From everything I had heard about him I was expecting something like this:

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/742/bifftannen.jpg

A powerful casino boss who had control of a morally bereft town filled with gangs, violence, and sin.

Instead, I got this guy:

http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/5725/alextrebekrobot.jpg

Touche' Obsidian, Touche'

Ummm It's Howard Hughes probably one of the riches most powerful men this country has ever produced.

i would actually liken Mr. House more to Bugsy Siegel or Meyers Lansky. A man that took a "two bit" watering hole in the desert and made it the swankiest place in pre-war times. Plus Tenpenny was already the "Howard Hughes" type character.

Little known fact: Mr. House is actually Andrew Ryan. Would you kindly agree?

I met what I expected to meet. So I'm fine. Really.

No he wasn't. Other than "wacky rich guy with urination issues". ^_^

House lacks the complete criminal intent of your other examples, too. He's OCD, he's extremely reclusive, he delves into his creation of dreams like very possibly nobody else before him (those did rightfully so), giving up society and more in the process... And there is that little fact of which city he wants to build into something glamorous.
Saying he's Hughes' very exaggerated likeness, only fitting for the Fallout world, would not be very wrong. ^_^

Yes Tenpenny was a HH type character. A rich, eccentric, miser hermit that OCDed milk bottles in a row just like Howard. An obvious homage to the Aviator himself. House is more like Siegal or Lansky than HH. He wants every other faction out of the way and will enforce the law with his robot/mafia army if need be. House is looking at the bottom line, money and the protection needed to keep it coming in. Just like the Mafiosos, House knows war is bad for business, so he employs you to do his dirty work. True Mob style. How is House OCD?

Yes, Tenpenny was a homage. But given how little character... well, anything in Fallout 3 had, it goes little further than that. ^_^

And Hughes did very much try to remove whatever bothered him on this or that day in his glorious quest to make Vegas the most glamorous city of the United States. They didn't call his council the Mormon mafia for nothing. :shifty:

Yeah and so did Lansky and Siegel before Howard, when Hughes was still flying planes. House isnt really anything like Howard Hughes.

I feel my previous statement may require some revisions.

I agree, my first pre-concieved notion of what Mr. House would be like when I met him was that of a more, Biff Tannen type of character. When I met him though, I was taken aback by the completely different direction they took with the character and was pleasantly surprised. The Alex Trebek comment I made was more in lieu with the voice work that was done. Last night I could have sworn it was Alex Trebek streaming through my headphones. Now that I've discovered that it's in fact René Murat Auberjonois (played Odo on DS:9), I'm am sad to find it wasn't Trebek, but equally pleased to find that now Odo and Worf are in FONV.

In any event, I had heard mention that from a few sources that the designers were trying to make a Howard Hughes type of character in Mr. House. I had known very little of Hughes and his life, save that he lived a reclusive lifestyle in his latter years.