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Robert House

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For Robert House's brother see, see .
Robert House
Biography
race, Caucasian
genderMale
affiliation (defunct)
roleAutocrat of New Vegas
location
family - half-brother
Gameplay
appearances
mentioned in

quests


(I-VIII)
Statistics
karmaNeutral
1 , 10 , 10 , 5 , 10 , 1 , 10
: 50
level2
Technical
actor
script by
00125e91 (computer)
001376d0 (real)
001264c5 (computer)
0014b095 (real)
 
“

We don't have to dream that we're important.

”— Mr. House

Robert Edwin House is the self-styled President, CEO, and Sole Proprietor of the in the in the year . House is foremost responsible for the founding of , the creation of , and civilizing the New Vegas casino tribes.

Contents

Biography

Pre-War

Born June 25, 2020 to a wealthy Nevada tool magnate, Robert Edwin House was orphaned at an early age when his parents died in a freak accident involving an auto gyro and lightning. Cheated of his inheritance by his half-brother, , he nevertheless attended the , and later went on to found in his hometown of Las Vegas at the age of just 22. It would soon become one of the most profitable corporations in the world making House a multi-billionaire by the age of 30, owing mostly to House's considerable technical genius and business acumen, and he used the wealth and power to gain controlling interests in myriad other businesses. These included , the on , and perhaps, most personally, the - the family business usurped by his greedy half-brother (although curiously, the factory on the outskirts of Vegas was still under his brother's control in 2077).

A staunch pragmatist by nature, Mr. House would regularly design and run mathematical paradigms based on global political and socioeconomic conditions in an effort to predict future events. By 2065, these projections led him to the inexorable conclusion that the world would be engulfed in a nuclear war within fifteen years. Worse still, his contacts within the military informed him that seventy-seven Chinese warheads were aimed at his beloved Las Vegas. Armed with this knowledge and his projections, House went to work on a secret plan to ensure the city would survive this apocalypse and that he would live to see the world after the war. He programmed multiple mainframes with satellite links meant to disable the vast majority of the Chinese missiles while in flight, then designed an array of high powered laser cannons, which he had installed on the roof of the Lucky 38, to deal with any missile his program had missed. To preserve himself, he took equally drastic steps: his body was permanently connected to an extremely sophisticated life support device to take care of his physiological needs, while his brain was wired directly into his vast information network via an enormous supercomputer. Essentially, he became a one-of-a-kind humanoid brain bot, with the and an army of serving as his "body".

An integral element of his plan was the , which in reality was a combination access card and high capacity data storage device, containing a massive OS upgrade for his Securitrons and the laser defense network. The chip was to be delivered in the afternoon of October 23, 2077. Unfortunately, about 20 hours before it could be delivered, the happened. The chip was lost and not rediscovered until over 200 years later by some of the multiple scavengers hired by House. Forced to work with an inferior version of the OS, he suffered numerous system crashes and was even forced into a coma by one of the failures before being able to reboot an earlier, stable version that only allowed him to save Las Vegas from 68 out of the 77 warheads, 59 disarmed and 9 destroyed, aimed at the city. But due to using an inferior software, numerous system crashes occurred and the Lucky 38's main reactor had to be shutdown. For five years House fought power outages and more system crashes until he rebooted his system in an old version of his operating system, but was put in a decades long coma.

Post-War

In , House regained consciousness from his 61 year coma. Biding his time, he entered the world stage once again in , when Securitrons under his command emerged from . This action was prompted by the arrival of scouts at . In order to establish his rule, he enlisted the help of 3 tribes living in , the - , the - , and a cannibalistic tribe that would become the , and rebuilt the city just in time to welcome the arrival of the 's advance forces. In exchange for help with and permission to use the as its headquarters, House signed the , ensuring cooperation from and, for a time, protecting from annexation.

House resides in the and is in charge of the that roam New Vegas. At some point after emerging from stasis, House won the leadership of in a bet, stripped it of all useful technology, and then planned to permanently seal the Vault away by filling it with cement. At the pleadings of he left the top section of Vault 21 as it used to be, and she converted it into a hotel (all the casino equipment was already there from the vault experiment).

Health

Mr. House is extremely physically decrepit because of his 200+ years in his stasis chamber and is sustained only by the life-support systems of his pod and the several augmentations he had done, such as the food pump and pacemaker. The Courier has the opportunity to break through his security and see his true form. However, opening his isolation chamber, even for a second, means that Mr. House will not live more than a year due to exposure to outside contaminants.

Interactions with the player character

Interactions overview

General Services Quests
: No
: No
Plays : No
Merchant: No
Repairman: No
Doctor: No
Rents bed/room: No
Starts quests: Yes
Involved in quests: Yes

Quests

Other interactions

  • Mr. House plays a major role in the game. The Courier hears a lot about him while traveling, but upon reaching New Vegas he is invited by House himself to visit him in Lucky 38. There, House gives the player vital information about and the . Also, he allows the Courier and his/her companions to use 's as a safehouse.
  • Mr. House is extremely obsessed in the collectible found in the game, and he will pay handsomely for each. The snowglobes can be given to in exchange for 2000 each. Snowglobes found in (), (), () and () will automatically be removed from the player's inventory and replaced with 2000 caps. Once the has sold a snowglobe to Jane it is placed on display (on a mantle) in the Lucky 38 . However, if the player kills Mr. House, the snowglobes will stay in your inventory and Jane will disappear.

