Future Fallout Games May Have Hard Time Matching Series’ Best Villain

Fallout as a series has had a few bumps in the road in recent years, but the successes of its games far outweigh the failures. The unique setting, atmospheric storytelling, and moral quandaries inherent to Fallout‘s identity have placed the series in the upper echelon of RPGs. Earlier games set fans’ expectations so high that subsequent games have had and will have a difficult time measuring up.

This high bar is especially true when it comes to NPCs. There are plenty of iconic NPCs in the Fallout games — from shopkeepers like Moira Brown to followers like Codsworth — that players have come to love. Fallout is also known for its horrific villains, and Bethesda’s writers will have their work cut out for them when trying to surpass one of the Fallout series’ most intimidating antagonists: Frank Horrigan.

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Frank Horrigan: A Villain in a League of His Own

Frank Horrigan is an Enclave Secret Service agent originating from Fallout 2. While out on patrol in the wasteland, Horrigan came into contact with the Forced Evolutionary Virus. Horrigan was already a brute of a man, but the FEV turned him into a mutated abomination. Back at the Enclave’s headquarters, Horrigan was sedated by scientists and put to work as a lab rat.

After years of experimentation, the Enclave had not only augmented his strength beyond that of any average mutant, but they took advantage of his compromised mental state to further entrench him in loyalty to the organization. The Enclave decided to turn this Super Mutant into a super soldier. As a cherry on top of his other physical enhancements, Horrigan was given a custom suit of power armor. This mindless murder machine quickly became a wasteland legend as well as the Enclave’s de facto form of conflict resolution.

How Frank Horrigan Measures Up to Other Fallout Villains

Fallout games are filled with bandits, robots, and mutated beasts for players to face in combat. However, the primary antagonists in many of the games’ storylines are far more prone to scheming than outright physical confrontations. Fallout villains like Caesar, Doctor Mobius, and Father would rather use their complex moralities to manipulate the protagonist. If that didn’t work, the villains would send cannon fodder to fight in their place. Frank Horrigan took quite a different approach when confronting the protagonist.

Horrigan wasn’t a villain that the protagonist could reason with or take on in a battle of wits. He was a combination of two of the most dangerous factions in Fallout — the Enclave and the Super Mutants — and demanded a brute force approach if the protagonist wanted to survive an encounter with him. This might not sound like the most intriguing final boss on paper, but Horrigan’s Adam Smasher-esque demeanor and lack of a lofty ideology make him a breath of fresh air for Fallout that Bethesda has yet to replicate. Horrigan’s memorably brutal death also helped to cement his legacy in the minds of players.

The Difficulties of Replicating Frank Horrigan’s Success

Bringing a Horrigan-like villain to future Fallout games might not be the easiest. When creating a villain with such a simple mindset and methodology, writers run the risk of having the character come across as either one-note or as a clear Frank Horrigan clone. Many players also come to the Fallout series now in pursuit of the complicated decisions offered by the more thoughtful villains mentioned earlier. Certain morality-based playthroughs might not feel as satisfying if the culmination is a brawl with some one-track-minded bodyguard. Still, Frank Horrigan was so simultaneously refreshing and terrifying that one can only hope that his character wasn’t lightning in a bottle.

Fallout

Fallout is a franchise built around a series of RPGs set in a post-nuclear world, in which great vaults have been built to shelter parts of humankind. There are six main games, various spin-offs, tabletop games, and a TV series from Amazon Studios.