Game Theory - We FINALLY Solved Cooking Companions Biggest Secret! (Dread Weight)

Episode Date: September 25, 2024

Join Game Theory Host Tom as he breaks down the sequel to Cooking Companions, Dread Weight!

What makes the chumpets from cooking companions different? Why did these four kids go on to become these adorable little kawai vegetables instead of horrifying ghosts like everyone else does in this series? Well, after three years, we finally have ourselves a sequel and with it, another quackpot theory. Hello, internet. Welcome to Game Theory, the show that never dreads the weight of law. And there's a lot weighing on my shoulders today, because we are once again exploring the deep world of Slavic folklore with our adorable vegetable friends.

That's right, we're talking about the sequel to the indie horror dating sim, cooking companions. The visual novel turned horrific cannibal nightmare fuel taking place in the 1930s. In that game, we took on the role of the Baba Yaga, an immortal witch from Slavic folklore that feeds on people that stumble upon her cabin in the Tartarus Mountains. Slowly, we end up eating our latest potential romantic companions. They do say the quickest way to someone's heart is through their stomach. These characters then go on to haunt us as we continue our slaughter. However, they aren't the only things that are haunting us.

Throughout the games, we are also introduced to the chompets. Sentient kawai vegetables that want to play games, help us out, and stop us from killing more people, mostly. One of them, Potato is actually quite okay with the whole murder thing, so long as he can get his hand on something he calls the secret. We've had ideas about what this secret could be for a while now, with the most likely one being that it's the Baba Yaga's ability to live forever. But now, we've got ourselves a sequel, Dreadweight. And it not only reveals what the secret really is, it also finally answers a question that we have had since the beginning of this series. Why are the chompets different? Why did they become adorable vegetables when our latest companions just became horrifying spirits?

Was it because they were children? Was it because they were killed inside the cabin? Was it because they were killed specifically by Baba Yaga herself? Well, grab your carving nice theorist because we've got a whole new mansion to explore. And it is full of cryptic messages. Slavic folklore and a brand new cast of victims, I mean characters to woo over. And they're all going to come together to help us find the truth. I just hope you like the taste of meat.

We start this game once again as the Baba Yaga, along with Potato, who, during the true ending of Cooking Companion's DLC, convinced us to go outside, but not to touch grass. Instead, we are to eat everyone we find. We read the same note from that ending about a man named Ivan and swear revenge on the person who sent it to us right before passing out. We wake up in a new location, but something is different. Our way of speaking has changed, and I don't just mean the dialogue. The actual text boxes and menus have changed visual style.

Clearly, we are now playing as a different character. Someone separate from the Baba Yaga, whose text box style was identical to what we saw in the first game. This new character wakes up in a mansion surrounded by a new group of remancible characters, each one more intriguing than the last. First is Kurt, our youthful, rich and mysterious, hope. There's Renata, Kurt's financial advisor. There's Dimitri, a young doctor who apparently can clean up blood real good. And last but certainly not least, is Kurt's bodyguard and resident muscle mummy, Gisela.

I'm telling you, she took one look at Buffsuky and said, hashtag goals. It's at this point that both of our worlds begin to collide. Baba Yaga reaches the mansion, determined to end Kurt's life. And she is actually a lot more pleasant to look at than I was expecting. Were you expecting something else? Little old me. Guys, is it hot in here or is it just the old sauna I'm recording in right now? As the night goes on, Baba Yaga slowly kills members of our crew.

We are attacked by their ghosts and we have to figure out who to trust. Baba Yaga, Kurt, or the new adorable spirits following us around, a duck named Max and a rabbit named Clover. By speaking to all of our new companions and by doing the cooking companion staple of clicking everything over and over again, we begin to realize what's really been going on at the mansion. Kurt has been doing experiments on the mansion's inhabitants, including us, wiping all of our memories in order to stop anyone turning him into the authorities. And of course, the game ends with multiple different endings that range from doing just that, turning Kurt in, to burning the mansion down to the ground, to once again falling in love with the Baba Yaga.

