[TV] Westworld

[Dasffion]

Westworld is both, if the above video is accurate Nolan took the inspiration for the park's mechanics from games like Skyrim, GTA V, and Red Dead Redemption.

I'm confused. I thought this was based on a movie from the 70's?

[Khuteh]

I like where this is going =D

[Deleted]

Say a guest takes up the bounty hunt quest from the Sheriff NPC.

Primary win premise: Capture the bandito
Fail premise: Bandito escapes

From either of those two premises a designer can create fail/win states that serve a narrative either linearly or non-linearly. Like Guild Wars 2.

Works in a computer game, not so much in an open ended sandbox, where there aren't really just 2 endpoints, there are many many more:

- player joins the bandito
- player frees the bandito, gets led to his pals, massacres them all
- player kills the bandito, then the sherrif, because they have a nice hat they want to pick up
- player gets bored halfway and leaves the quest hanging
- there is no longer a sherrif to return to because ANOTHER player just smoked the whole town

In pnp rpg this is also a problem, solved by the GM/narrator being quick to improvise and pick up the trainwreck the players inevitably make as soon as they go off the rails (which means, 5 minutes into the scenario, more often than not). Westworld doesn't have a GM, so the hosts must improvise.

Thus, a very broad network of small and loosely connected hooks and mini-questlines or whatever. With thousands of hosts an godknows how many players, any sophisticated or complex narrative would go to hell immediately.

Also, re: what you said about tension - there's a lot, as soon as you accept humans are not the protagonists.

[Endus]

Also, re: what you said about tension - there's a lot, as soon as you accept humans are not the protagonists.

Aside from a handful, right. At some point, they're probably going to blur that line, especially if they're planning on additional seasons after the first. It's hard to say that any particular individual is "the villain", but if this were a WWII setting, the humans would be the ones wearing Nazi uniforms. The "good ones" aren't not-Nazis, they're Nazis who are doing what they can within the system to be decent people. But they're still part of the system.

[Feredir]

I'm confused. I thought this was based on a movie from the 70's?

It is, but Nolan decided to bring other aspects to the material that were not present in the early 70s when Chrichton wrote it.

[Shinzai]

I'm confused. I thought this was based on a movie from the 70's?

I would say that the base premise of the show is the same. However, the perspective, approach, style and tone are all vastly different. The original was treading new ground into a concept that most people could barely wrap their heads around at that point in time. The idea of an AI was scary and strange in the 70s, where as these days, most people have a concept of what an AI is and have been practically drowned in media involving sentient robots and such.

[RobertoCarlos]

Nice interview of Evan Rachel Wood who explains westworld as both a theme park AND a game. (Even explains her character has a higher level character that is a bit more complicated than your normal story line)

So hopefully that puts an end to the theme park vs game debate as the show has aspects of both and is its own world in its own right.

[kail]

The very nature of a "game" requires that there be some kind of win condition. That may be following the story through to the end (though many take issue with so-called "walking simulators" being labelled as "games"), it may be more overt, but there's a way to "win".

There's no such thing in Westworld.

That is not entirely true. Most games do have a "win" condition of some kind (beat the story, beat the players, or beat the last level of an arcade). But there are video games that somewhat lack the whole win condition. You can play creative games like minecraft, and simply create shit. You can play sim like games, where it's simply a simulation of flight or living a life (i.e. Sims). Animal Crossing has no winning or losing, you simply play the game to enjoy it.

[ro9ue]

Not sure why people are bickering about categorizing Westworld under a "game" or "theme park". Why it's relevant at all? It's extremely advanced tech. Some of the entertainment we have now hardly fits neatly into the little boxes we place them.

That out of the way it sort of feels Ex Machina, but with many other layers. Anthony Hopkins and Ed Harris really make this show so interesting. You have a guy who clearly thinks of himself a god, and another guy who, at least according to the last episode has some reason to believe Arnold added another 'deeper' layer to Westworld . That just leaves this show open to so many interesting topics: Consciousness, what is "life", AI, transhumanism, etc.

Also, can't help but appreciate some of the references to some game design. I'll def keep watching.

[Paarthurnax]

I am, too. They punched him quite a bit and that could severely hurt a guest... even kill.

Assuming that everything is working as intended i expect the guests can only be hurt but not ever killed. They have shown that the Controllers have an overwatch/birds eye view on every guest in the park and they have the ability to turn off guns or call in help or turn a host off whenever and wherever they want. Ed Harris even requested and was granted an Explosive device out of thin air (real life cheat code?) so they seem to have a great deal of control over what is allowed even if the feeling is supposed to be real.

Now i'm not sure how that plays into the hosts that are slowly becoming self aware, my guess is they could cause real damage if they wanted to.

[Tradewind]

Looked more like they were pulling their punches intentionally, to a point where it was more than just standard stunt punching stuff lol. For all that beating, Logan's face was pretty unscathed, no blood anywhere and he looked more disappointed than scared when William refused to help and instead walked away. Even his "help me" seemed more like encouragement for William to jump in, rather than a cry for actual help.

Chances are when a host actually does some damage to a guest, there'll be a more surprised reaction from whoever the recipient of that damage is.

[babalou1]

See, I felt it was just moving those storylines down the same track a bit, not really giving us anything new or overtly unpredictable (which I'm perfectly fine with, I am fully on board this show).

The weapons bit was very interesting to me, as that was something I had wondered about - sure, guns can give guests a jolt, but that jolt puts down a host - but what about purely physical weapons, which I'd assume means guest on guest violence can and will happen. Knowings a random host simply cannot "instinctually" pick up a knife to defend themselves or another host adds to the presumed guest safety and the oh shit, when a Delores eventually unleashes.

