what makes the Chets from cooking companions different why did these four kids go on to become these adorable little Kawaii vegetables instead of horrifying ghosts like everyone else does in this series well after 3 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 tartous 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 Chets sentient Kawaii 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 hands 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 yager's ability to live forever but now we've got ourselves a sequel dread weight 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 trompet 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 knives 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 victim 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 companions 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 suddenly 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 textbox 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 romanceable characters each one more intriguing than the last first is Kurt our youthful rich and mysterious host there's ranata 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 mommy jazella I'm telling you she took one look at buffsuki and said hashtag goals it's at this point that both of our worlds begin to collide Bara 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 sauner 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 in 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 her 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 dread weight or at least the surface level one but as we all know there is way more that meets the eye with these games there's a lot of secret
law hiding in this thing so much so that I'm likely not going to get to cover everything in this video so if there are Mysteries I don't get around to solving today let me know down in the comments or if you just really like this series and want more episodes on it leave a comment as well that works too but 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 we the Bara Yaga starts the game in zako pane 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' traveled 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 jaella also mentions throwing someone's remains into the Baltic Sea so surpris inly I wasn't too far off with Denmark although there are a number of island in the Baltic Sea that would be considered Northwest of the tarris 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 folktales the island of buan 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 buan isn't a mythological place but the Slavic name for a a real Island an island known as rugan which is located in the Baltic Sea just off the coast of Northeast Germany which would be Northwest of the tartous 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 straand straand is the most northeastern part of Germany and is the closest port to the island of rugan
in fact there's now actually a giant Bridge connecting the two so clearly this Mansion is located on the island of rugan and that means we're playing quite a way out from where the game first started zakopane to rugan is about 830 km or 516 Mi that would take a normal person around 8 days nonstop on foot no wonder the baraba Yaga was passing out all the time on the way over I find it hard just walking 10 ft to the cupboard to grab more M&M so that's are where now the question is when we figured
out that the first game took place in the 1930 and for the true ending of the game the Baba Yaga left the cabin to terrorize local towns like zakopane at the very start of this sequel the baraba Yaga gets shot by a man in zakopane that must mean that the game is following up almost immediately right wrong just like we've traveled 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 lore about the fictional characters but in Redway that's not entirely the case some of them are real letters and sent by very important people people like President Eisen Hower 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 kusov the first Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and they're addressed 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 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 Viet what a joke Americans 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 8 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 stazzi and
it was an Open Secret that they were tapping phones and reading mail to try and catch Weston sympathizers and guess what we hear from Dimitri 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 Dimitri responds don't play dumb you know they're listening it's a perfect match the time period the location the suspicion 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 straand 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 kurtt at the dock making us what was known as
a grenzer 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 folders is a kilometer high and Kurt replies what are 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 stazzy that's why we know about the mail being monitored why Dimitri tells us not to play dumb when we ask who bugged the phone and why ranata also seems suspicious of us to begin with treat 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 Supernatural Force like the baraba Yaga 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 dive 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 and second thought maybe not but if none of that made you realize we can't really trust him then take a look at what Bara 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 isn't actually his real name just another lie so if Kur 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 buan 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 HT 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 kosi the deathless like most Slavic villains there are a lot of stories about this guy each with their own different
interpretations in some he's Baba yaga'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 sarovich PETA and The Wizard in it kosai 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 Bara yag 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 Bara Yaga is able to achieve these sorts of things so easily while he's having to use science old homes and rituals in order to achieve it just like kosai but Kurt clearly did manage to achieve immortality in the exact same way kosai 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 buan the exact same place Kurt's Mansion is located Plus at the end of the game Bara 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 hair these these two Spirits belong to the two bodies inside that box
Clover even references having their Rib Cage Broken open and having Max swn inside there's also a bunch of other references to koshai 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 vov of another famous Story the death of kosi the deathless in this story kosai steals the wife of the main character Ivan but Koshi 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 apologizing 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 kosai and now he will pay the price for it so there you have it Kurt is kosai the deathless
a man that envied Baba yaga'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 constant mentioning 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 already it implies that the 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 soul 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 kurk 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 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 the secret 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 secret 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 baraba Yaga hasn't dabbled with a little manipulation on other people during the story both Dimitri and ranata die at the hands of the Baba Yaga and both of them turn into creepy monster ghosts just like Mariah
anatol 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 ranata and Dmitri 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 CT but remember we're still Immortal at this point despite being shot in the face but then
Baba Yaga cradles us in our 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 ranata depending on your romance choices just like theirs our Spirits have been allowed to move on and that was only because the Bara 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 secret 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 chomet haunted the Bara Yaga as cute vegetables rather than angry Spirits like Mariah Anatoli Gregor Renata or Dimitri it's all because of what we've just been talking about the soul remember rata and Dimitri had their souls removed and from there they became the nightmare inducing spirits that means for Mariah Anatolia and Gregor to be the same the 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 Chets are the chomet because their souls weren't removed the answer is a resounding yes because in dread weight 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 ranata or Dimitri instead they're a cute little duck and rabbit just like the adorable trumpets 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 was just allowed to move on just like ranata 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 trumpets are different unlike Mariah anatol 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 they're 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 other wise 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 but if you're looking for more dating Sims with a side of horror why not check out this oldie but a Goldie episode on doy DOI literature Club just don't get too attached now theorists