I never really understood that from the first game, with her being described as an old hag. But now that I've seen her for myself, yeah, I get it. Anyway, that's the main story of dreadweight, or at least the surface level one. But as we all know, there is way more than meets the eye with these games. There's a lot of secret law hiding in this thing. Let's actually start solving at least some of the game's secrets, starting with the same ones we did when we covered cooking companions. Where are we? When are we? And who are we? So let's start with the easiest one. The where.

The barba yaga starts the game in Zacopane. But after a less than ideal interaction with a local, we move on. And when we ask Potato where we are, he says, Northwest of the cabin. Helpful as always, Potato. that could mean anywhere from the most northwestern part of Slovakia to Poland or even Denmark, depending on how far we've travelled. Fortunately, our other main character seems to be able to get a little more information.

Kurt mentions almost immediately that we took a boat ride to get to the mansion and that it's located on an island. Gisela also mentions throwing someone's remains into the Baltic Sea, so surprisingly, I wasn't too far off with Denmark. Although there are a number of islands in the Baltic Sea that would be considered northwest of the Tartarus Mountains. So let's get a little more specific. Going back to our trusty Slavic folklore, there is an island that appears in a number of Slavic folk tales, the island of Buryan. This island has the ability to appear and disappear with the tide, which is pretty useful for a guy who's

trying to avoid the authorities. But some scholars have claimed that Buyen isn't a mythological place, but the Slavic name for a real island, an island known as Rugen, which is located in the Baltic Sea, just off the coast of northeast Germany, which would be northwest of the Tartarus Mountains. Near the final moments of the game, we see Kurt being interrogated as he pulls up to a port. When asked where he's coming from, he avoids the question, instead responding, Visiting some friends in Strasand. Strousand is the most northeastern part of Germany and is the closest port to the island of Rougan. In fact, there's now actually a giant bridge connecting the two.

So clearly, this mansion is located on the island of Rougain. That means we're playing quite a way out from where the game first started. Zacopane Tarugan is about 830 kilometres or 516 miles. That would take a normal person around 8 days non-stop on foot. No wonder the Baba Yaga was passing out all the time on the way over. I find it hard just walking 10 feet to the cupboard to grab more M&Ms. So that's where, now the question, is when? We figured out that the first game took place in the 1930s.

And for the true ending of the game, the Baba Yaga left the cabin to terrorise local towns like Zako At the very start of this sequel, the Baba Yaga gets shot by a man in Zacopane. That must mean that the game is following up almost immediately, right? Wrong. Just like we've travelled much further than you'd expect, this game takes place a little further in the future. As you explore the mansion, you can find letters hidden in various drawers, just like you could in the first game. However, in cooking companions, these letters tended to be fictional letters that gave us law about the fictional characters. But in Dreadway, that's not entirely the case.

Some of them are real letters. And sent by very important people, people like President Eisenhower and Joseph Stalin. And these letters are all on public record, which means we can use them to figure out when this game takes place. Two of these letters come from Nikita Krushchev, the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and their address to President John F. Kennedy, one about the Cuban Missile Crisis and one about the state of Russian and US relations, both of which were sent in 1962.

This game is taking place three decades after cooking companions. That is a long time to hold a grudge, Baba Yaga. Although I suppose when you're an immortal witch, what's a few decades? All of that being said, while these letters are a good starting point, there was one other detail that pushes the date back a little further. If you choose to spend time with Dimitri, there's a chance he'll drop this little piece of information. Glad we're prioritizing economic stability instead of warfare like the Americans, colonizing

Vietnam. What a joke. colonizing Vietnam. Given we just found letters from the 1960s, he can only be talking about one thing, the Vietnam War. The US put troops on the ground in Vietnam in 1965, and they remained there until 1973. So, for Dimitri to be talking about this invasion in the present tense, the war is still going on. And so, we are playing some time within those eight years. I know, it's not the most exact date, I'll admit, but given this game takes place in Germany, it does place us during a really crucial time in German history. After World War II in 1949, Germany split into two independent

nations, the Federal Republic of Germany in the West, who aligned with the Western democracies like the US, and the German Democratic Republic in the East, who sided with the Soviet Union. Due to these different ideologies, tensions were high, to say the least, and the countries remained divided until 1990, putting this game smack dab in the middle of those historical tensions. During this time, East Germany had a state security service known as the Stasi, and it was an open secret that they were tapping phones and reading mail to try and catch Western sympathizers. And guess what we hear from Dmitri when we ask him about the mansion's phone? It's the only phone in the mansion.

