Villainpedia: The Master

:_villain: Frank Horrigan video here -> https://youtu.be/HI8V2WfqzHI

The main reason I love the master is that when you show him the proof that the mutants are sterile, he feels so terribly bad for every terrible action hes done, because he did those things in the name of the unity, but the unity was ultimately going to fail, and seeing him become sad and depressed as he kills himself is actually quite sad.

I love the fact that the Lieutenant actually knew there was something wrong in the mutant reproductive process but didn't have enough courage to tell the Master about it. This is what happens when you control people with fear too much; your subordinates tend to lie to you to keep you happy, and in the end you are completely unaware of the whole situation.

“Leave now, Leave.. while you still have hope” will always hit hard

The Master is voiced by the same guy who voices Winnie the Pooh, an equally compelling villain

It's a shame that fallout will never be dark and strange again. Master is just not something we'd ever see in modern fallout.

I genuinely spit my drink laughing at 1:50, where you're introducing The Master, but the filler footage is you SPRINTING up to some dude in his house and caving his fucking skull in with a giant hammer

Sad that Fallout 4's villian, Father, wasn't as well rounded. If you ask him why he even made synths and what their purpose is, he just says "you wouldn't understand" and then dies. Very poor writing.

"The Master wants to capture pure humans." The Game Over screen: mutants gunning down every single person

That part when the Master realizes he messed up and that female voice says, "All my work" in that shocked and dismayed tone always sticks with me. Amazing voice acting.

The true horror is the master realizes his mistake in the end.

I played Fallout when I was way too young. The scene where you get dipped in the FEV vat and the Super Mutants kill everyone in the Vault scared me. The Master terrified me. I had nightmares for months after meeting him.

I really want more villains like The Master. He’s so grotesque but he has a way about him that he knows what he’s doing, and that he truly believes it’s for the greater good. I especially want more villains that can be talked to, eventually showing them reality and that they’ve been doing wrong, not right, to the point that they just give up.

To me, the Master is the ultimate expression of the Wasteland: he’s a monstrous twisted creature horrifically impacted by the technology and radiation that makes the Wasteland so hostile. Once a mere man, he’s become a Frankenstein’s monster intent on bringing a destructive peace—just as, in a way, the Great War did. Yet, when he’s shown to be wrong, he fails into despair and destroys himself, rather than use all his knowledge and power to find another way to help the devastated world. In essence, he’s the epitome of self-destruction that both led to the apocalypse and is too often the norm for life within the Wastes itself.

I love his talking-head, truly one of the best villain designs

33:20 the way that the slightly angry voice just says “madness?” Pierced my heart. He sounded so enthusiastic, but in that moment it’s just confusion and possibly sadness towards all of his work being useless.

The saddest thing is, much later on, i think it was in Jacobstown in Fallout NV, you will learn from Marcus that the reproduction system of supermutants actually started to heal... and since they can live for hundreds of years, it would in the end work out. Master DID really have a master plan.

I feel bad that Harold never learned the true fate of his old friend, he knows about the Master by Fallout 2, but he never found out he was Richard, and Richard likewise thought Harold must have died because otherwise he would have helped him out of the vat he fell into. I kinda wish there had been an option to tell Richard and/or Harold about the truth at least as an Easter egg rewarding players who put two and two together, even if just to have one or two extra lines of dialogue. Also, if you do another Fallout 1 Villainpedia, I’d love to see one for the character Set cause he is so bizarre as a character but surprisingly multifaceted, I think he’s highly underrated. I guess technically he’s not a villain but he is a resentful pawn of the Master and not a nice fellow.

I just love how the game doesn’t end when you beat the master. You have to beat him AND the lieutenant, because the game is aware that the lore implies that he would continue with the mission, even if the master was gone. It’s so rare to see a game respect secondary villains in this way. And I love how the game itself almost believes that the master would have been in the right, had his plans not been doomed to fail from the beginning, due to the reproduction issue.

What ultimately made the difference between the master as a truly evil villain, and the master as a tragic villain really does come down to trying out the diplomacy option. If you don't take that route he is nothing ever but a evil maniac, albeit a really cool and perfect fallout one. But the diplomacy option to defeat him shows that like you said he truly always meant to be the savior, and the moment he chose to die and end his reign instead of riding the madness and trying to conquer anyways is the moment he proved everything he claimed he wanted, that he didn't lie, and that when we found out he was wrong, he accepted it, and chose to end it, rather than perpetuate it. It's a very very powerful moral backbone that is disturbing if you think to be present in such a monster of a man, yet lacking in so many wastelanders that are absolutely human. The master, the practical father of mutants was honest, if anything.