Pauper's Drop (Level)

"My folks lived in the St. Louis Hooverville in '32... and the Drop is worse by a mile. Nobody's supposed to live down here, city pissing on us. Never dry."

- Grace Holloway

Pauper's Drop is the fourth area in BioShock 2. This is Rapture's poor district, and did not exist when the city was built. Rather, it was constructed by the workers themselves. Here Subject Delta will acquire the Shotgun in the Fishbowl Diner, and the Research Camera at the King Pawn.

In this area Augustus Sinclair asks Delta to confront Grace Holloway, Eleanor Lamb's old childminder, to fetch a key to open the gate of the Atlantic Express train station. Grace will be found barricaded in her well-hidden safe house in The Sinclair Deluxe.

History


Pauper's Drop was originally Maintenance Junction 17, built as housing for the workers building the Atlantic Express and their families, and permanent settlement was never planned. However, after the Express was finished, the workers found they could not afford to move anywhere else, and so were stuck in the ramshackle neighborhood. They were later joined by former tycoons, like Prentice Mill, who had fallen on hard times when economic depression struck Rapture. Augustus Sinclair exploited this situation, and built the Sinclair Deluxe "hotel", as cheap housing for some of the workers as well as other down-on-their-luck Rapture citizens who had nowhere else to go. Sofia Lamb observed the desperation in the citizens of the Drop and began offering free counseling sessions, subtly spreading her collectivist philosophies among the lower classes of Rapture. The many posters advertising her counseling can still be found throughout "The Drop."

Fishbowl Diner
This part of Pauper's Drop held two businesses and was the main hub for all of Pauper's Drop. Most of this section is occupied by The Fishbowl Diner. When the tracks were being built, this diner was made to feed the workers. After the families settled in the Drop, it became a common restaurant for all. Later, the Diner was closed down and boarded up, but the back door remained unlocked.

Behind the Diner is Marlene's Flower Emporium, a simple flower shop in the Drop. The hub connected the Sinclair Deluxe, the Atlantic Express train station, Town Square, and Skid Row.

Town Square
The Town Square part of Pauper's Drop housed several hotels and businesses. Fontaine Clinics sold Gene Tonic remedies to the people of the Drop and used extreme security measures to prevent burglary by its desperate customers. Rock Flanagan ran a private investigative firm out of a small office in this area, but went out of business when the Rapture Civil War ruined his chance of customers. One of the only businesses to profit from the economic hardships, King Pawn, maintained a heavily locked shop here.

Skid Row
Skid row, originally a Pump access station for the Atlantic Express, was one of the worst places in the "The Drop." It housed the marketplace of the area, where many low quality inexpensive goods were peddled. Swindlers and quacks, such as James Hollcroft, took advantage of the people's desperation to make a profit selling shoddy goods. Doc Hollcroft took up residence in the defunct "Reliable Pharmacy" in the market and refitted it to brew and sell his "Doc Hollcroft's Cure-All."

The Skid Row section also houses The Limbo Room, a popular jazz and blues venue which hosted singers such as Grace Holloway, who sang about  the "down and out" in Rapture. Sofia Lamb's supporters often handed out pamphlets between songs, spreading her collectivist philosophy. After the 1958 New Year's Eve Riots, the Limbo Room was closed because of the economic crash, when patrons stopped coming.

The Sinclair Deluxe
The Sinclair Deluxe was constructed by Augustus Sinclair to capitalize on the demand for cheap housing in Rapture. Its many rooms offered shelter to those who had fallen on hard times, including Grace Holloway and Gloria Parson.

Maps
Pauper's Drop (Level)/L1|Level One Pauper's Drop (Level)/L2|Level Two||true Pauper's Drop (Level)/L3|Level Three Pauper's Drop (Level)/L4|Level Four Pauper's Drop (Level)/L5|Level Five

Single Use Events

 * There are 3 Power to the People vending machines.
 * Hamilton building, 2nd floor, down the hall from a El Ammo Bandito vending machine
 * In the back of skid row, in the Limbo Room club, behind the stage and in one of the side rooms.
 * In the opposite hallway of the vent shrine in the Sinclair Deluxe, there will be a connecting hallway with a Turret at the end of it. Next to said Turret is the room where the machine can be found.

New Weaponry

 * Shotgun - Inside the Fishbowl Diner.
 * Research Camera-Inside King Pawn.

New Plasmids & Tonics

 * Hypnotize – In the entrance to The Limbo Room.
 * Hacker's Delight – Above the Diner, across a makeshift bridge.
 * Shorten Alarms – In Hamilton Apartments, near a desk.
 * Fire Storm – Opposite the pharmacy on the second floor in the market.
 * Freezing Drill – In the Sinclair Deluxe Tenements,in the table of sacrifices.
 * Keen Observer – Next to the bed in the pink room in Grace’s apartment.

