The Central Theme of Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!
Ya know, other than cooking real good.
Hey Chefs! It’s me, Ryan.
In addition to lore, something I never thought I’d have to worry about when I was first brought on to write for the Cook, Serve, Delicious! series was a narrative theme. For the uncertain, a “theme” is a concept that occurs throughout a story that binds multiple elements together. Stories can have one or many themes, and these themes can be accidental or intentional (or a mixture of both, as in our case). Typically, however, a strong story has at least one coherent central theme. For example, the Harry Potter series is about many things, but one of the most prominent is the theme of death—from the death of Harry’s parents in the first book to the concept of the three Deathly Hallows in the final book.
As such, when we writers began developing the story for CSD3, we suddenly had to think about the theme of a game series that had, up to that point, been entirely about the player’s mission to beat the game and/or master the game’s mechanics.
Finding the Central Theme
The development of CSD3’s theme started later in the process than you might think. As you learned from the March newsletter, the development of the story for CSD3 began with David telling us that he wanted the game to begin with Chef’s restaurant from CSD2 blowing up, forcing Chef to start over in a food truck. After we plotted the route and developed Whisk and Cleaver as characters, we brainstormed story beats we thought might be interesting to pursue for each character and the story as a whole. We even drafted a very, very rough script to see what ideas might arise from that process—all before even considering the theme.
After we identified the ideas that sounded most promising and interesting, Nick suggested that we figure out a central theme that could tie them together and guide us through developing the rest of the story. Elements that we liked or had already locked in included:
Chef losing their restaurant again and starting over in a food truck
Cleaver searching for a place to call home
Whisk having a reputation as a driver who often gets lost
The food truck driving through “Newer Orleans,” which is slowly being rebuilt after it was destroyed in the Blue War
Through examining these ideas, the central theme revealed itself to us: starting over and rebuilding. Chef was starting over after losing their restaurant, Cleaver was looking for a new place to start her life over, Whisk needed to rebuild her reputation, and even the world itself was rebuilding after a devastating series of natural disasters and war. As a delightful bonus, this theme worked perfectly with the tone we had established in CSD2 that we planned to carry into CSD3, internally referred to as “upbeat sadness.” The theme arose organically, and it was now up to us to write a compelling story in service of that theme.
Amplifying the Central Theme
Having discovered the theme, we set out to build a story around it. Anywhere we could fit the concept of rebuilding and starting over, we did so. For example, Whisk—whose backstory originally included being responsible for some terrible things in the Blue War—was given a new backstory that strengthened her journey and tied into the theme; instead of just trying to rebuild her reputation, she also rebuilt her sense of self-respect and started over with a new group she could call her family after growing accustomed to being constantly ridiculed by her former team. We also peppered lines throughout the script that painted a picture of the world being determined to recover from tragedy.
And, of course, to drive the theme home, the game ends with an abundance of imagery and dialog that promises a bright dawn on the horizon for our characters and the world at large, thanks to their determination to push onward through devastating circumstances—but I won’t spoil the details for you here, you’ll just have to complete the game!
Thanks for reading this month’s newsletter! I’ve got another developer feature lined up for next month’s newsletter that I think you’ll like, so stay tuned for that!
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June Discord Challenge
Our June community challenge is up and running on the CSD Discord — post your entry for a chance to win great prizes like game codes, the iconic Sundae plushie, or replicas of CSD3's in-game gold and bronze medals!