Game Theory: Friend or FOOD? (Cooking Companions DLC)

i'm back i've been looking for you it's been about four months since your last theory are you losing track of time again how have things been why would you ask me that you know exactly what happened you know exactly what happened let me remind you hello internet welcome to game theory now with 50 less cannibalism but the same dead kid flavor you've come to love and welcome back to cooking companions everyone's favorite visual novel about eating your camping buddies then turning them into kawaii food stuffs in case you missed our previous theories on the game the original cooking companions told the story of an unnamed protagonist living out in the woods and the four hikers that unfortunately join you in search of shelter shortly into their stay the food runs out and you as the chef are forced to find some alternative sources of meat for everyone one by one each member of the group is consumed by their hunger their guilty conscience and eventually just consumed mostly by you meat thanks to clues in the game we were able to figure out that the player character is actually the baba yaga an old hag from slavic folklore that would you know eats people that happen to get lost in the woods near her cabin but that solution only gave us half the story you see though we might be an old cannibalistic hag living out alone in the woods we aren't truly alone throughout the tale our character is visited by five adorable grocery store rejects the chompats you've got cabbage the leader of the group who loves to play games onion the comedian who thinks they're way funnier than they actually are the pun filled bread the cute but threatening raspberry and potato just potato a character who immediately stands out from the group as the tuber who refuses to play along and just insists on getting his knife back clearly one of these things is not like the others while all the other champets are playful and generally cheery potato is despondent angry threatening and that's because he's especially important to our character's origin story exploring hidden notes found throughout the game we were able to piece together that potato before he became a root vegetable was actually a serial killer known as the butcher of zakopane a man that we suspected was possessed by the baba yaga years before we were the story we crafted went as follows we were originally part of a group of five kids taken in by the butcher victims waiting for the slaughter except something unexpected happened the butcher was lonely he wanted a protege and when we arrived at the forest cabin he singled us out to learn his ways there was only one problem we were still loyal to our friends when it came time for our friends to be sacrificed down in the basement we struck first killing the butcher and saving the group except it came with one problem something that we could have never predicted in killing the butcher we ourselves got possessed by the baba yaga under her influence we then turn on our friends and thus the chompettes were born our four friends and the one starchy killer who just wants his knife back and that was the story or should i say that was the story as best as we could piece together but now everything's different enter the game's new dlc chomp at origins a prequel story to the events of the original game you know what that means it's suddenly my hour of reckoning one of the few times on this channel that we either get to confirm or deny a past theory which means and it's time to see just how wrong we were so will i be getting the sweet taste of victory or just a big ol slice of humble pie it's time to explore that familiar old cabin one final time to see what mysteries dear dream studios has cooked up the prequel story starts with three children standing in front of our familiar cabin in the woods there's selena oleg and bolek if it wasn't clear from the first letters of their names or the color of their outfits dear dream studios was also kind enough to color their names to be the same as our chomphet pals selena is cabbage old leg is onion and bolek is bread i don't know if you can tell it but they really wanted to make sure we knew who was who this time we're not playing the role of the killer or baba yaga or anything like that but rather we're the fourth child rhino the child who would go on to become raspberry we're told that we're running away from someone escaping into this empty cabin to hide eventually the man that we're running from finds his way into the cabin the four hide down in the basement but it's too late a knife-wielding killer stands before us ready to make the final blow but suddenly the kids faces turn to horror as slashing sounds are heard and the killer's eyes closed the last thing that we see are children running for their lives except for rhina who's surprisingly calm about the entire situation so what's it all mean how did the details of this dlc actually fit inside of our original set of theories well in true theory fashion we got a lot of stuff right and also a couple things wrong first and most importantly this is definitely the baba yaga's cabin as they search the premises bolek mentions finding a fence that's covered in bones which is one common trait of the baba yaga's cabin in slavic folklore we also get an extra dream in new game plus that tells us the story of us dying in a river of fire controlled by a man with a handkerchief this seemingly random story is another famous tale coming out of the baba yaga canon called the death of koshay the deathless in fact i suspect that we might even be able to catch a glimpse of the baba yaga in the dlc but it is buried real well when the kids first descend into the basement of the