world work first. The completed dishes, “served” in the game’s camping and diner scenes, were then photographed from various angles. They were then scanned to create 3D data for the digital artists to work with, but artists weren’t just left to work off of static images. The digital art team also handled the physical dishes prepared by the food team and their ingredients — how are you really going to perfectly render a zucchini unless you’ve actually held a slice yourself? Recipes were then tasted by the teams creating the in-game models, and the 3D data tweaked as necessary.