Connecting ROM to VA-11 HALL-A (Spoilers for both)

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While I know the two games just tangentially share the same universe based off some themes and crossover, upon replaying ROM I've started to notice how things could start moving towards the world we find in 207X.

So, the direct references we have are:

- NSFW League
- Hassy
- ROM Characters and Dana in Neo-SF
- VA-11 HALL-A drinks at Stardust.
- Augmented Eye

So, using a bit of guesswork...

- Dana Zane, when you meet her in ROM is already Lexi's partner or, Dana joined Lexi as a partner when she became a Private Detective, or according to her epilogue in Endless Christmas. (Granted, the likely answer for the mixup is that the two games didn't try to align their timelines perfectly, but that's no fun!)

- Augmented Eye became more of a "rumor rag" after Zinn's demise and they moved to Glitch City... alternatively there are multiple Augmented Eye offices around the world. I'd like to think that Zinn's death for snooping around however changed how things were run at Augmented Eye when Donovan took over.

- Synthetic alcohol started to become more of the "norm", possibly because it was more cost-effective than using real alcohol? Alternatively, it may just be the norm for BTC sponsored bars. Regardless, Synthetic Alcohol ingredients have been around since 2064.

- Hassy never moved beyond the west coast. Dana mentions it as a rarity in Glitch City, but Lexi still talks about it being commonplace in Neo-SF.

- ROMs gaining sentience eventually lead towards the creation of Lilims, more human-like ROMs. They bridged the "Uncanny Valley" and stopped developing ROMs that looked like machines as they had all gained more human qualities. However, ROMs still exist, such as the Vending Machines outside of VA-11 HALL-A.

- The technology to make Hybrids was eventually utilized in the creation of Cat Boomers. Laws for hybridization may have changed once corporations started to run the city and gov't.

- Congress fell apart and cities/corporations started to control their own areas. I can't remember specifically, but there were some lines around Chapter 3 or 4 of ROM about the world outside of Neo-SF that made me think this was an inevitable conclusion. I think there were some passing optional factoids about experiments in that kind of gov't elsewhere in the world.

- Courtesy of Zalkanis - Flower's research into neural implants on animals most likely resulted in the "talking dog" tech/translators we see available in VA-11 HALL-A.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

[Arynis]

I don't think I'm that far in VA-11 HALL-A yet, but based on what I've seen of the game so far (save for the point about Dana) I think those sound plausible.

To add to the list, could Flower Cybernetics's neural implant experiment on animals have evolved and improved to result in the talking dogs like Rad Shiba? So they are now capable of human speech and can understand human speech, unless they are based on something else.

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Originally posted by Zalkanis:

To add to the list, could Flower Cybernetics's neural implant experiment on animals have evolved and improved to result in the talking dogs like Rad Shiba? So they are now capable of human speech and can understand human speech, unless they are based on something else.

Yes! That.