Don’t let the dour screenshots of the wasteland fool you. Fallout fans can’t help but picture their memories in this world as colorful ones, courtesy of its sometimes hilarious, sometimes downright scary, but always superbly well-written cast of characters. Let’s take a look at the best of the best.
Fantastic (Fallout: New Vegas)
How can you go wrong with a guy called Fantastic? He looks rad wearing his sunglasses indoors and his name assures us that he is, but he’s about as reliable as Homer Simpson as a nuclear power plant expert, which is a problem because he has the same job. Fantastic is either a conman (likely) or someone highly underqualified the boss hired out of desperation, but his lines never fail to entice laughter.
Marcus (Fallout 2, Fallout: New Vegas)
So many sequels nowadays have little more than an overdose of callbacks to the glory days of their franchise going for them. Marcus, a sentient super mutant who once served the Master, was an interestingly unorthodox choice for a companion in Fallout 2.
Marcus could’ve made a return as a badass companion in New Vegas, but the game makes the bold choice of having him as a hardened NPC who refuses to join the fight, showing that war might never change, but it will change people — even superhuman mutants.
Benny (Fallout: New Vegas)
Benny is the mysterious figure you meet at the start of Fallout: New Vegas. The game makes hating him very easy from the get-go as he nonchalantly shoots you in the head while sporting a white checkered suit, but then goes on to make him grow on you. This doesn’t happen because we learn he’s nicer than we thought, mind you, but because he’s undeniably charming in his malfeasance. Benny gets bonus points for being voiced by the late Matthew Perry of Friends fame, who got the role because he at some point played so much Fallout 3 he had to get injections to fix one of his wrists.
Master of the Super Mutants (Fallout)
You spend the entirety of the original Fallout encountering “lifeforms” egregious to the point of making the demons in DOOM look cute in comparison, but nothing could prepare you for the “Master”. The shivers you get from merely looking at this once-person would be more than enough to put the villain of the original Fallout on the list of its best characters, but I’m not one to put style over substance. I’m happy to inform you that this man’s dialogue and his usage of separate voice clips to sound creepier make him just as gruesome on the inside as he is on the outside.
Preston Garvey (Fallout 4)
I like Preston Garvey less for what he says, and more for his secret potential to do evil. Preston Garvey is the most memorable character in Fallout 4, mostly due to the meme mocking him for his unwavering dedication to protecting settlements. That’s nice of Garvey, but he actually has the ability to go completely mad, unkillable, and aggressive towards the player. I hope that glitch will never come to haunt and hunt you, but it can — and it’ll make for one hell of a story if it does.
Caesar (Fallout: New Vegas)
When I first played New Vegas, I saw Caesar as no more than a big buffoon. He looked silly even in comparison to the guy in the white checkered suit. It turns out I was the one being silly, as Obsidian’s image of Caesar was visionary, to say the least.
No villain is better than one who accurately pinpoints a problem many don’t know is real yet, and Ceaser is a true tyrant whose Roman Empire-worshipping gang foresaw the avalanche of fascist-friendly LARPers that we’d get hit by one decade after the release of New Vegas.
Orris (Fallout: New Vegas)
If Fantastic gives away conman vibes, then Orris gives away conman degrees. He looks like a total badass and even seems to act like one, as we see him quickly dispatching an enemy posse. That’s great unless you’re a more attentive player who goes through the trouble of investigating the corpses, a move that will reveal they’re all just very alive people merely playing dead. Orris isn’t a great soldier or even a good conman, but it’s beautiful to see him honing his craft.
How can you not immediately hire this man for the laughter, even if he might end up getting you killed — or having to fake death — in the process?
Frank Horrigan (Fallout 2)
If you go into the final battle of Fallout 2 expecting to face off against a hamburger of a person, like the Master in the original Fallout, you’re in for a surprise. The villain now is Frank Horrigan of the United States Secret Service, the power-armored super mutant Darth Vader of the Wasteland. He’s the antithesis of the previous villain, a man of few words and an excellent foe to trade blows with.
Mr. House (Fallout: New Vegas)
Who better than an elusive Wizard of Oz-type villain to haunt a decrepit Las Vegas ripoff? Though he has a face, House, the two centuries-old owner of the New Vegas strip, is less of a man, and more the physical manifestation of capitalism. He’s supposedly a genius who found great success in robotics and aerospace research, but he just can’t avoid getting caught up with dumber, more mundane, things. Are we looking at yet another video game villain that perfectly predicted the rise of a real-life one? Who knows.
Joshua Graham (Fallout: New Vegas Honest Hearts DLC)
Joshua is yet another character with a bit of visionary flair to him, as he predicted not a real-life villain, but John Wick — kind of. He once helped a terrible man gain a massive amount of power, and he’s now out to “fix things”.
Joshua is both a physically and mentally tortured man, meaning there are various layers of complexity to him that the game explores very well. It’s sad that he only shows up on the DLC, but he’s a more than welcome addition to this bonkers fold.