Kurt needs it to make calls. Besides, it's bugged. Isn't the mail monitored too? And when you ask who bugged the phone, Dmitri responds, Don't play dumb. You know they're listening. It's a perfect match. The time period, the location, the suspicious.

it all points to the East German government being the ones who tapped Kurt's phone. They are the ones he is actively trying to avoid, which surprisingly leads directly into the question about who we are in all of this. I've already mentioned that near the end of the game, Kurt is interrogated on the docks of Stralzand. However, he's not being interrogated by just anybody. He's being interrogated by us. As the conversation goes on, the interrogator is knocked out and dragged onto the boat,

Exactly like we're told about when we first wake up at the start of the game. We are the ones interrogating Kurt at the dock, making us what was known as a Grenza, basically a border control agent. Except it goes a little deeper than that. Grenzers were mainly responsible for one thing, shooting anyone who tried to escape across the border. But our character is doing a little more than that. They're running a full-blown investigation. In one interaction with Kurt, he confesses to having someone steal a horse from Baba Yaga, to which we respond.

Stealing horses is a crime, Kurt. Instructing someone to commit a crime is also a crime. I bet your folder's a kilometer high. And Kurt replies... What? Are you remembering? Kurt reacts specifically to us mentioning his folder, as in his case file. For us to remember a case file means we aren't just a normal border control agent.

We are more likely part of the GDR secret police, the Stasi. That's why we know about the mail being monitored, why Dimitri tells us not to play dumb when we ask who bugged the first. phone and why Renata also seems suspicious of us to begin with, treating us like we should know about the lack of fair trials given to people like her who were listening to broadcasts they weren't supposed to. We are part of the problem. We are part of the secret police cracking down on people's freedoms.

We are one of the bad guys. And in one of the endings, we actually do arrest Kurt, leading him to be tortured by the government and leading dictators to rule the world. So yeah, while we may not be an evil super-enet. force like the Babayaga, I think you could argue we're actually much worse. However, it's at this point that I've got to be honest, I'm getting a little antsy. We've solved a lot of important details, but none of it really relied on the Slavic folklore that made the first game so interesting.

Sure, it's nice to know that we aren't some kind of supernatural being and instead are a real monster, a human being, but if we aren't the mythological creature in this story, then who is? I mean, someone's got to be from folklore, right? Would be a bit depressing if this time around there wasn't any new folklore for us to into. Thankfully though, theorists, there is someone who feels in that need. Our new hospitable host, Kurt. If you haven't noticed, Kurt is a little bit shady. He kidnaps us, wipes our memories, lies to us constantly. Oh, and he lies in our bed to watch us sleep. Dude, at least buy me

dinner first. On second thought, maybe not. But if none of that made you realize we can't really trust him, then take a look at what Baba Yaga calls him during the end of the game. I'm not telling her anything, Kurt. She's using quotation marks around his name, as if Kurt, is actually his real name, just another lie. So, if Kurt isn't who he says he is, who is he really? We know that he's a character with a connection to the island of Bouyen. We know that he has a connection to the Baba Yaga, but the weirdest detail is actually from the end of the game,

where Baba Yaga holds out an egg, crushes it, and in doing so, Kurt literally disintegrates before our very eyes. That's not usually how death works. But it does tie him to a very specific character from Slavic folklore, Koshai, the Deathless. Most Slavic villains, there are a lot of stories about this guy, each with their own different interpretations. In some, he's Babayaga's sibling. Other times, he's married to her, which might explain why she keeps calling him Sweetie in one of the flashbacks. One of the most famous

stories is Sarovic Petter and the Wizard. In it, Kosci isn't a supernatural being like the Baba Yaga. He is instead a wizard, and he uses his magic for one specific goal to achieve immortality. Looking at Kerr, it's clear he has been doing the same thing. During the final confrontation, Barba Yaga implies that Kurt has been around since the witch trials, which in Europe were between the 15th and the 18th century. So a good century and a half before this game takes place, he has managed to find immortality. And in a conversation with Dimitri, he voices frustration that the Baba Yaga is able to achieve these sorts of things so easily, while he's having to use science, old tomes, and rituals in order to achieve it, just like Koshai.

