| abstract | - Mr. Robert Edwin House, simply better known as Mr. House, is the self-styled President, CEO, and Sole Proprietor of the New Vegas Strip in the Mojave Wasteland in the year 2281 and one of three possible antagonists of Fallout: New Vegas. House is foremost responsible for the founding of RobCo Industries and civilizing the New Vegas casino tribes. Born on June 25, 2020 (261 years old) 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 a lightning strike. Cheated of his inheritance by his half-brother, Anthony, he nevertheless attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later went on to found RobCo Industries 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, owing mostly to House's considerable technical genius and business acumen. He used the wealth and power to gain controlling interests in a myriad of other businesses. These included REPCONN Aerospace, and the Lucky 38 Hotel & Casino on Las Vegas Boulevard. A staunch pragmatist by nature, Mr. House would regularly design and run mathematical paradigms based on global political and socio-economic 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 77 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 Lucky 38 and an army of securitrons serving as his "body". An integral element of his plan was the platinum chip, 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 delivery, the Great War began. The chip was lost and was rediscovered over 200 years later in Sunnyvale by some of the multiple scavengers hired by House. Forced to work with an inferior version of the OS, he has 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. House regained consciousness in 2138. Biding his time, he entered the world stage once again in 2274, when Securitrons under his command emerged from the Lucky 38. This action was prompted by the arrival of New California Republic scouts at Hoover Dam. In order to establish his rule, he enlisted the help of tribes living in Vegas (later known as the Three Families) and rebuilt the city just in time to welcome the arrival of the NCR army's advance forces. In exchange for help with Hoover Dam and permission to use the McCarran Airport as its headquarters, House signed the New Vegas treaty, ensuring cooperation from NCR and, for a time, protecting The Strip from annexation. When the Courier (main protagonist of Fallout: New Vegas) reaches New Vegas, Mr. House invites them to his private home in the Lucky 38 penthouse, where he reveals the truth behind what has been going on: the package the Courier was nearly killed for by Benny was "The Platinum Chip", a device created for Mr. House immediately before the war but never delivered due to the end of the world. House has been trying to retrieve it ever since, as it unlocks the full capabilities of the assets House controls, and would allow New Vegas and the rest of the Mojave to flourish far more greatly than ever under his rule. Benny had wanted to steal the Platinum Chip to take over New Vegas himself. From there, the choice is to either work for Mr. House for the remainder of the quest, or side with either the NCR, Caesar's Legion, or "Yes Man", a Securitron reprogrammed by Benny to do whatever anyone tells him to do who wants to help the Courier take over Vegas independently. Choosing to side with any of the other factions, Mr. House must eventually be killed/disabled, which is done by using a secret terminal next to his monitor, it unlocks the secret chamber where his ancient, hideously decrepit original body is. Even if the House is placed back into his pod, exposure to outside bacteria means that he will not survive for little more than a year at most. Mr. House is also fond of collectible snowglobes, and any found throughout the Mojave Wasteland can be turned in to him for a large amount of caps. The one act in particular that truly pushes Mr. House into "villain" territory is when he orders the killing of the Brotherhood of Steel, who he claims to be "delusional terrorists that aren't worth trying to reason with". Unlike almost every single other quest in the game, there is no alternative peaceful way to deal with the Brotherhood that House will recognize, so in order to side with him they have to be murdered.
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