Environmental Protection Agency (location)

The Environmental Protection Agency was a location for Fallout 2 that was eventually cut from the game. The following is a description of the location from the Fallout Bible #6, written by Chris Avellone:

The EPA was full of an odd assortment of puzzles, fighting, and various weird adventure "seeds" (literally), including, but not limited to:
 * 1) A parking lot jungle replete with several varieties of spore plants.
 * 2) A bizarre petting zoo. Filled with humans. Hungry humans.
 * 3) Sub-levels filled with exciting varieties of poisonous gases and virus-laden mutant fruit flies.
 * 4) A small government museum complete with dioramas! The exhibits on post-holocaust America are especially amusing.
 * 5) A storage room full of new seeds for Arroyo. Some seeds grow into bad things.
 * 6) An entourage of custodial peevish holograms that provide tours and bursts of incidental binary strangeness.
 * 7) Various non-player characters on "ice". (in hibernation).
 * 8) Computers filled with information on crop rotation and the F.E.V..
 * 9) A clinically depressed Mister Handy and a hyperactive drug-making appliance for Science characters.

The EPA was supposed to use the Vault City/Vault 13 tile set for interiors (bright white, like original vault). Special scenery objects include an EPA parking lot sign, and color-coded symbols on the walls, running the whole range of the rainbow.

Special items

 * Can of dog food (a la Mad Max)
 * Insecticide
 * Shampoo
 * Pesticide
 * Marijuana
 * Pop Rocks (drinking Nuka-Cola with these triggers a horrible exploding death)
 * EPA Government Power Cell
 * Bug Spray Canister (kills all insects instantly)
 * Plant Spray Canister (kills all spore plants instantly)
 * Gas Mask
 * Solar Scorcher (this was its original location)
 * Test Tube

Art

 * Parking Lot
 * Entrance Level (Office Building)
 * Level Red (Security, Public Relations, Museum)
 * Level Orange (Blood-Curdling Cafeterias and Sinister Conference Rooms)
 * Level Yellow (Power Core)
 * Level Green (Animal and Biological Testing; Arboretums and Cages of Creatures)
 * Level Blue (Hibernation)
 * Level Indigo (Top Secret Research into Gender Modification)
 * Level Violet (Memory Core)

The breakdowns of map flow is listed above.

Carnivorous Jungle
The player character has to navigate a jungle filled with Venus mantraps. This isn't as much an adventure seed as a combat-based necessity in order to enter the EPA in the first place.

Gas-Filled Level
One of the levels is filled with poisonous gas. If the player character wanders around this level, they will take considerable damage every round until they leave or die.

Ventilation Horror
In order to get access to the main EPA complex, the player character has to navigate a series of ventilation shafts where they can only use small weapons against the inhabitants of the ventilation shaft: giant mantises, Small Scorpions, and the occasional man-eating plant.

Hologram War
The player character can encounter some of the custodial holograms that still fill the EPA corridors. They were mostly used as tour guides while the EPA was still in operation, but ever since the "Big Silence/Great Static" following the "Big Flash," they have become somewhat warped in their duties. They have taken the bureaucratic mentality to a lethal extreme, imposing regulation and regulation upon each other until they have become gridlocked in their duties and can no longer function. The heads of each division are currently arguing ad nauseum in one of the EPA conference rooms because the presence of a powerful magnetic field that keeps erasing their short-term memories (they keep repeating the same argument every five minutes, forget everything they say, then repeat it again). Only by fixing the problem with the magnetic coils, interrupting the conversation and ordering them to stop can the player stop the gridlock.

Holograms can only be destroyed by an EMP grenade, or by stealing or destroying the EPA power core in Sub-Level Yellow.

Static Zzzzzt
The player character discovers one malfunctioning hologram that speaks only in static (like a fast food drive through speaker). If the player character repairs the holograms projector (or slows down his speech), they can learn some important codes or other information.

Mr. Chemmie!
The player character discovers a small appliance in one lab (Mr. Chemmie) that takes various raw materials (plants, beer, condoms, chemicals, garbage, Scorpion tails) and turns them into various pharmaceuticals like Rad-X, Mentats, RadAway, and so on. The player character can experiment with the machine to create certain drugs or bizarre substances. Characters with a high Intelligence, Luck, or a high Doctor or Science skill can create special drugs that no other character can.

Mr. Chemmie always speaks in exclamation marks.

The Brave Little Toaster
In one of the abandoned kitchens in the EPA is a small, intelligent toaster with an IQ of 6000. All of its brain power is focused towards convincing humans to make toast. Dialogues with it will be somewhat one-sided, as the player character will ask it a question, and it will respond with some question about whether the player would like toast or waffles.