cabin we discover a literal murder chamber hidden inside the darkness but you know what we do when there's a dark scene you whip it out and by it i mean photoshop cranking up the exposure gives you this not only a clear scene of the various cages and hostage pit in the middle of the room something ripped straight out of silence of the lambs but in a when you see it you'll poop bricks moment if you look back here yep that is a face staring right back at you watching the kids and their killer from the shadows waiting for the moment to strike them all down that i suspect is the baba yaga notably missing its left eye which is a reference to yet another baba yaga story where their left eye is shot out during a battle could it potentially be the spirit of a past victim sure weird faces appear from the shadows when you least expect them all the time in this game but the missing eye and the placement right next to where everyone's about to get slaughtered my money is on the yaga that said while we basically nailed it on that half of the story we were a bit off when it came to potato turns out he doesn't live in this cabin like we first suspected he's also not possessed by the baba yaga he just wishes he were after our four friends in the butcher wind up dead at the end of the dlc's first playthrough we think to ourselves that quote keeping these intruders around might be entertaining for now potato is considered to be a part of that group one in a group of intruders sticking their noses into a place where they're not welcome the cabin he was not nor was he ever the baba yaga oh my hypothesizing about the baba yaga changing bodies yep not a real thing the baba yaga is just a separate real character in this universe so who then is potato and why is he trying to kill these kids all of a sudden well my dear theorists that's where the classic lore drops of cooking companions come in hidden throughout the game are secret notes that can only be accessed by interacting with an object over and over and over and over and over again until all the dialogue options are completely exhausted by clicking on the cauldron in the kitchen we find this note hi i saw the fence outside kids are needed please teach me the secret i'll bring him here on sunday you won't have to do anything please teach me the secret as you can see the spelling in these notes is um challenging but that's actually a huge clue for us after reading the note selena the soon-to-be cabbage comments the following did a kid write this either it was a kid or an adult who didn't do very well in school that language is important because when playing through the main game we're given hints that one of the chompats did indeed drop out of school in order to work at the butchers it's potato these letters are all coming from him potato apparently knew about the baba yaga that was living out in the cabin and wrote to them in the hopes that the killer would say yes to doing a collab now this is an important factoid because last time we thought we were potato's pupil but it turns out to be the exact opposite potato actually wanted to be our student if you pick bolek's route and check the walls enough times you'll find another note that says hi stop pretending like you aren't home i was good i did a good job please tell me what i'm doing wrong teach me the secret clearly potato went around town killing people in an effort to boost his resume trying to get himself an acceptance letter from the baba yaga school for serial killers but even though we were wrong about him being the baba yaga we were right about him being the butcher of zakopane selena the cabbage actually recounts the story of them finding a body stuffed into a potato barrel with the killer running away as soon as they spot him it's the same killer that then attacks the cabin the butcher so now that we have ourselves access to all the information here's how the story really wins a group of four kids try to escape from a serial killer the butcher of zocco pane by hiding down in the basement of a seemingly abandoned cabin in the woods when the butcher finds them and prepares his attack the baba yaga returns home and slaughters them all for intruding transforming the group into potato and the rest of the chompets oh yeah we also get to see potato at the very end of the game in one of the game's many secret easter eggs we get this jump scare our title screen is then sliced up into tiny little cubes this my friends is the face of the butcher we know this thanks to his height relative to the kids as well as one additional key detail the knife he's holding the knife that as potato he would be so salty not to have straightening all this out now allows us to try and actually solve the biggest mystery of the entire game the disappearance of raziel aka cornbread this elusive sixth chomp head is basically like the golden freddy of the franchise everyone keeps talking about him there are hints to him everywhere and clearly he's important to the story but the only time we ever catch a glimpse of him is if we managed to unlock one of the hardest secret endings in the game razael was a bit of an enigma during our previous theories mainly because we had so little information to work off of we're told that he's oleg the onion's relative despite the fact that bread calls him cousin cornbread we know that he's been in the cabin before because of his tiny boat under the couch and we know that eventually we eat him the baba yaga consumes his flesh not really a whole lot to go off of so last time i pitched my own idea that razael came later after the original champetz had all been killed however the new dlc proves otherwise see razael's already missing at the start of the story yeah basically