New Enemies

 * Rosie
 * Brute Splicer
 * Grace Holloway (choice only)

Audio Diaries

 * 1) Sofia Lamb - Ryan vs Lamb: Religious Rights - On a cabinet in Marine's Flower Emporium.
 * 2) Grace Holloway - Better Times With Lamb - On the roof of Marine's Flower Emporium.
 * 3) Prentice Mill - The End of the Line - On the shrine to Prentice Mill in Town Square.
 * 4) Tobias Riefers - Clinic Code at the Fishbowl - Beside the locked door to Fontaine Clinics.
 * 5) Rock Flanagan - Camera in Hock - On the desk in the office of R. Flanagan.
 * 6) Sofia Lamb - Arrangements - Beside the vent shrine on the roof area of Town Square.
 * 7) Sofia Lamb - Therapy with Grace 1 - On a cabinet in the upper level of an unnamed hotel (red neon sign saying "Luxury Rooms") in Town Square.
 * 8) Augustus Sinclair - Wrong Side of the Tracks - Behind the Sinclair Hotel reception desk, left side.
 * 9) Mark Meltzer - Blood and Lamb - In the locked room accessible from a hole in Doc. Hollcroft's Pharmacy.
 * 10) Andrew Ryan - Pauper's Drop - In the small room above Doc. Hollcroft's Pharmacy.
 * 11) Jackie Rodkins - Sunday Services- Exit the Limbo Room, head left, and take the stairs on the left continue until you find it next to a gatherable corpse.
 * 12) Stanley Poole - Mole - Beside a Rosie corpse in the tunnel between Market and the plaza in front of the Limbo Room.
 * 13) Grace Holloway - Closing the Limbo Room - In the dressing room of the Limbo Room.
 * 14) Grace Holloway - A Gift from Lamb - In the bathroom of Room 106 of the Sinclair Deluxe.
 * 15) Augustus Sinclair - Profit Coming, Profit Going - On the broken floor above the vent shrine in Sinclair Deluxe.
 * 16) Gloria Parson - Where has Harry Gone? - In Room 213 of Sinclair Deluxe near a safe and a Turret.
 * 17) Gideon Wyborn - The Butterfly - In Room 212 of Sinclair Deluxe in the area with many butterflies.
 * 18) Elliot Nelson - What a Snap - Beside a wheelchair on the top level of the atrium of Sinclair Deluxe.
 * 19) Eleanor Lamb - Barbarism - Under the bed in Eleanor's room.
 * 20) Grace Holloway - Failing Lamb - On the bed next to the wide window in Grace Halloway's room.
 * 21) Leo Hartwig - Field Trial - On the corpse of a hostile Brute Splicer near the diner on the way out of Pauper's Drop. (Freezing him will make him unlootable.)

BioShock 2 Multiplayer
This location is featured in the BioShock 2 Multiplayer DLC, Rapture Metro Pack.

Bugs/Glitches

 * Oddly, if the player chooses not to kill Grace but sets traps where she sits, the player will hear the traps go off as Subject Delta leaves the passage behind the wardrobe, but Grace will be unharmed.
 * If the player saves, then loads, at any time after defeating a Big Sister, the battle music will play continuously for the remainder of the level.

Behind the Scenes

 * An unused radio message from Sinclair in the game's audio files explains the origin of the level's name: "Welcome to Pauper's Drop, kid- named after a suicide in point o' fact. They used to say all the world's weepin' collects down here. Gracie's people have been loyal to Lamb from the very beginning. I guess a desperate man'll buy most anything." — VO_GTO_R_Sinc_FindDeluxe_01 in Bio2_DX_04_05_06_ALL_Stream.fsb


 * A quote by Hogarth de la Plante, Lead Environment Artist of 2K Marin in the Deco Devolution artbook explains more the level's origins: "Pauper's Drop is a district that is under the tracks or under the Brooklyn Bridge or something like that. It's somewhere people are living where they weren't originally supposed to live. We came up with the idea of the Atlantic Express Train System that permeates BioShock 2 You go through all the train stations, but there was also a maintenance switch yard on the ocean floor where trains would stop to be worked on. But then at some point Sinclair realized that there was all this real estate down there that nobody was using for anything so he sublet or purchased it from Atlantic Express and built a low income housing area literally down under the Atlantic Express tracks."


 * A television at the entrance to the level shows a Security Camera shot of Subject Delta in front of the sign for "J Green Groceries." Oddly, the player does not encounter this store until the next level, Siren Alley. This could be explained by the developers commentary below that would suggest it is an artifact of when Pauper's Drop and Siren Alley were one map.


 * As mentioned in the Deco Devolution artbook by Alex Munn, Senior Level Architect, 2K Marin: "We really started with a tenement district and the diner. Early on Jordan wanted to have some sort of diner. He was thinking of Edward Hopper's painting and the idea of a lonely character hanging out in diners. Everything changed but the diner. Early on in development we realized we had so much content we had to break it into two maps so part of it went into the Pauper's Drop map and the other went to the Siren Alley map." This explains why the two maps have similar tones. This explains the previous trivia point, since the grocery would have been on the same level.


 * As mentioned in the Deco Devolution artbook by Hogarth de la Plante, Lead Environment Artist, 2K Marin: "There was also going to be a garbage dump. All the Rapture trash getting thrown down garbage chutes and ended up out here and so they'd send out underwater people to go scavenge it."
 * Originally, this level was to include a lot of Film Noir elements, such as dim lighting, flickering neon signs, and foggy alleyways.