User blog comment:Chaosian/Primary source for Tower Pack DLC/@comment-217.26.27.230-20130928160304/@comment-1932315-20131005080500

If I recall from exposition in 2033, several lines had been destroyed to prevent mutant threats some time ago, likely more than two or five years ago by the wording. Keep in mind as well that the Biomass, or more, the Creature of the Kremlin, was essentially an over-night thing.

I wouldn't be terribly quick to judge the complete character of two people from a single word. If either had a shred of dialogue that made them sound like they had superiority complexes, then yes, I would probably come to the same conclusion, yet they completely don't. The line, "as commoners call it" is not said in a snide way of one who is above commoners, but in a noting kind of way like a scientist observing culture. This is true about the various weapons of the Rangers arsenal, and was an oversight of my own, though, mind, Su and Bar are Stalkers who may or may not be associated with Kshatriya (and neither faction is explicitly related to the Rangers of the Order).

By scavenged materials, I mean everything found in D6 and in the Metro is used from one generation to another. It is a society of hand-me-downs that is spiraling out of control, a sentiment most evident in Anna's dialogue about how in two generations people won't even understand the world before the war. Nothing new is made in the metro, everything is adapted. With this in mind, I find it next to impossible for either A) a high-tech combat simulator to have been hauled down from the surface (from a Museum mind, not a military institute with technology that doesn't exist today), set up to work to the point of which it needs proper calibration, or B) the creation of a high-tech combat simulator in a society that was on the road to the second Dark Age. It's a complete change in theme from the series.

Of further note, supporting the theory that the Tower Pack is an early event is the references to problems with the power. It would make sense early in time for this to be the Biomass, yet as a piece later in the timeline it is a completely dropped sub-plot.

Additionally is an argument that could go either way. If Metro Command is sitting around doing nothing besides secretive and special missions, a number of their soldiers wouldn't be receiving action and would have a use for a combat simulator (see the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout New Vegas). On the other side is, of course, if the Rangers of the Order had solved all the problems of the world seven years from the Enlightened ending, they too would need a combat training program.