Inventory

Apparel Weapon Other item On death
- - - -

Notes

  • On the shores of , due east of New Vegas, sits the grandiose pre-War , the current site of the NCR's . Due to its name, its obvious past opulence, and the presence of a large portrait of Robert Edwin House, standing in front of a large robot resembling , in its main dining hall, it may be surmised that Mr. House was a chief financier and patron of the club before the bombs fell. This portrait is reminiscent of a famous painting of Howard Hughes.
  • If Mr. House is disintegrated by an , the Stasis Chamber disintegrates with him. The same event occurs when using a and it's signature goo.
  • From information contained on the terminals in the , it is gleaned that Robert House's half-brother, Anthony, used underhanded means to wrest his inherited share of the family business from him after the death of their father. It is strongly implied that Robert's later, methodical hostile takeover, coupled with paranoia regarding the , drove Anthony House completely mad.
  • Mr. House is given the nickname "Not-At-Home" by the for his tendency to remain ostensibly neutral in Strip affairs.
  • Upon his death, the quest will simultaneously trigger and fail, and the note will appear in the player's inventory.
  • If you take Mr. House out of his stasis chamber, he will ask you why you have ruined his plans and he will react differently depending on what you tell him. If you say you did it in the name of the NCR, he will belittle them and call you a "sad, misguided whore." If you tell him you are acting on behalf of Caesar, he will be horrified that slavery is humanity's future. If you say you did it for Yes Man, he will tell you your "vanity project" is doomed for failure. If you say it was "just business", he will retort by saying that you should have worked for him for personal gain. Finally, if you say you did it just because you didn't like him, he will call you a fool for letting your feelings about him jeopardize humanity's future.
  • Robert Edwin House is one of the characters that the player must eat in order to earn the perk.
  • In the G.E.C.K. there is a version of Mr. House as a human before the war under the ID MrHouseOUTDATED, although he has no mustache and his hair is grey rather than black as it looks on his computer.
  • Mr. House cannot be targeted in
  • Due to his age and method of staying alive, Mr. House actually counts as an abomination for the challenge.
  • If you kill him using the Ranger Takedown with any kind of displacer glove, Mr. House and the stasis chamber will flip over, causing a lag.
  • Another portrait of Robert House, similar to the one in the House Resort, is found in the location of the add-on . It was punctured by several knives, most likely by , who has a serious hatred for House, long before the events of Old World Blues.
The following is based on and has not been confirmed by sources.
  • Cut dialogue indicates that if the Courier had killed House and then went back to the Strip, a pre-recoded public announcement by House would have been broadcasted in the streets, declaring himself to be deceased, along with an encouragement for people to pick up a copy of his obituary at the nearest Securitron, explaining why his death became public knowledge so quickly.
  • Cut scripts and dialogue indicates that a female Courier could have gotten inside the control room with without raising the alarm, as she could seduce House into letting her visit him in more up-close and personal fashion, if she agreed to undergo some sort of body and brain scanning process first.
End of information based on .