While the toaster seems like just an incidental strange character, it does happen to mention (almost in passing) in its dialogue that it is broken and can't access everything it needs in order to successfully make toast. If the player character repairs it, then it can provide them with the following: the secret code for the vault in one of the New Reno casinos (which is otherwise near-unopenable), some secret codes for jinxing the slot machines out of their cash, and some other bonus items.

ABACAB
One of the computers in the EPA mentions a simple cure for epilepsy. Apparently, by repeating a series of letters with the proper inflections, a listener can be cured of either autism or epilepsy. If the player character discovers this and goes to New Reno and says the code phrase to the Barking Man (who didn't make it into the game, so I put him in Planescape: Torment), then they will be cured and gives the player a minor reward (in addition to the minor experience award).

No News of a Thaw
The player character may discover some hibernation cells in the lower levels of the EPA, and depending on what type of character they are (combat, stealth, or diplomatic), they can free one of three hibernating humans that have been preserved since the great silence.

Hologram 00000, Director of Science
A brilliant hologram that can't express himself properly as an electrical short has damaged his vocal abilities, and now he can only communicate through displaying binary numbers (a character with good Science skills or a high Intelligence can read the binary codes, decipher what he is saying and fix him).

Hologram 10001, Director of Security
A gung-ho marine hologram who peppers his speech with a lot of crude German phrases. He believes that everything in the complex should be killed and then the EPA allowed to reboot. Fortunately, he can no longer command any of the robots, all the weapon defenses have run out of ammunition, and all he can really do is bluster about how much he would like to destroy everything if he was in charge. If the player performs some tasks for this Director, they can get access to the security locker rooms, which holds some old ammunition, weapons, and some armor.

Hologram 12001, Director of Operations
A weaselly, nervous-smiled male hologram. Only characters with a high Intelligence can make out what the hell he is saying since he uses so much double-talk. Nothing can be gotten out of this director, since he has no authority over anything.

Hologram 10031, Director of Ground Maintenance
A frustrated hologram who is in charge of all the ground maintenance at the EPA. The fact he has no physical body and none of the robots do anything he says has forced him to operate at 100% inefficiency for the past few decades. The other directors always bring this up whenever they can. If the player character fixes the robots or takes care of some of the gardening and landscaping problems around the EPA (killing the lethal plants), the Director will hire them, allowing them access to the EPA medical cabinet and storage shed (which contains new seeds, chemicals, herbs, and various insecticides and weed killers).

Hologram 40011, Director of Public Relations
This sexy-sounding (yet somehow prim and proper at the same time) hologram is in charge of all the tours and press releases. Her syrupy-sweet attitude and her constant stream of press releases gets annoying really fast. Nonetheless, the player character cannot get to certain areas of the EPA complex without her. There are also some portions of the complex that will only open if she leads the way (mostly the museums and petting zoo). Characters with a high diplomatic skill can get much more out of her than other characters.

Secondary characters
There are no secondary characters.

Zzzzzt
A malfunctioning hologram that speaks only in static until he is repaired. When repaired, he is quite relieved and can provide the Chosen One with information on various mysterious objects in the EPA sub-levels, along with codes that allow access to restricted areas.

Brave Little Toaster
A genius-level toaster. It has a 6000 IQ. It likes to make toast.

Mr. Chemmie
A cheerful, hyperactive little drug-making appliance.

Appearances
The EPA was originally to appear in Fallout 2, but was eventually cut off because of lack of time to finish it. It was mentioned in the Sierra mission statement holodisks and in the Van Buren Nursery design document and also mentioned in Fallout Bible.

Behind the scenes

 * The Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and with safeguarding the natural environment: air, water, and land. The EPA began operations on December 2, 1970. It is led by an Administrator, who is appointed by the President of the United States. The EPA is not a cabinet agency, but the Administrator is normally given cabinet rank. The EPA comprises 17,000 people in headquarters program offices (Washington D.C.), 10 regional offices and 27 laboratories across the country. The regional office in San Francisco (for region 9) is responsible for the states of Arizona, California and Nevada. Two research offices are located in Las Vegas, NV.
 * The can of dog food is a reference to the movie Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, where the titular character is seen eating from a can of dog food at the beginning of the film.
 * The death from Pop Rocks and Nuka-Cola is a reference to the urban myth that eating Pop Rocks and drinking cola will cause enough carbonation to make a kid's stomach explode. In a popular version of the myth, the character "Little Mikey" (played by [still living] actor John Gilchrist) of an iconic "Life" cereal commercial is said to have died this way.
 * The character of the Brave Little Toaster is a reference to Talkie Toaster from the TV show Red Dwarf; one dialogue option is a direct quote from Red Dwarf character Lister.
 * Elements of the Environmental Protection Agency (such as the Toaster, and Hologram 00000) would later appear in Old World Blues, an add-on for Fallout: New Vegas.

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