that in this prequel dlc the kids decide to try solving the murders that are happening throughout zakopane in order to do that oleg needs to get some tips from his grandma and the way he gets her to open up is by saying that he's gonna use the information to help find the missing razael and when they do eventually find their way to that forest cabin they can find the same toy boat with razael's name carved into it hiding under the couch he's been here he's been gone for quite some time so what happened to this kid what brought him here in the first place well when potato corners the kids down in the basement he says this before finishing them off say hi to raziel for me he knows who raziel is but why well i suspect that raziel's the kid that potato refers to in his original letter to the baba yaga i saw the fence outside kids are needed i'll bring him here on sunday the hymn in this case is razael potato brought him here to the baba yaga in order to prove his worth and hopefully learn the baba yaga's secret which does leave us with one final question what is the secret that's so worth killing for it keeps getting brought up potato writes to the baba yaga about it not just once but twice he wants to know it so badly that he's willing to sacrifice kids to get some answers and yet the game still leaves it ambiguous that said i think that i've figured out what the secret is there's one thing that the baba yaga is well known for throughout slavic folklore something that's often described as her big secret that's the ability to become young again living forever and going back to the main game we can actually confirm that this is the baba yaga's goal inside of cooking companions by the end of your first playthrough you're getting hit with a lot of information the chompats are in a state of disarray they're dropping vague hints as to their backstories your cooking companion karen is starting to get real hungry for your flesh and you're constantly passing out flashing through weird hallucinations it is in the middle of this chaos that we encounter potato hiding inside of a drawer and he asks us the following you seem to survive almost anything do i have that right must be that addiction to the meat or something else would you share that secret with me it's at this point that we can actually choose to tell him whatever it is that he wants to know so badly if you do share the secret with him he responds with i'm living longer than expected already but this is good information to take with me so that basically confirms that the information he wants is related to extending your life in some way but then how do you do it that brings us all the way back around to cannibalism and raziel some folk tales say that the baba yaga stays young by eating children and while we search the cabin we stumble across drawings of a small child being fed meat by a large black monster we're told that these drawings are made by none other than razael so this appears to be depicting the baba yaga preparing to consume our young little cornbread friend but the baba yaga's eaten countless people before it's why we keep seeing spirits of the dead all around the cabin so what makes raziel so different why did they move on to become cornbread rather than just stay in another angry spirit well i think that's explained away by this drawing right here a small boy surrounded by horrific faces were you fattening him up or were you scaring the hell out of him while you hesitated one does not simply eat kids one does try to fatten them up before consumption however raziel was different because the baba yaga started to connect with him it started to care for the boy we're told throughout the story that raziel was a fountain of pure life and energy a joy for everyone around him i suspect as potato rightly calls out that the baba yaga started to hesitate it knew that it needed to consume razael to continue living but it didn't want to sacrifice such a loving and sweet child eventually the baba yaga does consume him but the damage is done the baba yaga continues killing and surviving but does so begrudgingly as potato repeatedly calls out in the main game we're slipping we're getting sloppy we don't care as much about what we're doing anymore because in the end what good is eternal life if you have to be a lonely monster in order to get it but hey at this point i think it's pretty darn clear that since cooking companions first came out i've been super invested in 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Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 3,268,942

Keywords: cooking companions, cooking companions game, cooking companions explained, cooking companions all endings, cooking companions gameplay, cooking companions ending, baba yaga, cooking companions baba yaga, cooking companions ending explained, ending explained, ddlc, doki doki, doki doki literature club, scary, horror, scary game, horror game, game theory, game theorists, game theory lore, game theory cooking companions, matpat, matpat cooking companions

Id: TAwgezu2Kw4

Length: 15min 19sec (919 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 20 2022

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[u/MasterSansai]

About the "Baba Yaga" in the Basement, I'm Pretty sure this part of the theory is wrong.

This Image is the one of the portuguise speaking ghost.

This is further disproven when looking at the game files. That exact image is called "Baby" seen here

[u/Silverhop]

aww was looking forward to GTlive when he played the rest of it. This will have to do :D

[u/MrChonkers1965]

He missed some important things such as, the kid speaking a different language in the kitchen, and the hidden ending if you say yes to potato