| abstract | - Level Map expanded for the MMORPG to its full extent (not only what we are allowed to see in the Solo game - as with the other level maps the interior areas are much more extensive now). The much larger interior spaces and facilities include functions that should have been present to be an integral part of the Old City, and they give the MMORPG players more to interact with. Map Diagram Color Key :
* Light Beige - accessible floorspace from in-game
* Black - Structural walls (reinforced concrete - primary watertight structure)
* Dark Grey - bulk foundation concrete (built ontop/into seabed rock)
* Orange - Additional space within given structural walls (not visible in-game) - including many utility space (ie- sumps at lowest level)
* Green - Continuations of a floor level (implied by a door or windows or blocked passage/door or similar stacked floors)
* Blue - Ocean Water areas (water contacting exterior surface)
* Brown - Seabed and some interior structures like banister rails/outlines of furniture/machines
* Red - Atlantic Express tracks, doors and airlocks, some machinery/pipes/cables/conduits
* Yellow - Stairs/steps/elevators/access shafts (paths of level changes)
* Light Blue - Window 'glass'
* Purple - Blocked doors and passages (in-game) (main floor of Outer Persephone you go thru in the game and some extrapolated parts of Inner Persephone) --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- "In the house of upside down, cellar's top floor, attic's ground. In the house of upside down, found is lost and lost is found." - Little Sister Song Outer and Inner Persephone are intermeshed (they overlap in the area, OP/IP floors part of same structures) so I did both together. I have done my text descriptions seperate. The elevator from the seabed above (from Fontaine Futuristics) looks to take you well over 100 feet down deeper, which adds yet more water pressure ( +3 atmospheres) which the stuctures have to deal with. A likely reason Persephone's style largely resembles a German WW2 bunker. - Part of the puzzle for the Persephone game levels is the rock areas that have to be contiguous between level maps, but also leave open areas near the various existing windows, which have to look out onto open water. The rock supports the building structure (from above in most places). Near the top of the cavern there are large irregular pockets of water (instead of one large simple 'dome' shape). The building structures run between and through the interleaved hanging cavern ceiling rock. The water opens out downward into the main volume of the 'Cavern', which edges onto the Abyss. Note- the windows in the Little Sister's delusional area are not real -- when you flash back into the real world a few times the real cells all have solid walls where bright indistinct window views are seen by Little Sisters. Outer Persephone's Map Orientation is dependant on the connection to Fontaine Futuristics map via that first elevator. A mystery - you enter an elevator when leaving the Fontaine Futuristics level, which is a cylinder shape and when the Outer Persephone level starts (with you in the same elevator, descending) it is now a rectangular shaped elevator (maybe the plasmids are causing you to see things...). The MMORPG is one contiguous map, so inconsistant design errors like that wouldn't happen (plenty of other things to flub, but the Player Community can spot and correct those). At the beginning of the level, you are facing an elevator door that opens (the button is gone so you really cant tell for certain which way is which -- like if you somehow turned while it descended. That makes your facing uncertain - DID you turn and are you now facing North (the door side you entered the elevator thru) OR South if you did NOT turn and are facing where that button was (and a opposite side dual-door opened onto the Outer Persephone reception area). Pick one - North and Persephone is directly under parts of Fontaine Futuristics. Pick South and Persephone is furthere South towards the Abyss (which it is supposed to be). I selected the South facing so Persephone is not below Fontaine Futuristics (the Lifeboat has to ascend somehow to open water and better it not be right thru the Fontaine Futuristics' buildings). - Big concrete statues seen as you enter Outer Persephone. Maybe that (impressive) facade is a Wales Brothers design? I doubt Sinclair would have paid for largely needless decoration (might at least had it visible from inside where the inmates would be impressed by it). They could have at least been used as part of some building structural reinforcement (for a place hanging precariously over a near bottomless pit...). Of course concrete statuary doesnt have to be anywhere as strong as the building walls (they do not have to hold out water pressure) and only have to support themselves. They can even be largely hollow to decrease even that weight (and have them use less cement to make). Their expense would be more the shaping and the transport/installation than the cement/concrete that is relatively cheap in Rapture.- The Little Sister Crazy Dollhouse (the area you see while in Lil-Sister-Vision) was once the City Insane Asylum (long before the entire City was turned into an Insane Asylum). When you (in BS2) temporarily break out of the Lil Sis conditioned delusion, you can see the cells there have padding in them (might also be sound proofing to help muffle the screams). - Stalactites-like rock formations (hanging) above building structures (some over Viaducts) If I was building there, I would have had such a hazard cut/trimmed off to minimize posibility of catastrophic failure (such rockwork is trivial to do with the technologies used to build Rapture - plaasma cutters vs drillinbg and blasting). Found one of those exterior walls with window (near Examination Room) looking out upon it and it has no real width to it (when it is supposed to be many-feet-thick pressure proof construction). There are some very odd free-floating rocks outside the window in Lamb's Ofice. They may have been meant to be glued to the stalactites in their immediate vicinity. Window under the floor in "Lamb's Ofice" --- perhaps there had been a different