But Kurt clearly did manage to achieve immortality in the exact same way. Koshai did by disconnecting his soul from his body and putting it inside a needle. He then puts the needle inside an egg and puts that inside a duck and then inside a hair, inside a box that is buried in the forest on the island of Buyang. The exact same place Kurt's mansion is located. Plus, at the end of the game, Barba Yaga finds the box buried in the forest with two bodies inside. During an ending where we arrest Kurt, he is accused of improper storage of animal remains. And throughout the game, we've been haunted by the spirits of Max the Duck.

and Clover the Hare. These two spirits belong to the two bodies inside that box. Clover even references having their rib cage broken open and having Max sewn inside. There's also a bunch of other references to Kosci the Deathless throughout the game. Kurt's ceremonial room underneath the mansion contains a throne made for two people and a rusty iron sword, which is referencing this painting by Victor Votsnissov of another famous story, The Death of Kosci the Deathless. In this story, Koscii steals the wife of the main character.

Ivor, Ivan, but Kosci's horse is too fast to catch. Koshai, however, lets it slip that Baba Yaga has a faster horse, and so Ivan goes to get it. Baba Yaga doesn't want him to have it, so in the end, Ivan steals the horse. She chases him but fails and falls into a lake of fire, matching a nightmare that the Baba Yaga has during cooking companions. But with Kurt apologising about Ivan stealing a horse in the letter and in the final confrontation, it's clear this wasn't just a nightmare. It was an actual event that happened and Kurt is to blame because he is Koshai and now he will pay the price for it.

So, there you have it. Kurt is Koshai the Deathless, a man that envied Babayaga's ability to live forever and so found his own means of immortality through dark magic and elaborate schemes. But then, what does this have to do with The Secret, TM? I mentioned it at the start of this episode and if you've been following our coverage of these games, you'll know that the secret has been a big mystery throughout each installment of the series. In the first game, Potato continually asks Baba Yaga to tell him the secret. In the DLC, we find out that Potato has been desperate to learn the secret since they were human. And then during this game, Potato is still trying to figure it out.

However, despite its consternmentioning, we've never truly known what the answer is. Which, I guess makes sense. It is called The Secret for a reason. Last time, we came to the conclusion that it must have something to do with eternal life, mainly based on potato giving us this line in the original game. I'm living longer than expected already, but this is good information to take with me. If he's living long already, it implies that this secret would be able to extend his life somehow.

Then, when I first got to the end of this new game, I felt like we had pretty much nailed it. In some of the game's endings, Kurt will hunt you down and kill you because you gave away the location of his sole egg to Baba Yaga. Just before he does, though, he gives you this line. You're given the greatest secret humans have ever known. And you squandered it. During your different playthroughs, Kurt can give you a number of different things. But there is one item that is consistent regardless of your choices.

At the start of the game, you are given a drink of water. And one of the responses you can give after drinking it is, I think I swallowed a hair. As the game goes on, we find out that yes, it was in fact a hair. Kurt has made everyone in the mansion eat one of his hairs, which in turn makes them immortal just like he is. So we are now immortal and according to Kurt, that is the secret that we have squandered. So, case closed, the secret is eternal life, right?

Well, not exactly. Because if you do go on to kill Kurt, Potato says this. Why didn't you brew a stew of some of his hair? I could have had a sip, just enough to learn a secret. Why didn't you let me ask him? In this moment, Potato seems to know what Kurt's hair does and believes if he drinks it, then he will learn to. the secrets. If all he wants

is eternal life, then why would he need to learn about it after drinking a hair? He'd already have what he was after, which means eternal life cannot be the secret, or at least not the full secrets. Earlier on when you find the box containing Kurt's soul egg,

Potato asks once again, Can't I at least ask him about a secret before you do it? Just leave me with his research papers. I can figure it out. So, the secret has to do with Kurt's research and experimentation. As we've discussed, Kurt didn't achieve his immortality by natural means.