2 Things.

1. Id assume physical weapons hurt and can kill. Thats why that jackass was getting his ass kicked and choked out. Id like to see what happens when a host stabs a guest.

2. Teddy grabbing The man in Blacks knife stuck out as strange to me. Are hosts pre-programmed to defend guests from other guests or was that just a luxury afforded only to Ford?

[Endus]

Ed Harris even requested and was granted an Explosive device out of thin air (real life cheat code?) so they seem to have a great deal of control over what is allowed even if the feeling is supposed to be real.

What that looked like, FWIW, is that he had the explosives with him all the time, but they're Westworld-approved and -provided items, so he had to essentially make it clear how he was using them (not necessarily by filing any actual request form), and that use had to be approved before they were "activated", both (I assume) so that they could be sure it wouldn't break anything they weren't supposed to and so that they explosion could be controlled to not endanger other guests. If you offered the same explosive cigars to a fellow guest, they just wouldn't go "boom", because the administrators wouldn't trigger them on their end.

I presume edged weapons are treated similarly, and even blunt weapons may be designed to go "soft" on impact against guests. Improvised weapons are going to be the big issue in the immediate future; a table leg likely doesn't have the code to "soften" when used as a club.

- - - Updated - - -

1. Id assume physical weapons hurt and can kill. Thats why that jackass was getting his ass kicked and choked out. Id like to see what happens when a host stabs a guest.

2. Teddy grabbing The man in Blacks knife stuck out as strange to me. Are hosts pre-programmed to defend guests from other guests or was that just a luxury afforded only to Ford?

#2 answers #1. Look at the speed and accuracy Teddy displayed. It's inhuman, and the Man in Black can't fight him. The hosts have the capacity to be much stronger, faster, more agile than the guests. A host won't ever accidentally stab or injure a guest, because they're fully in control; it may be best to see them as having two levels of consciousness; their main consciousness which is the role they play, and their "subconscious", which is Westworld's safety protocols. The active consciousness is entirely controlled by the subconscious, in their case. This is why Dolores just straight-up couldn't pull the trigger on a gun to protect herself; the subconscious code wasn't letting her. That subconscious code got rewritten, which iis why things are going weird.

[Fencers]

I suspect part of my frustration with this show is that I want a complete breakdown of the mechanics of Westworld. How big is it? What triggers NPCs to spawn? Are the NPCs going about a set of parameters awaiting an interaction point (i.e. a guest tagged with questline X, Y, Z)? To what degree can the guests be hurt?


The narrative of the show is not too interesting to me- really I don't dig ti. However, I love the concept of an interactive theme park but I want to know how it functions more so than whether or not that rich guy is an asshole or if the board is gonna shut it all down.

[Immitis]

my biggest question is, will westworld end the season with the westworld bits done and move onto another section of the park next season? or will we slowly see other sections of the park in future seasons? because i know they talked about the big difference between the tv show and the movie is that because it was a show we would eventually see other parts other than westworld.

i wanna see space world, elf world, goth bitch ghost world.

the wild west is cool for a beginner introduction but tbh i really wanna see some other shit.

i wanna see a dude fuckin a alien robit

- - - Updated - - -

oooh i just thought of something.

what if the season ends with them getting to the center of the maze and all it is, is a door to a different section of the park.

like, maybe they kill the man in black or capture him or something, dolores opens a door thinking shes gonna be free.

NOPE JUST SPACE WORLD BITCH YOU STILL STUCK

[galvin]

Its already been said there wont be other parks in the show. It would have to be done as a spin off.
Forget the link, but the info is out there.

[Endus]

Its already been said there wont be other parks in the show. It would have to be done as a spin off.
Forget the link, but the info is out there.

Not only that, it would cheapen the show. Having them escape "Westworld" only to enter "Spaceworld" or "Pirateworld" is just an attempt to hit the reset button on the story, for no good reason. I don't know if they're planning to wrap this story up in Season 1, and if they do then there's room to start another, separate story in a second park setting, with a completely different focus/goal (so you're not dealing with emerging sentient AI at all), but that's the only way I'd see them going about it. Adding a new setting just complicates things and doesn't extend the story in any meaningful way, since the Western setting is dressing, not a core part of the underlying themes.

[dwightyo39]

The scene where the tech is working on the bird robot made my wife and I sad. Our pet bird recently died, and the one in the show looked similar. They way the guy is trying to bring it to life is how I felt when I was getting ready to bury her. If only I had the magical tablet the tech used.

Anyway, on a less depressing note, it looks like we finally see shit hit the fan next episode.

[kojinshugi]

The very nature of a "game" requires that there be some kind of win condition. That may be following the story through to the end (though many take issue with so-called "walking simulators" being labelled as "games"), it may be more overt, but there's a way to "win".

There's no such thing in Westworld.

That's absurd. All the "narratives" have win conditions. Wyatt's gang rides into town and starts shooting people, the win condition is for the guest to defeat them. There are literal questgivers in town that take you on missions that have win conditions.

No, the park doesn't have an overarching storyline (for most guests), but neither do many games.

If you took the main storyline out of GTA or some other sandbox game, and only had individual missions, would it stop being a game? Of course not.

[jimboa24]

I'm fascinated to see what Maeve wants with Felix. The fact that she knew his name and seems to be completely aware of where she is and what she is now is both freaky and thrilling.