Thanks for the congrats! It's crazy to see this topic revived - here I thought I wouldn't hear from anyone. So I've been working away on this project and falling in love with all of the little nuggets that the creators left as I endeavor to create my own connections as well. The location of Paseo was a particularly interesting thought that I had when I lined up maps from 1,2 and 4. Look at this.
I used to think that the PS2 and PS4 maps were totally different (many games totally change maps in the same world for game design convenience), but a few things began to gel. To me, it's likely that instead of sand, Paseo was washed away by the ocean. It doesn't make a ton of sense that Paseo would be flooded and not Zema since they occupy locations with similar features, and presumably similar height above sea level.
Lining up two similar looking maps seemed too easy, so I figured that I'd use Zema as the central point. It would make some sense that SEED and the artificial lifeform would have originally been built into the cliff-face behind Zema in 2 as in 4 (though there are no mountains behind the town in 2. What got me excited was the location of Biosystems lab near Oputa. Is it reaching to assume that a biomonster/fauna production facility stretched from the lab, beneath the empty reservoir and up toward Zema? Is it possible that it extends even further? For Neifirst to pump out as many Biomonsters as she did from AW1282 through to AW1284. you would need quite the facility.
Outside of Uzo's location, there's nothing else that really persuades me that it's the same map, but if a person were to use this idea as a jumping off point for writing stories about the lore in the collapse centuries, there's a lot of inferences that could be made about why the map changed. What force caused Piata to move? Did the Motavians exact some centuries-long revenge on Palmans and take their town (Palmans killed them on sight in PS1 don't forget).
Anyway, this project has taken me on a wild ride in terms of inferring what happened to physical places on Motavia during the intervening millenium. If you have other ideas about Paseo, I'm all ears!