There are not many characters in the Fallout universe who combine retro-futurism, paranoia, and unchecked ambition as well as Robert Edwin House. With ‘Fallout’ Season 2 drawing nearer and the most recent trailer finally showing the mysterious leader of New Vegas, the long shadow of Mr. House is cast over the wasteland once again.
To know why his presence is so electric and why his philosophy has been one of the most lasting moral battlefields in the franchise, we must go way back, before bombs ever dropped.
Even Before The Ruins, Robert House Was A Genius
Mr. House is not a pre-war billionaire who was frozen in a post-apocalyptic jar. He is the embodiment of what the series asks: what does humanity owe to its future, and who gets to decide what that future looks like? In House’s case, he decided it for all of us. Robert House was a child of luxury in a glittering pre-war Las Vegas. Having been born in 2020 to the rich proprietors of H&H Tools, he appeared to be on the path of an influential life, until the most Fallout-themed event happened: a freak auto-gyro accident left him orphaned at the age of two.
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It was a ridiculous, tragic afterthought to a life that was soon to be anything but normal. However, the trauma simply made his mind sharper. House became a genius and nearly inhuman. He joined the Commonwealth Institute of Technology, a Fallout version of MIT, where he developed the scientific base that would later transform the wasteland. House is a genius, a fierce, and almost predatory businessman who, at the age of near adulthood, established RobCo Industries.
RobCo became an empire. Its fingerprints can be found everywhere in Fallout. House basically constructed the technological backbone of the Fallout universe. However, behind the business tycoon was a man who was becoming more and more convinced that the world was heading towards disaster. House predicted the Great War with uncanny precision using mathematical models, news data, and his own invention of cybernetic prediction systems.
He had estimated the time of nuclear destruction within a twenty-hour range of error. This was close enough to justify a plan that would eventually redefine Las Vegas forever. It was the calm, almost clinical certainty with which he moved forward. Most scientists publish their predictions. House constructed a means of surviving them.
How Mr. House Rebuilt Las Vegas After The Bombs
With his prophecy, House turned the Lucky 38, his own casino, into a fortress that could protect the city against nuclear fire. And, he also changed himself. House was more afraid of death than the apocalypse. This led to him closing his body in a life-sustaining chamber and connecting his consciousness to a powerful computer system. He would guide the future from behind a dozen layers of metal, code, and moral distance.
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In 2077, the bombs dropped, and House was horrifyingly right. His defenses saved dozens of nuclear missiles and the heart of Las Vegas, thanks to him. However, he won at a price: the shock destroyed his life-support systems, putting him into a fifty-year coma. In 2138, he woke up in a wasteland dominated by anarchy, vultures, and small groups of people tearing each other apart. However, House was not in a hurry to fix anything. He watched. He calculated. And at the right moment, he became the creator of a new vision, New Vegas.
To him, he is the last hope that humanity has, to some. Now that ‘Fallout‘ Season 2 is set to explore more of New Vegas and Justin Theroux is taking over the role, the question is: which version of House will the show adopt? The games never provided one, clear-cut answer, and the show appears to be willing to accept that ambiguity. One thing is certain: when Mr. House enters the story, the stakes don’t just rise. They transform.
