WestWorld: ...Where nothing can possibly go worng!

it was rhetorical

Does Delos have other themed parks juxtaposed to Westworld in this? The space they have seems vast as it is.

In the movie there were other theme parks--one of them Ancient Rome--but nu-WW runners say this isn't the case here (though they have lied before)

I'm currently a host in Midwestworld. We're self-aware that this is a simulation but it's mundane enough that I just kind of deal with it.

I don't think it was rhetorical. I think the ecosystem really is supposed to be fully self-contained and artificial.

going back a bit, i thought it was pretty clearly telegraphed that the boy Ford talks to in the desert is himself as a child (both British, both costumed in white shirts and black pants; the talk about the remark "both" their fathers made about boredom)

patron sailer completely otm, think this is meant to be clear

i didn't pick that up at all.

this is holding my interest but i'm kind of planning on it getting ropy and stupid pretty quickly here. i feel like it's doling out its secrets in irritatingly small pieces but i guess that's the form innit.

it's unclear to me in a not-pleasing way exactly what kind of diagnostic alerts and real-time monitoring the managers have. you'd think if there was a set procedure for dealing with hosts that start to have strange ideas, then something like thandie newton discovering her earlier drawings of hazmat men would set off alarm bells.

otoh i like the idea that the software for fake-consiousness is so complex that they are stuck w/ using the conversational 'interface' and limited logs to figure out what they host was 'thinking'

i don't think the show has really captured what a game-player's mentality is, the good guy dork and evil brosexual are a snooze. there's something about a double consciousness that doesn't have much to do with "morality" -- wanting to really enjoy and get into 'character' as part of an immersive experience, but at the same time level up, acquire shit, maximize your time, see the outer limits of the design, fuck with the rules, etc. the show is def too self-serious to be all that insightful about how ppl behave in sims and what that might mean.

the scene between hopkins and the danish manager was pretty tense and unsettling but idk corporate conflict between R&D and bean-counters is not usuall so operatic. it all seemed a little unprofessional if u ask me.

The quest to find Wyatt
- Secret origin of nice guy gunslinger who previously had no real backstory
- Black hat's quest finds tattooed snake woman who is searching for Wyatt
- Wyatt has some demon cult, the native americans have figures of the WW technicians that resemble Hopi kachina dolls and some backstory that they view them as walking between worlds

The quick cut from the revelation snake lady's plan is to bust into the prison to black hat being on the prison transport was something I didn't quite catch originally. A prison break always happens but it's triggered early (with the exploding cigar gag!)

"Where are you from?" "Same as you, don't you remember?"
camera pans down to little girl's sketch in the dirt of the maze pattern
orion's belt -- it's not orion's belt, but the lines and dots look like they could be laid over the maze as a map with waypoints

"a world where you can do anything you want -- except die"
who is it that really can't die? the guests can't be killed, but the hosts are repaired, repurposed, or put in storage

desert hills aren't 100% safe regardless what the robots are supposed to do. maybe the guy just tripped or drowned or something.

I hope for a multi-season mystery of what happened to arnold, then they reveal he accidentally tripped and hit his head on a rock. Or maybe it was auto-erotic asphyxiation.

Arnold is Dolores you guys

Can't spell Dolores Abernathy without A R N O L D

I hope for a multi-season mystery of why in the name of fuck they leave the bullets inside the hosts sometimes. Maybe they'll leave it completely unanswered!

Didn't get how a request for explosive use was communicated. & is that something that happens every time a guest improvises an apparently spontaneous plan with danger involved.

Just caught one of the story moderators or whatever the HQ job is called responding to the call & giving ok.

I guess that was just to communicate that THEY ARE WATCHING EVERYTHING

But I guess they are NOT ACTUALLY WATCHING EVERTYTHING if Thandie Newton can bury all those pictures without being noticed

Is taht down to her being a host not a guest. & they've only been expecting hosts to follow pre-programmed storylines that they know the parameters of for the main part.
BUt looks like AI is becoming stronger even if it is just old programmes corroding and running into each other which isn't a way I thought those things worked. Certainly not to take on a life of their own.
But maybe I'm thinking of things in a more binary way than things will turn out to be. But I thought that was still the basic model idea for programming anyway.

They're not watching everything, just the guests.

