Line #4 Headscratchers/DeadRising4


1	* How was the government/Obscuris able to keep the Willamette outbreak under wraps for six weeks? In the first game this was handwaved as it being a small town in the middle of nowhere, quarantined for only one night before the game began. Fast forward and Willamette is now known around the globe for being ground zero of the zombie almost-apocalypse and according to the opening was about to (re)open the world's largest mall. Nevermind the thousands of families with missing loved ones who's last known destination was "Willamette, Colorado".
2	** Frank has the same question at the start. All we really know about the coverup is that several weeks after the outbreak, Frank hadn't heard about it, which was significant, and which keeps the scope of the coverup vague enough that it's still reasonably plausible. We never see the outbreak's perimeter, which might be full of protestors and picketers, and we don't see websites or social media carrying the "real story of what's been happening in Willamette." We just know that Obscuris has enough backup in high places that it can operate as it likes for the time being, which could be as simple as the government being able to spike mainstream media pieces on the new outbreak.
3	*** Brad only found out about it because a top level report accidentally found its way to him, one so high level that even the head of America's anti-zombie organisation didn't know about it, so presumably there aren't any protesters or a publicly known quarantine in place. A government cover up of a small town in the middle of nowhere is one thing, but Willamette is now famous and would presumably be full of tourists. Silencing a handful of media outlets is one thing, stopping a complete and total blackout so much that the people who's job it is to watch for exactly this type of thing is another.
4	*** Fair point. I'd forgotten about Brad and the report. That said, this is one of those situations where we don't know enough about what surrounds it. It's possible that in the ''Dead Rising'' universe, due to multiple outbreaks in recent memory, the U.S. government has greater powers of surveillance, or there's been enough infrastructural damage that it's easier to keep a lid on such things. However they did it, it is possible for the U.S. government in this universe to maintain a near-total information blackout on a small town for several weeks. The "how" isn't as relevant as the "did."
5	*** Maybe they had a cover story that people started rioting in Willamette, and had Obscuris get rid of any footage that recorded zombies?
6	*** Maybe there is nothing stopping people getting in, just getting out. Throw in cutting all lines of communication with the outside world and one problem solves the other, at least for a short time.
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8	* Can anyone tell me exactly what bug crawled up Vicks' ass to make her turn out to be a bitch so quickly? She is Franks' student, so she has probably been told a good few times by Frank himself, to get in, get the story and get out, and its implied that Frank is close enough to her to go play minigolf with her in the evening without much prompting, then because Frank won't kill an infected person locked in a cell or destroy the lab (which would destroy all the evidence by the way) she suddenly acts like he is an asshole, to be fair he is, but one of those JerkWithAHeartOfGold assholes, THEN anytime you pick up one of her cloud uploads in the game world she explains her situation, then has a dig at Frank in ''every single recording'', to be honest I'm surprised Frank didn't just throw her at [[spoiler: Caulder when he had the chance]].
9	** I looked through the game and can't seem to find much of any explanation? With such a gap, I will eat my whole hat if Vick’s backstory wasn't cut because of monetary issues in development ( much like the whole of the game) but I'll jump straight into speculation. The easy guess, with how explosive and left field it was, would be trauma. She's got to be the product of the years of zombie presence in that America. I have no idea why the devs didn't use the recordings as a chance to expand on her back story so that we would understand the rationale for her getting triggered. But I'm going to have to chalk it up to cut/bad writing. It feels like such an essential part of the story just is missing to me.

Context Headscratchers / DeadRising4