Notable quotes

  • "As I hear it, I would eat at the Gourmand every night... If I were ambulatory."
  • "But autocracy? Firm control in the hands of a technological and economic visionary? Yes, that Vegas shall have."
  • "I offer many benefits, but vacation time isn't one of them."
  • "Imagine two snarling dogs fighting over a curve of bone, perhaps the rib of their master, long-dead."
  • "You don't see them raiding hospitals to cart away or armfuls of . No, they greatly prefer the sort of technology that puts people in hospitals. Or graves, rather, since hospitals went the way of the Dodo."
  • "We're talking about a who think all Pre-War technology belongs to them."
  • "Because they're ridiculous! Because they galavant around the Mojave pretending to be Knights of Yore. The world has no use for emotionally unstable techno-fetishists. Just wipe them out, will you?"
  • "Goodbye? Is that some kind of joke? You barely understand what I want you to accomplish down there."
  • "I can't reach through this monitor and compel you to follow instructions, but know this - if you disappoint me, you will pay for it."
  • "Are you a child? was taken from you, obviously."
  • "You laid the foundation for my victory, so fine - I'll permit some latitude in how you schedule your work. You're welcome."
  • "This is not the time for Q&A. Kindly hand over the Chip."
  • "Absolutely not! Caesar is of great use to me. I don't want you harming a hair on that man's head - assuming you can find one."
  • "I much prefer working with robots..."
  • "What of it? I enjoy them. There's something about a that I... find pleasing."
  • "Until you do this, consider yourself suspended... without pay."
  • "{sarcastic}Marvelous work ethic, bravo."
  • " may be a grandstanding boor, but I want him protected."
  • "There's more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying goes. Or went, that is - being extinct."
  • "Sorry to deny you a moment of primate triumph, but you'll have to go elsewhere to sound your barbaric yawp."
  • "{dry}An opinion you expressed with supreme subtlety and finesse. Moving on..."
  • "Do you have any idea how prodigious is the opportunity you're casting aside here?"
  • "Why would I want to go to war against the NCR? They're my best customers."
  • "Not interested? Not interested? You have an interest in this even if you're too stupid to know it. If you have an interest in breathing, you have an interest in this."
  • "I haven't shown my hand - I've shown one card. I've given my enemies a single, provocative datum upon which to fixate. They have no idea what other cards I'm holding. It's a strong hand, believe me - I dealt it to myself."
  • "Success depends on forethought, dispassionate calculation of probabilities, accounting for every stray variable."
  • "Consequently, I have to "wait and see" what happens. It's... grotesque."
  • "You're making me question your usefulness, you realize."
  • "To your untrained eyes, it may look as though mankind is making a comeback. In the NCR, you have something that resembles a nation state. Savage as it is, in , you have an organized society. But neither of these offer a future. They're regurgitations of the past."
  • "Had I used an armed caravan to transport the Chip, I might as well have been announcing to the world "this is important. Attack this!""
  • "You are the first person to step foot inside the Lucky 38 in over 200 years. It was not an invitation I made lightly."
  • "I'm not offering you an incentive as crude as money - though there'll be plenty of that. What I'm offering you is a ground-floor opportunity in the most important enterprise on Earth. What I'm offering is a future - for you, and for what remains of the race."
  • "If you find so frightening at this remove, imagine them rampaging across the Strip. We have a chance to see them destroyed, to see New Vegas become the harbinger of a new age."
  • "Don't let the video screens and computer terminals fool you. I'm flesh and blood, not silicon."
  • "You needn't be afraid of me. It's my Securitrons that are going to kill you."
  • "By the time I was 30 years old, I was a billionaire 30 times over. I founded and ran a vast economic empire. Do you really think I'm going to let an upstart come into my home and ransom my property to me? I spent two centuries searching for the Platinum Chip. It's my invention, my property - mine. Now be a good courier and deliver it!"
  • "I invite you to think carefully about what you do next... standing alone before me, surrounded by my heavily-armed Securitron guards."
  • "I'm sure the assassins will wait for you to show up."
  • "Nothing to impede progress. If you want to see the fate of democracies, look out the window."
[read more...]

Appearances

Robert House appears only in .

Behind the scenes

  • created House's console.
  • In casino parlance, "the house" refers generally to the gambler's opponent, the casino itself, as in the idiom, "."
  • Mr. House's personality is based on that of . His obsession with snowglobes is a reference to another work of fiction, Orson Welles' , itself based on the life of . A snowglobe falls from the hands of the dying 'Hearst' in the beginning of the film as he utters the famously cryptic line, "Rosebud".
  • Jane, House's computer companion, is likely an allusion to the filmstar , who was under contract to Howard Hughes and also his lover for a time.
  • Mr. House had another Securitron gal named Marilyn (based on Marilyn Monroe) that was apparently cut. However, she appears alongside with Jane in a card from the deck of card of the collector version, the texture file for her "face" is still in the game's files and there's a reference to her in the G.E.C.K. Also, after meeting Mr. House, will say she's surprised he only has two robot sex slaves. This was likely meant to reference Jane and the absent Marilyn, but the line was never removed or changed.
  • If the player opens House's life support chamber to kill or disconnect him, House will ask "Why?" One of the responses is "Because I don't like you." This may be a reference to lines spoken by Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey in the David Mamet film "".
  • One of the challenges in the Gun Runner's Arsenal, , which requires you to kill House with a 9 iron golf club, which is a reference to Bioshock's Andrew Ryan, who suffers a similar fate.

Bugs

  • PCIcon pc.png Xbox 360Icon xbox360.png A Medicine check of 35, gaining XP each time, can be accessed as many times as you want.
  • PCIcon pc.png Activating Mr. House fails to start dialogue, rendering him useless (the mainframe). This might be the result of resetting ally status of Securitrons when they are hostile due to a faction error with vault 11 robots. To fix this, enter the following commands into the console: setally 1267AB 0001B2A4, resetquest 00147885, setstage 00147885 5, setobjectivedisplayed 00147885 1, prid 001264c5, setdestroyed 0.

Gallery

  • Portrait of Mr. House standing in front of a large robot, located in the .

  • The portrait of Mr. House is extremely similar to this one of Hughes standing in front of an airplane.

  • Prototype version of House's computer screen.

  • Mr. House's stasis chamber.

  • Mr. House in the flesh.

  • Mr. House up close.

  • Mr. House's playing card, the King of Diamonds.

  • Prototype Mr. House in the games ending.

  • Mr. House and Vault Boy, as they appear in the achievement/trophy for .

  • Unused concept art of House's stasis room.

References

  1. House's dialogue: "My networked mainframes were able to predict and force-transmit disarm code subsets to 59 warheads, neutralizing them before impact. Laser cannons mounted on the roof of the Lucky 38 destroyed another 9 warheads. The rest got through, though none hit the city itself."
  2. collector's edition
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