January Newsletter: Deep Dive into Developing Whisk
Deep Dive into Developing Whisk
How did everyone’s favorite optimistic driver come into existence?
Hey Chefs! This is Ryan, one of the two writers for the Cook, Serve, Delicious! series! I thought it would be fun to go deep behind the scenes for our last game and talk a little bit about our writing process, so this month we’re going to dive deep into the development of everyone’s favorite optimistic robot driver, Whisk!
Soooooo why robots?
David had been trying to get robots into Cook, Serve, Delicious! for a while. In fact, during the development of CSD2, David pitched the idea that Brysen (mentioned in numerous emails as being a vaguely amazing person) was a robot who would show up at your restaurant. While it was fun to play with the concept, we ultimately decided to save robots for something “more grand.”
A year later, David pitched Nick and Me the story and gameplay for CSD3, which included the addition of a robot driver and guardian in your food truck. They needed to be robots so we could canonize the fact that no humans were harmed in the Blue War or during the events of this game. This is a family game series about the post-apocalypse, after all.
David’s vision was for the robot duo to be optimistic and energetic, which would make them stand out from the plain-faced customers. Nick and I decided that each robot should have a different personality, but we liked the idea of an optimistic and energetic driver who would encourage you during the sometimes stressful gameplay.
So how’d you come up with the name?
I came up with the name “Whisk” on a whim, just so I wouldn’t have to keep referring to the character in our conversations as “the driver.” I thought it would be fun to name the characters after kitchen tools, and “Whisk” just seemed like a great non-threatening and fun name for a delightful robot companion. It was meant as a placeholder, but it just worked.
How did Negaoryx enter the picture?
Negaoryx had been cast for the game before we wrote a single line of dialog. (In fact, we weren’t even going to have a big overarching story, or voice acting for the main characters at all, until David decided to cast her.) This proved advantageous in that we could write the character Whisk with Negs’ personality in mind. She was already perfect for the role we had envisioned, and we got to write the role specifically for her. That’s like, double perfect.
How did you write Whisk? Got any fun scrapped ideas to share?
From a gameplay perspective, Whisk needed to pump you up and encourage you to keep going even when things were down. From a story perspective, we wanted her to also display depth and not appear completely one-note. As such, we brainstormed a lot of different ideas for how to make Whisk more than she seemed on the surface.
One of our earliest concepts was that … wait for it … Whisk was responsible for destroying Washington DC as well as the player’s restaurant at the start of the game, and she fought on the opposite side of the Blue War as Cleaver. We figured this was a decent way to tie up some loose ends with the story while also giving Whisk some much-needed character depth. You’d find out that she took the job in your food truck to get to the nation’s new capital of Nashville so she could destroy that, but through the journey, she has a change of heart, etc.
That would have been so cool! Why didn’t you do that?!
That idea proved to be too convoluted, especially for a game about going to a cooking competition. It would have been too big of a plot point to act as a side story to the main quest. In the end, we went for a more scaled-back story about her being bullied in the past and learning to love herself. Voila!
Whisk was an incredibly fun character to write, especially since we knew her character would transcend the story to make a real difference in the gameplay by cheering you on. Furthermore, we couldn’t have asked for a better voice actress to portray Whisk than Negaoryx! She was eager and excited to perform any crazy line we threw at her and proved to be invaluable at bringing the character to life. Developing Whisk was a collaborative effort through and through.
Next month I’ll tell you how we developed your favorite robot guardian, Cleaver! So tell all your CSD-loving friends to subscribe to this newsletter if you haven’t already!
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January Discord Challenge
Our New Year challenge is running through February 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!