We've heard a few outlandish stories recently about Dragon's Dogma 2, including the role of GTA5 in inspiring director Hideaki Itsuno. But the secret behind the strangely appetizing mystery meat goes above and beyond.

Over the past day, I've been watching countless videos showcasing the culinary animations in Dragon's Dogma 2, painstakingly trying to figure out how Capcom managed to create such realistic and delicious-looking meat.

When not slaying monsters or roaming the wilderness, one can rest and recuperate by preparing delicious dishes. It was a bit of a shock to see the screen fade to black and the camera focus on the most realistic cut of meat I've ever seen in a game, but I can rest assured that I know where the mysterious meat came from.

"The meat that gets roasted in the camp is live-action [footage]," Ituno said in an interview with 4Gamer. For several months, I was having a 'what's interesting about camping' meeting with the camping enthusiasts on the team, and one of them said, 'I can see as many pictures of people grilling meat as I want. This led to its introduction into the game."

This is a fairly obvious answer to my existential conflict about how on earth Capcom was able to make meat look so realistic, but that doesn't make it any less impressive or entertaining. Now that I know that Capcom has decided to use real food, everything looks even more appealing.

"We could have used expensive CG to represent the meat, but we decided to use higher quality meat for the same cost, so we went with the current format," explains Itsuno. Each type of meat available in the game has a different image when grilled." You will probably notice the truth, as the chunks of meat displayed before and after grilling are different.

Cooking scenes are not the only thing to look forward to in Dragon's Dogma 2. The open-world setting immediately captivated Senior Editor Wes Fenlon during the demo." After taking on a few quests, I proceeded to completely ignore them for the three hours I spent obsessively trudging through a small portion of the vast open world."

You'll be able to run around the world starting March 22, but don't forget to take a break, stock up on supplies, and get hungry in between the action.