New Vegas: the City Mr. House Saved, From the Game to the TV Series

New Vegas is what became of Las Vegas after the Great War. Unlike almost every other American city, it was barely touched by the bombs, because Robert House had spent years building defences around it. In Fallout: New Vegas it's the glittering prize everyone in the Mojave wants, a casino Strip run by House and his robots. The TV series returns to it in season 2 and finds it very changed. (Fallout: New Vegas; Fallout, "The Wrangler")

How Las Vegas survived the Great War#

Robert House, the founder of RobCo, worked out years in advance that a nuclear war was coming and decided to save his home city. He tells the Courier that he built a missile defence system around Las Vegas, and that when the bombs fell it destroyed 68 of the 77 warheads aimed at it. (Fallout: New Vegas)

It should have been better. House had commissioned the platinum chip, a data-storage device that would have upgraded his defences and his Securitron robots, and it was due for delivery on the afternoon of 23 October 2077. The war started first. The surviving defences were enough to save the city's core but not the outskirts, and House spent decades afterwards in a coma inside the Lucky 38. (Fallout: New Vegas)

Rebuilding as New Vegas#

When House woke, Las Vegas belonged to tribes descended from the region's survivors. He sent his Securitrons out with a choice: join him, leave, or die. Three tribes accepted and were remade as the Three Families. The Chairmen got the Tops casino, the Omertas got Gomorrah and the White Glove Society got the Ultra-Luxe. (Fallout: New Vegas)

Freeside, the slum just outside the Strip's walls, was left to fend for itself and is now run by the Kings. (Fallout: New Vegas)

When the New California Republic reached the Mojave and took Hoover Dam, House made a deal with it. The NCR gets an army base at the old McCarran airport, and New Vegas keeps its independence while NCR tourists and soldiers on leave pour their pay into the casinos. (Fallout: New Vegas)

New Vegas in 2281#

By the time of the game, New Vegas is the richest place in the Mojave and the centre of a three-way standoff. The NCR wants to annex it, Caesar's Legion wants it as its Rome, and House wants to keep it for himself. (Fallout: New Vegas)

The main districts each have their own feel:

• The Strip. Behind walls and Securitron guards: the Lucky 38, the Tops, Gomorrah, the Ultra-Luxe and Vault 21, which House turned into a hotel. (Fallout: New Vegas)
• Freeside. Poor, crowded and lawless, held together by the Kings and the Followers of the Apocalypse. (Fallout: New Vegas)
• The outer suburbs. Westside, North Vegas Square and the ruins in between, home to scavengers, gangs and refugees. (Fallout: New Vegas)

The Courier, shot in the head over the platinum chip at the start of the game, ends up deciding the city's fate. They can hand New Vegas to House, the NCR, the Legion, or take it for themselves with the robot Yes Man. (Fallout: New Vegas)

New Vegas in the TV series#

Season 1 ends with Hank MacLean walking out of the Mojave and stopping on a hill above the city, with the Lucky 38 on the skyline. On the way he passes the horned skull of a huge creature half-buried in the sand. (Fallout, "The Beginning")

Season 2 shows what happened in the fifteen years since the game. When Lucy and the Ghoul reach the Strip, it's been taken over by deathclaws. Freeside is still crowded and busy, and the Ghoul reveals he has spent years searching for a Vault reserved for Vault-Tec management. (Fallout, "The Wrangler")

That Vault is under the city. Hank uses it to mass-produce chips that wipe people's will, staffed by wastelanders he has already turned. In "The Handoff" the Ghoul fights his way into the Lucky 38 and plugs the cold fusion diode into House's machinery, waking a digital version of Robert House. (Fallout, "The Handoff")

The finale ties the threads together. House admits he let Vault-Tec build the management Vault but didn't realise it was really for the company's investors, the Enclave. Maximus, in NCR Ranger power armour, holds Freeside against the deathclaws until an NCR Ranger and a column of NCR troops arrive. And a reunited Caesar's Legion, under a new Caesar, marches on the city as the season ends. (Fallout, "The Strip")

For more on the man behind the city, see Mr. House.