He used science and magic to do so. It eventually worked, but in order to achieve it, he had to transfer his soul into something else that he could then hide somewhere safe. During the ending where we burn the mansion to the ground, the Duck Max also mentions Kurt helping him achieve a similar goal. I used to hold out hope that helping Kurt achieve his goals would lead him to helping me. Letting my spirit rest or transferring me into another more capable body. Transferring me into another body.

Just like Kurt transferred his soul into a needle inside an egg. The secret isn't the ability to live forever, but the ability to live forever and stay young and capable by transferring your soul into a new body each time your old body fades. That is what potato has always wanted. When he was human, he wanted to be put in a more capable body. and can you really blame him? I mean, look at that face!

That's a face only a mother could love. But now, he wants out of his starchy prison to return to the world of the living so that he can go on to kill again for himself. But hang on a minute. This may have been how Kurt achieved his immortality, but Potato first tried to learn this from the Baba Yaga, and she's not transferred her soul to stay alive.

That was actually our first ever theory on this franchise, but it got debunked thanks to the DLC. So why would he have asked her for the secret, if the secret is soul transferring when her immortality wasn't tied to that. Well, she may not have done it to herself, but that doesn't mean the Baba Yaga hasn't dabbled with a little soul manipulation on other people. During the story, both Dimitri and Renata die at the hands of the Baba Yaga, and both of them turn into creepy monster ghosts just like Mariah, Anatoly, and Gregor did in the original game.

We at first thought this was happening because they died outside the cabin, which would make sense we aren't in the cabin for this game either. But then Onion comes along and gives us a little more insight into how we killed Renata and Dimitri. Tearing their spirits from their bodies was definitely the right move. She didn't just kill them. She tore their spirits from their bodies. Later on, you can be shot by Kurt.

But remember, we're still immortal at this point, despite being shot in the face. But then, Baba Yaga cradles us in her arms and tells us our torment is over. We feel the knife press against us, and suddenly we end up in a white, space with either Dimitri or Renata, depending on your romance choices. Just like theirs, our spirits have been allowed to move on. And that was only because the Baba Yaga removed our spirit from our bodies. She too has the ability to manipulate and move souls. And that is why Potato first went to her for the secrets.

However, the revelations don't stop there, because now that we understand what the secret is, it actually begins to answer another question we've had since the original game. Ever since we first covered it, we have been wondering why it is that Chompets haunted the Baba Yaga as cute vegetables rather than angry spirits like Mariah, Anatoly, Gregor, Renata, or Dimitri. It's all because of what we've just been talking about, the soul. Remember, Renata and Dimitri had their souls removed, and from there, they became the nightmare-inducing spirits.

That means for Mariah, Anatoly and Gregor to be the same. same, that Baba Yaga also removed their spirits after death. So if you become a weird, creepy ghost when your soul is removed, does that mean the chompets are the chompets because their souls weren't removed? The answer is a resounding yes, because in dreadweight, we also see what happens when you don't remove a spirit after death. When we find Max and Clover's corpses inside the box in the woods, they are very clearly dead, at least according to potato. And yet their ghosts still haunt the mansion. Though, they aren't angry spirits like Renata or Dimitri. Instead, they're a cute little duck and rabbit, just like the adorable chompets.

Earlier I mentioned that during Max's ending, he wants nothing more than to be transferred into a more capable body, but he also says he'd be happy if he was just allowed to move on, just like Renata, just like Dimitri, and just like us. The reason he and Clover maintain these cute animal spirit forms is because their souls were not removed from their bodies. They're still trapped inside, unable to move on. And that, my friends, is why the Chompets are different. Unlike Mariah, Anatoly and Gregor, the Baba Yaga ate these children, but didn't release their souls before doing so. They are now stuck here, unable to move on. It may even be that the reason their vegetables is because their souls transferred into the

vegetables that they were being cooked alongside. We did hear the mention being cooked inside of the oven or the cauldron during the first game, but that's just speculation. on my part. Regardless, this is why they constantly beg her to let them move on throughout the original cooking companions. Will you let us go? Someday maybe? All they want is to be free, to have their spirits transferred and allowed to move on. But Baba Yaga couldn't bring herself to do it. Because otherwise, she'd be completely alone. And as we've seen from her relationship with Kurt, to her relationship with Karen, to holding on to potato, all she really wants are some cooking companions. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching.