Summary
The release ofFrostpunk 2has given us plenty of insight into the fallout of the events of the original Frostpunk. However, one unknown that persists even after completing the new campaign is what happened to the evacuees who fled Winterhome on a dreadnought during the scenario, ‘Fall of Winterhome’?
This topic arose in a recentReddit thread by hackmaster214, but it’s something I’ve been pondering myself since finishing Frostpunk 2’s story mode. At the end of the Fall of Winterhome scenario, the captain (player) must evacuate as much of the city’s population as possible before the faulty generator explodes.
Where are the Winterhome Survivors?
There is some debate amongst fans about what happened to these evacuees. A theory that emerged before the release of Frostpunk 2 was that the Winterhome survivors you find in Frostpunk’s scenario ‘A New Home’ are the dreadnought evacuees, but there’s no mention of the dreadnought itself during these scouting missions. While these could be the dreadnought evacuees, they could also just be survivors who fled the city of their own accord and survived.
Another theory that emerged with the release of Frostpunk 2 is that the nomads you play in the game’s prologue, the Wanderers, are Winterhome’s survivors. This theory is plausible: the evacuees could have crashed their dreadnought after fleeing Winterhome, adopting a nomadic culture and returning to the dreadnought every whiteout. They have deep-rooted traditions which may seem strange for a people that had a completely different living situation 30 years ago, but three decades is a long time in the apocalypse.
There are some strikes against this theory - first, the dreadnought is far away from Winterhome. It would be strange for the evacuees to circumvent New London, which lies between their origin and destination. It’s also worth noting that the Winterhome survivors were primarily children and engineers, so it seems strange that the tribe’s elders, who were probably originally engineers, would adopt practices like sniffing oil to try and tell the future. But once again, a lot can change in three decades at the end of the world.
The theory proposed by hackmaster214 and others is that the dreadnought is still out there. The evidence they give is the result of a scouting mission where you may find a location near Winterhome where a dreadnought was serviced before departing. The location contains a statue of a man covered in eels with a plinth that reads, “Those who stay are lost, but those who move on will be found.” This theory suggests the dreadnought is still out there moving around and keeping the survivors alive in a Snowpiercer-type situation.
There are two other dreadnoughts associated with Winterhome, one exploded en-route and the other was broken down for parts and can be found nearby in Frostpunk 2. The location of the last dreadnought, the one that evacuated Winterhome, is either unaccounted for or is the one used by the Wanderers and then New London.
Nothing is certain currently, but Frostpunk 2 has already announced three upcoming DLCs. If 11-Bit Studios follows the same model they employed with Frostpunk, we’re likely to receive scenarios that shed light on this question.
Frostpunk 2
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11 bit studios' Frostpunk 2 blends city-building, survival, and strategy mechanics as it challenges players to survive on a post-apocalyptic Earth with power-hungry humans.
