Fallout: New Vegas' Mr. House Was Based On Howard Hughes, But The...

"The question is does he actually have the chops to make it happen? And there's some indications that he does."

The Fallout TV series returns this week, with season 2's episodes dropping weekly until February. This season of the show has opted for the setting of New Vegas, and PCG's Ted Litchfield recently had the opportunity to speak to the lead writer of Fallout: New Vegas, John Gonzalez.

As well as some inconveniently correct observations on the lack of credit and residuals for videogame writers, Gonzalez was in a reflective mood on how some aspects of the 2010 game come across in 2025. This includes one of New Vegas' most memorable characters, Mr. House, a tech tycoon kept alive by a supercomputer who runs the post-nuke Vegas, and who'll have a major role in season 2 of the show.

"My own sense of Mr. House has changed as we've seen the rise of Silicon Valley would-be messiahs," says Gonzalez. "One of the things that now seems prescient is the fixation, the fascination they have with technological immortality.

"But Mr. House is unique in that he was able to calculate when the Great War was going to occur within a window of a few days⁠—he was just a couple of days short of getting the platinum chip. I don't think we're seeing that Elon Musk is able to calculate things to that degree of precision."

Briefly, the platinum chip is the macguffin that Mr. House is obsessed with obtaining: It was due to be delivered just before the nukes fell but, after House miscalculated the war's kickoff by a few hours, has spent the past 200 years lost in the wastes.

In the meantime, the cryogenically-preserved Mr. House has been forced to keep things running on an outdated and glitchy OS, which is obviously a source of some frustration, though at the same time he's managed it. It's basically the reverse situation to all of us being forced to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11.

The inspiration for the character was not from Silicon Valley, however, but one of the major American entrepreneurs of the early 20th century, who eventually became a legendary, oft-parodied recluse and in the last decade of his life used his fortune to transform Las Vegas into the casino and entertainment playground we know today.

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But Mr. Hughes, though involved with the CIA, Mafia, and conservative politics, did not share House's obsession with human potential and development. Artificiall

Source: PC Gamer