A theory on procedural generation...(spoilers)

[LadyWYT]

I don't recall who mentioned procedural dungeon generation recently, but I know it's been brought up a time or two in the past, and I've been thinking...

I think the Devastation from chapter 2 was a test run for some procedural generation work that we may or may not see harnessed for minor dungeons in a future update. Reason I say that, is that while I know all the story locations are hand-built from scratch(or at least I figure as much), it doesn't make sense that the entire Devastation area is 100% made by hand. It could be, but more likely there is some kind of generation algorithm at work that utilizes pre-built set pieces instead to flesh everything out, given that many of the details repeat over the entire area and there's really only one or two locations aside from the Tower that stand out as unique. 

That being said, it's still impressive work, and I'd wager a precursor to procedural generation of more complex structures. I'm guessing we might see some of it come to fruition in chapter 3, if that's case, as I'm guessing that we'll be using the Lens to travel to the Rust world or a different dimension. If that ends up being the case, a potential reward could be using the Lens every once in a while to re-enter the other dimension and complete a small dungeon challenge in return for a few goodies, although I'm not sure how well that kind of gameplay loop would mesh with what we have already.

[Thorfinn]

I believe you are right. I have not looked at the code, because I don't want to spoil it, but the two times I've been there, they were different, moreso than the RA is different, which, I think, is purely in terms of clutter and lootgen.

I've seen indications of procedural generation in ruins. Some of them no longer appear to be strictly schematics, and neither are they cut-n-paste jobs. Depending on your gaming background, I do not believe what I'm noticing are properly geomorphs or dungeonmorphs, but something different.