Old City theories

[Rage]

I always wonder "WTF happened to Old city" in the game the people said that it use to have people living there.

What happened did they just up and move. Did a gang of dogs push them out. WHAT!


Another why can't you fix old city when the Bonnes kind of destory it?

[Musashi]

Because. It just works that way yo. (Boredom killed the cat. WHA?)

[Pitch]

I always figured the people of the Old City may've fallen victim to Reinitialization.. It is pretty close to the Main Gate.. I'm not sure though, I don't recall an explanation being in the game..

As for why you can't rebuild it... the people have no use for it?

[Rage]

I said "Theories" is doesn't have to be true. Of course there isn't a real explaintion. That's why I said theories...oh well. I say gangs like what happened to New York in the early 20 or 30's I think.

[Musashi]

Not entirely true, it is the area where all the POWER PLANTs are >_> of course, none of them can get damaged though.

[Blues]

I think they just moved out. After all, Uptown, City hall, and even Downtown are better than the old-fashioned, drab, gloomy, and mechanical look of Old City. It's not entirely abandoned, though- There's Met-Hat workers there, and those annoying dogs. It's a good place to hide, as evidenced by the Bonne's constructing of Bruno there. As for it being (not) fixed, well, I guess Amelia didn't want to waste the money on such a out-of-the-way, abandoned place. Still, the Old City is an interesting place, if you jump on a buliding and look around.

[Santa Melty]

Well, it would seem that the old city is nothing more than abandoned. As to why, there was never any hint given in the game. It was not a reinitialization, we can tell that much. Proximity to the Main Gate should not mean anything, as the reinitialization would affect the entire island. Besides that, it would flatten everything, not just kill the people.

As quoted from a library book:

It's 'The History of Kattelox Island, Vol. 1'...Let's see--This unpopulated island
was discovered some 100 years ago. At the time of its discovery, the surface of
the island was almost completely covered with ruined buildings. Kattelox became
well known after the discovery of high-quality refractors under the island some 60
years ago.

The buildings were decrepit, but certainly still standing. Also, the power plant in the Old City was still operational, so we can assume that it was probably abandoned due to economic problems rather than some biblical purging.

So, why aren’t people there anymore? No idea. I thought there was an explination in the game, but a quick run-through of the transcripts proved otherwise. I’m sticking with the economic angle though. There may have been people living there, but, as Blues said, most of the buildings do not seem to be made for living. Many of them look like warehouses or factories. Perhaps they were once an industrial island, but there was some shift in the market that rendered them unable to produce.

Of course, with so many references to people living there, it may have just been poor building and zoning that drove people out. Perhaps having housing so close to the Main Gate or to the power plant made for undesirable living conditions. And going back to the building designs, they do look like buildings that would be more suited to industry. Cheap, I mean. They may have just been the first homes constructed, which were replaced once the island/businesses hoarded enough money to construct decent housing, after which they simply abandoned the old and embraced the new.

Something along those lines, I think. But it wasn’t reinitialization. The dogs are a possibility, as there may have been wild packs of dogs on the islands before Kattelox was established, but it is extremely unlikely, what with the previous reinitialization having wiped everything out. The dogs were probably domestic animals that got loose and began living in the abandoned Old City after all of the above was said and done.


As for why you can’t reconstruct the buildings, what Pitch said. They have no reason to simply repair a few buildings and leaving the rest. The land could be used, yes, but they’d probably want to tear down the whole lot of the buildings and start from scratch if anything. And, though that might encourage expansion, there was probably no immediate interest for such a thing on such a small, sparsely populated island, hence why they did not. In such a situation, the government may just be waiting for private companies to take up the task of demolition and reconstruction. Let demand run its course, as it were.

Of course, I’m just pretending to know what I’m talking about. I’m no economist or anything; it is simply a guess.

[Pitch]

Ah, you know, I really oughta've paid more attention to that library. Gotta be at least the third time something in it I haven't read has made something I thought impossible.

I never really gave the Old City that much thought, though. It doesn't seem very inhabitable, though... I suppose, maybe it was an industrial area before they discovered the refractors underground and it became a digging site.