That's not true. It's also been shown that they watch the hosts to check if they're deviating from their loops. The logistics of running the park seem all over the place though, bascially whatever's required to fit the (show's) plot

last week stumble, this week faceplant. four episodes i told u

WW has the feel of one of those quickly vanished post-Lost shows from a few years ago (like Alcatraz) but one that sat in development and had a lot of money and stars thrown at it

Was brusque scando business woman scratching her nose while mentioning that she was sitting in the same chair she sat in when she visited with her parents meant to be a hint that she's a robot

What if all the guests and staff are robots and all the hosts are human

or something

This feels a lot better than those post-Lost shows (not just because of the $$$ and actors)

I guess they didn't have the awesome feature of making us guess if x is a robot or not

But, yeah, the early maze conversation between ERW and Jeffery Wright did push the limits of "I'm going to be pointlessly vague about this to maintain suspense"

If you're interested, Vincenzo Natali has posted a handful of his storyboards for the recent episode on twitter: https://twitter.com/Vincenzo_Natali/status/790859254517395458

xp but also killed the suspense by sketching a lot of the mystery out immediately, it's already on action thriller rails

they are p meta upfront gamey about the rails tho so maybe there has to a deeper level to this etc zzz

That's not true. It's also been shown that they watch the hosts to check if they're deviating from their loops

That mostly seems to be the dumb QA team seeing if a robot has literally wandered off, not running brain diagnostics or anything.

I hope for a multi-season mystery of why in the name of fuck they leave the bullets inside the hosts sometimes.

Tbf they did have that little voice-over implying that the techs were rushed because QA wanted her back out right away.

At least they're making stabs at plausibility.

i like this show mainly because I like the actors and the set pieces but there are some annoying internal inconsistencies that don't make sense like, what is a day for the hosts vs what is a day for the guests? don't the hosts wake up every morning and repeat the same thing? then why don't the guests see the hosts acting out the same shit daily? and when do they clear the robot bodies away and clean them up? etc.

show is hella dumb but watching anyway

well yeah sex robots

like, there seemed to be a point where evan rachel wood is with Bernard that happens in the middle of the night when she's apparently also with dude from House of Cards by the campfire. Did they just come take her out of the scene? doesn't that screw with the sense of reality for the guests?

show is hella dumb but watching anyway

― Spottie, Wednesday, October 26, 2016 6:08 PM (eight minutes ago)

same

drink every time a new character is naked when they're introduced

finally caught up to this. i'm a vote for this show is fantastic.

OK that last bit with Ford + Dolores was fantastic

the beardo douchebag technician is even lazier than the black hat douchebag wannabe Delos-owner, though

Good to know our clockmaker god carries a pocketwatch in his vest THPPBT

oh shit actual goosebumps

this show just earned everything it's asked of me.

Given the Lynchian nature of some of the sequences in this ep, I think my idea that we're watching a couple of different timelines in the history of the park might still end up being the case - but as above, I don't care anymore. This is getting really good.

yeah this was an excellent episode, and the trailer for what's to come is rather exciting (thandie newton in a jumpsuit leading a swarm of armed invaders into the HQ)

Also this episode made it pretty clear - to me, anyway - that the park operators and hosts have more in common than they do with the guests, including that most of the park techs joke about being recycled or whatever as a means to stave off the anxiety that they might be a "host" themselves.

And did I miss it earlier or is the same technology used to repair and clean the hosts the reason why illness and disease have been eradicated in the "real world?" Has that been made explicit?

i thought this ep was pretty bad! gratuitous in its presentation, tedious in characterization, parsimonious in the various 'mysteries'

still hooked tho :/ fuckin hbo

the douchebag & dork nonbuddies are so uninteresting and unconvincing

This is the first episode where I really got in tune with Dork Nonbuddy (that is his name now, thanks): He put a lot of work into his "hmm, maybe I should shoot this robot that is choking my new BiL" look, and then again when it was time for the "why do I care so much about what you think, robot girl?" look, and then like four more times when he had to chew it up with no lines. I officially care about what happens to this guy that barely talks! That's good TV.

Dudes name is McPoyle always will be

his motivation is "i am a good man," but if there's any commentary on videogamers here it ought to just be "i don't have much interest in sex robots, also i'd like to see what the good-guy quest lines are on my first run through but my friend keeps capping the npcs, it's so annoying"

among repeat players you'd see the userbase coalescing into types if not factions: scuzzbags who just like to kill and fuck, push the limits of pvp violence and trolling; true LARPer types who get really committed to their character and the immersion of it (whether as hero or villain); and completionist/a-press weirdos who want to experience every last thing, map out the underlying rules/patterns and explore every weird glitch.

And those bathroom gamers who are secretly shitting by the hitching posts

are you a gamer, goole

I'm watching a few more of these, just started ep 4. I find the trick is to tune out the dialogue pretty much completely whenever one person has been speaking for more than 5 seconds. And simply finding other things to do during everything set outside of the park, in the control room or whatever, cause the "as you know gentlemen" is off the fucking charts in this thing

why is borgen even in this

meta commentary about emmy chasing in this latest 'sode