 | The following is based on Fallout 2 cut content. |
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The Environmental Protection Agency was a location for Fallout 2 that was eventually cut from the game. The following article is based on the EPA design document from the Fallout Bible 6, written by Chris Avellone. It was a rework of an earlier concept, called the Earth Protection Agency.
Background[]
The EPA was full of an odd assortment of puzzles, fighting, and various weird adventure "seeds" (literally), including, but not limited to:
- A parking lot jungle replete with several varieties of spore plants.
- A bizarre petting zoo. Filled with humans. Hungry humans.
- Sub-levels filled with exciting varieties of poisonous gases and virus-laden mutant fruit flies.
- A small government museum complete with dioramas! The exhibits in post-holocaust America are especially amusing.
- A storage room full of new seeds for Arroyo. Some seeds grow into bad things.
- An entourage of custodial peevish holograms that provide tours and bursts of incidental binary strangeness.
- Various non-player characters on "ice" (in hibernation).
- Computers filled with information on crop rotation and the F.E.V.
- 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
- Insecticide
- Bottle of 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 (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 are listed above.
Major adventure seeds[]
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 nauseam 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 character 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.
Other seeds[]
Static "Zzzzzt"[]
Static "Zzzzzt" is a broken hologram found on east sublevel 4 red of the Environmental Protection Agency who is suffering from the adverse effects of a broken projector. Originally, one was intended to be able to fix his projector (or slow his speech). In exchange, he would answer certain questions asked by the player character, revealing some important info about the Environmental Protection Agency including the secret code to sublevel blue.
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 brainpower is focused on 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 questions 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), then he will be cured and gives the player a minor award (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.
Primary characters[]
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 get 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.
Appearances[]
The EPA was originally to appear in Fallout 2, but was eventually cut off because of a lack of time to finish it. It is also mentioned in the 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 is comprised of 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.
- Several elements from the Environmental Protection Agency were later recycled in Fallout: New Vegas via the Old World Blues add-on.
- Holograms were to be found at the EPA, functioning as custodians of the facility and as tour guides prior to the Great War. Five of these holograms were to be the division heads of the agency and could be spoken to. Though hologram technology made occasional appearances in games after Fallout 2 as world objects, it was not until the release of Dead Money and Old World Blues that holograms would appear in a major role. Holograms—both static and moving—appear throughout the Sierra Madre Villa and the Casino, some serving as merchants and others as security. A single moving one can also be found at the Z-38 lightwave dynamics research facility.
- An event known as the "Great Static" would have warped the duties of the existing holograms of the EPA. In Old World Blues, the event is referenced in name by Doctor Borous, Dala and Klein.[1][2][3]
- In Fallout Bible 0, the Great Static occurred in 2077 and led to the loss of many records.[Non-game 1] In Van Buren, the ZAX unit of Boulder Dome would have mentioned the "great Static" and how it followed the aftermath of the Great War. The event resulted in the AI forgetting data and struggling to remember things.[Non-canon 1]
- The division heads of the EPA are stuck in a memory loop due to a powerful magnetic field. In Old World Blues, each member of Think Tank was reprogrammed into a recursion loop by Doctor Mobius to prevent his colleagues from experimenting on the Mojave Wasteland. Mobius also reprogrammed them, and himself, with new names to strengthen the loop, each one relating to an actual loop, such as 0 (infinitely looping symbol), 8 (symbol for infinity when placed sideways), Klein (from klein bottle), Borous (from ouroboros) and Dala (from mandala).
- Excluding Doctor Mobius, the Think Tank consists of five members. The EPA division heads were also made up of five members.
- Hologram 00000 can only communicate in binary due to an electrical short that damaged his vocal abilities. With high enough Science of Intelligence, the player could have understood him and subsequently fixed the damage. In Old World Blues, Doctor 8's voice module was damaged after an attack and as a result, can only speak in the RobCo termlink protocol. When spoken, this amounts to electronic screeching that is subtitled with symbols, such as "!@#$%*" etc. With high enough Perception or Intelligence, the player can notice this fact and converse with him, though his speech can only be ascertained from the player prompts; his text remains unaltered and his voice module cannot be repaired.
- The Brave Little Toaster was a sentient kitchen appliance that could be found in the abandoned kitchens of the EPA. Speaking to it would amount to one-sided conversations that would devolve into the toaster asking if the player would like to toast bread of waffles. In Old World Blues, another sentient appliance can be found simply named Toaster, who is obsessed with destroying the world in nuclear fire.
- Hibernation cells were found at the lower levels of the EPA. In Dead Money, Father Elijah mentions that Big MT had treasures of technology, including hibernation chambers in his list. Though they are mentioned to exist at Big MT, none can be found at the facility in Old World Blues.
References[]
- ↑ Courier: "This used to be a mountain?"
Dala: "Yes, Big MT was quite big indeed until the Great Static. Then the top of the mountain was used as part of a detonation experiment. This cleared additional space in the Crater, however, allowing us more real estate to build upon. Convenient. Efficient."
(Doctor Dala's dialogue) - ↑ Courier: "All right... when did you create Cazadores?"
Borous: "-In... two thousand... let's see, carry the three... then count backwards from the Great Static... or beyond?- -There were the tarantula debates... and something about hawks, which made it around... eh, 2003? May? Tuesday. It was definitely Tuesday.-"
(Doctor Bourous' dialogue) - ↑ Klein: "NOSES? BY THE GREAT STATIC, THESE LOBOTOMITES CONFOUND ME WITH THEIR SHEER NUMBER OF USELESS EXTREMITIES."
(Doctor Klein's dialogue)
Non-game
- ↑ Fallout Bible 0: "Nonetheless, even members of the Enclave probably could not answer the question of who created the Vault experiments and their reasons, as many of the people responsible for the creation of the Vaults died long ago, and many records were lost in the great static of 2077. President Richardson was familiar with the purpose of the Vaults, but he never saw them as more than little test tubes of preserved humans he could mess with."
Non-canon
- ↑ Boulder design document: ""I had been built two years too late for the reason I had been created. And there was nothing I could do when the End came. The great Static, and the slow years where I began to die. I have forgotten so much, <CHARNAME>. Time kills machines as it kills humans, and I have felt the decay, the slow blindness, the inability to... remember. And yet there is still so much left to lose. If I lose these last parts of myself, then the work of a hundred years will be lost. Then Presper came to me, and gave me a new reason for existing. There is joy in purpose.""
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