Earlier this year, Microsoft began its acquisition of Zenimax Media Inc, Bethesda’s parent company. As a result, the next generation of gaming will see Obsidian Entertainment and Bethesda under one roof, a fact which has helped fan hopes of a sequel to Fallout: New Vegas, be it a direct continuation or a spiritual successor.
The original Fallout: New Vegas, developed by Obsidian and published by Bethesda, was praised for its world-building and characters by fans and critics alike. One character in particular, the mysterious Mr. House who presides over the New Vegas Strip, is one of the best executed RPG characters in the game, and topping him would be no easy feat.
Mr. House casts a long shadow in the Fallout lore, even before players reach New Vegas. A master businessman and adept engineer, Robert Edwin House was born in 2020 and founded RobCo Industries on June 25, 2042. RobCo is responsible for some of the most iconic tech in the Fallout games, including the Pip-Boy, the Eyebot, and, in collaboration with General Atomics, anti-communist colossus Liberty Prime.
Throughout his career, Mr. House was known for his pragmatism. While his professional moves seemed confusing to competitors, almost all of them were based on algorithms Mr. House had created in an attempt to predict the likelihood of possible future events. In 2065, this led him to conclude that a nuclear war would break out within the next 15 years, and with that in mind, Mr. House put a new plan into action.
With Fallout’s Great War on the horizon, Mr. House retreated to the Lucky 38 Hotel & Casino, a venture he’d begun in Las Vegas some years before. He designed laser defenses to help disable the 77 Chinese nuclear war heads aimed at Las Vegas and put his own body into a hibernation chamber which directly linked his brain to the casino’s supercomputer. The final phase of House’s plan involved using a platinum chip containing an upgrade for his laser defense system and securitrons to forever cement his hold over New Vegas. However, the Great War broke out just before it was delivered, and it wouldn’t be seen again until the events of Fallout: New Vegas.
Mr. House is an interesting character on paper. His backstory is intriguing and delivers on the classic sci-fi trope of a man willing to sacrifice an aspect of his own humanity in the pursuit of power and a new form of “life.” However, the real success of Mr. House as a character has less to do with his backstory and far more to do with how he works in the game world of New Vegas itself.
Mr. House is one of the most important characters in Fallout: New Vegas, perhaps the best known after Benny, the man who shoots the Courier at the start of the game. Despite this, there is nothing to stop the Courier interacting with him in any way. The player can side with House entirely, side with any of the other factions of New Vegas instead, or can take over the New Vegas strip themself by killing Mr. House or disconnecting him from his computer system, keeping him alive but leaving him isolated in his hibernation chamber.
The variety of ways the player can interact with Mr. House helps integrate the character into the open-world RPG design philosophy of Fallout: New Vegas. It would have been easy for Obsidian Entertainment to make working for Mr. House an involuntary part of the main quest that players could either complete or ignore; instead, players are given the option to take down Mr. House if they so choose.
Players can compare this to the opening of the Dark Brotherhood questline in Skyrim. At the beginning of the questline, the player is kidnapped after murdering Grelod the Kind for Aventus Aretino and forced to kill another person. After that, they’re told where to find the Dark Brotherhood if they want to join and serve Sithis. However, there is no alternate route through the quest that gives the player the option not to kill Grelod the Kind.
The player can choose to show up to the Dark Brotherhood base and to kill everyone there, but it isn’t a meaningful way through the questline, it simply makes it inaccessible. With Mr. House, every approach to the character feels equally prioritized within the story–there are not some roleplaying options which feel like they have been given significantly more attention than others. Each comes with their own unique allies and enemies like Yes Man, the robot who will help the New Vegas Courier take down Mr. House.
The trick to topping Mr. House isn’t to write a character with as compelling a central concept. Plenty of games have had morally complex industrialist figures like House, like BioShock’s Andrew Ryan. What makes Mr. House special is the way the player’s typical in-game options also play out in the story.
For example, in a typical RPG, players can kill almost any NPC they meet. What makes Mr. House special is that killing him has significant effects on the story, rather than just cutting one part of it short. The decision to side with Mr. House or not feels like a real choice, which in turn incentivizes the player to learn more about the character, his ideology, and his plans for New Vegas. If a presumable Fallout: New Vegas 2 is going to include a character as memorable as Mr. House, the developer won’t just need to come up with a character as compelling on paper, but one who is integrated into the game world and its core design philosophy.
Fallout: New Vegas 2 isn’t confirmed to be in development.
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