purpose for that odd room. It would have made a lousy office originally, with all the insane inmates having to pass thru it to get into the Asylum, so maybe it was used somehow for processing incoming crazies. It is another odd thing which is a puzzle for its being expensively built. The windows on the building facade (that big building mass across the water as you enter the level from the elevator) indicate that there are many floors over there besides the one we get access to. There appear at least 6 levels (some partial) below and 4 levels above the level we enter and move about on. Parts of Persephone complex could/should have served as the City Jail, and other parts as the City Insane Asylum. The Jail was a temporary holding place for suspects and those given short sentences for minor crimes (yes, there actually would be 'laws' that would be enforced), versus the long term (or Life) Prison sentences given for major crimes. All the facilities needed to operate and manage the Jail and Asylum would be included (and would be in all those additional floors). A Hot Water Pumping Station would also be in that building section for the Heat Pipes (from Hesphaestus) you see outside above the entry Viaduct. An Atlantic Express Station is there and would have been the main transportation conduit for all of the Persephone facilities. --- --- --- --- - Sofia Lamb was living on borrowed time. Looking at the state of her 'base of operations' in Outer Persephone, it is a disaster waiting to happen any minute. The drainage pumps must be going on Full night-and-day to handle all those leaks, and were they to burnout or get clogged the whole place could fill up with water quite rapidly (sorry - "Unity" doesnt equal all Drowning together, and certainly would have put a dampener on Sofia's plans). Sofia has minions. She could have things kept in much better condition. Seal the leaks, clean/scrape off the sealife growth and other encrustations/corrosions (and their wonderful seashore smell), eliminate the fires and short circuits, get all the lights working, patch the walls and floor, give the place a new coat of paint -- how different it could have looked (and certainly would no longer be a catastrophe just waiting to happen). Keep a number of her minions busy keeping it hospital clean - "idle hands are the devils tools"... Make them obsess over what their "Savior" might think, emerging into such a mess/dump. All it might have taken was one anal-retentive tidy-obsessive ex-medical Splicer to paint/clean the whole place without even being ordered to. Likewise the minions would have been 'tidied up' and their behavior might have been interesting with obcessive cleaning just as you walk in and they start shrieking "Wipe your boots" and "Dirt, dirt, no no NO!!!" etc... Imagine what a difference for US to have entered Persephone in such a pristine fixed-up state - the contrast to the rest of Rapture (we had just gone thru) might be startling. Might it interfere with the Lil-Sister-Vision sequence's contrast ?? No, a modern hospital-like sterile medical environment would still be significantly different than that pretty delusion which the Little Sisters see. --- Main Atrium : All those steps/stairs, when some patients have to be moved by wheelchairs and gurneys (which we see all over). The stairs go up then down, then up again. There was plenty of room for ramps and a continuous level to deliver wheelbound patients with the least effort. Not really sure what this room's function would have been with those big glowing red water pipes and such, and an 'isolation room' hanging off it (The whole arangement really seems to be only designed for a big blast-fest fight to take place in the game). Perhaps when Persephone was also the City's Insane Asylum and City Jail there would have be many non-inmate present (lawyers, psychiatrists, constables delivering inmates, etc..) to justify an 'Atrium' with fancy decorative features. --- A modification on my Fontaine Futuristics map allowed a walking path between the two facilities to correct the problem of requiring a Diving Suit 'Sea Walk' to reach Persephone in the normal times. You would need that passage to still be accessible (in BS2 times) to get supplies and personnel (Lamb's minions) between the two points (as the Persephone AE station is not functioning and Submarines are mostly un-available). - Very Bright : Bright bioluminescence down in the 'Abyss' - with those long distances through water, which in reality quickly absorbs bright sunlight ("almost no light penetrates below 490 feet of water depth in the Ocean, even when the water is very clear"). For an ecosystem to expend that much energy, there has to be the excess of a rich ecological environment (the geothermal heating no doubt would help). Normally such a 'rich' system would not exist in the depths, so there must be unusual circumstances down there. In the MMORPG many mysteries may be explained... --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- A Twist for Every Occasion : A Real BS2 Twist would have been there was NO Eleanor, and it was all a manipulation by Sofia Lamb for some reason or other (Maybe YOU are to be the "First Utopian" ??, for some not too torturous plot reason). The idea hit me walking across the Viaduct into Outer Persephone at one of Eleanor's little psychic messages - and I though "How do I know there actually is an Eleanor?", and its been mentioned elsewhere that Sofia was capable of manipulating Splicer dreams in various ways, as well as an assortment of 'conditioning' methods. Perhaps all those hundreds of SPlicers you slaughter werent so willing to become "One with the Unity" and the mayhem was by Sofias design and intent to 'harvest' them. Heh, I just thought up another Bizarre-O-Land plot - a 'sea slug' happened to be inside that Vita-Chamber when Eleanor was reconstituting you (Delta) and now you get to live out a mangled version of the plot of 'The Fly'. Might make a good submission for one of the MMORPG's 'Twist' Contests. (Really Bizarre-O-Land-ish would be creating interactive Machinimas submissions with the viewers taking part in the storyline). --- . . .
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