HBO's Westworld: These violent delights have violent ends

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > HBO's Westworld: These violent delights have violent ends

Toxic Fart Syndrome: Jul 2, 2006; *hits A-THREAD-5*

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They probably want to beat TWD and the other fall shows to the punch, hoping to make this the new GoT.

An old college buddy worked on the production crew and had some awesome things to say about it, but I also read some pretty shady stuff about the contracts the extras had to sign. Hopefully this doesn't turn into another Luck, I really dig the premise and they got an amazing cast.

Fingers crossed...

# ¿ Aug 7, 2016 03:46

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 08:52

Toxic Fart Syndrome: Jul 2, 2006; *hits A-THREAD-5*

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Yeah, didn't The Wire run pretty much alongside The Sopranos? I'm not sure it was ever considered a big hit, more of a sleeper and critical darling which is now viewed with rose-colored glasses. I think Sex and the City and Sopranos were their first big hits and the "flagship" shows when their original programming started taking off. Carnivale and then Rome bridged the gap between Sopranos and True Blood, but were too expensive so welp. After that it seems like they threw most of the programming budget at their tentpole show, then liked to have a lot of cheap-to-shoot contemporary-setting shows all based around New York to pad the lineup.

I'm guessing they have a lot of sets/props leftover from Deadwood that make Westworld cheaper to film while GoT is still taking the lion's share of the budget.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2016 17:17

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Flatscan posted:

David Milch is a mess of drug addictions, gambling problems and mental illness, that`s why.

Also money? HBO seemed completely loathe to spend money on sets and costumes for more than 2 seasons before GoT was a smash hit. That's why I think there was a warehouse full of old Deadwood props like guns and belts and whatnot that they just couldn't bear to throw out and are now reusing. Probably that bulldozer from Carnivale, too.

Speaking of Deadwood, the most recent trailers for West World have me worried that they are trying to borrow Deadwood's vulgarity by just inserting "gently caress" a few times into every sentence to make it more ~adult~. Which totally misses the point of how much fun the dialogue in Deadwood was or why it was so good. Hopefully it's just the snippets.

Still really excited, but trying to temper it so I can be pleasantly surprised rather than disappointed.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 15:26

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Isn't that an overtly comic-book show? I found it pretty unwatchable from the start and wouldn't think of Hell on Wheels and Deadwood as related in anything but setting, but maybe I just didn't give it enough of a chance?

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 23:11

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New trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuS5huqOND4

# ¿ Aug 29, 2016 02:37

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Medullah posted:

Is this a one season thing? Or are they shooting for series?

Rewatched the original movie today for the first time in 20 years. I didn't know Michael Crichton wrote it when i saw it before, but knowing that now it's pretty obviously similar to his other works a theme park malfunctions and guests are trapped as a ~~Velociraptor~~ Yul Brynner chases them down.

I think they're hoping it will :turianass:

replace

GoT, so multiple seasons are definitely a strong possibility.

At the same time: it's HBO and they hate spending money on sets/costumes, that they can't buy at a department store in Manhattan, for more than two seasons sooooo............

It comes down to ratings and reviews. If it earns them critical acclaim, it will almost certainly get a second season just because. But if it isn't pulling in subscriptions and hype (as in: are people having WW viewing parties ala Got/TWD?) it will get the can.

:shrug:

# ¿ Aug 29, 2016 17:01

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Ninety minutes and a $25 million pricetag for the premier!

# ¿ Oct 2, 2016 00:51

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I noticed Ed Harris say he'd been coming for thirty years...which is when the park had its last :airquote:

incident.

They also seem to be intentionally ambiguous as to whether this is all actually on earth or not. Cop-guy mentioned the guests coming to "your world," but Hopkins later made it sound like they were still here, but somewhere remote.

:tinfoil:

tl;dr show's good, will watch again

# ¿ Oct 3, 2016 04:28

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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:

There is no way that is just cheaper than paying people minimum wage

If you can buy the robot for <$150k, you make your money back in a decade? The ones they have seem pretty easily replaceable...

# ¿ Oct 3, 2016 19:02

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The fly thing at the end made me think Delores was lying about the picture: she just kept saying "I don't see anything" because she knows that's the ~safe~ response. It also made me think that the sheriff went into seizure-mode because he wanted to swat the fly on his face, but couldn't because of his programming.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2016 20:52

Toxic Fart Syndrome: Jul 2, 2006; *hits A-THREAD-5*

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Also, it's pretty hosed up that CopGuy just turned off Delores' display of emotions during his interview, he didn't turn them off entirely. She may be so advanced that it's an act, but he doesn't know that, so she would have still been screaming on the inside in his mind. It seemed like another good example in which the humans devalue the experiences of the hosts.

And yeah, I'm guessing Hopkins wants to resurrect someone as a host.
Corporate wants to make workers/soldiers to sell.
Management wants to make Pod People and take over the world? I'm guessing more than a few employees will turn out to be robots.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2016 00:38

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I'm guessing it's not a post-scarcity society, but one where the hyper-rich have access to these things.

Port Authority still seems ambiguous about the location, and mention of "The Territory" seems to suggest a new frontier, if not a deep ocean settlement (maybe not Sealab, but actually buried under the seafloor?) then perhaps another planet.

The legal document clearly suggests that their are other parks besides WestWorld. Hopkins may not even be the senior engineer, but just the old burnout they stuck in the western park because it only gets 1400 guests anyways. I would assume the financial numbers to be within our experience of them and not adjusted for future-inflation.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2016 16:29

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Megaspel posted:

Yeah my bad, I was gonna put a efb on there. I tend to reply to posts before I've fully caught up, since the thread moves so fast and I usually read little bits over a longer period of time.

One thing that I never figured out an answer for consciousness, (okay I haven't figured out most answers for it,) what happens if you split someone's brain perfectly down the middle, 50/50, then gave each side a clone of the other half?

Which clone is the original, are both? What happens to the 'you', your consciousness/experience? Which side do you go on, or is it at that moment you split into two and the past you exists as two separate you's?

That question really messed with my sense of what defines me, there's so much of your brain that exists but isn't being used at any one moment. Even if you believe the real you is the parts of your brain that doesn't die and replenish, which part of those cells are you, and if you get alzeimers and those bits die, are you dead?

This reminded me of the split-brain problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfYbgdo8e-8

Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:

Yeah, but in (almost) every video game violence is in service to the plot so there are consequences to the violence, even of that consequence is nothing more than "that guy I killed would have killed me/needed to die so I could get to the warp zone." The point of the narratives is to establish consequence within the context of the park. Dumpy McHusband killed the bank robber because he was a wannabe hero, not a wannabe murderer. The lack of consequence works for him only as long as he doesn't hesitate or think too much because the park has given him God Mode. The second bandit will fumble with his gun however long he needs to so he can be gunned down. The park isn't a video game as much as it is a very detailed choose your own adventure.

That's why the rootin' tootin' black hat guest falls flat for me. The point of murder is finality and the consequences thereof. I'm sure that there are people who would commit random murder if they could, but I imagine that the knowledge that the victim could be put back into service the next day would leave the experience hollow. Hell, for the price of one week in the park you could probably murder like 3 real people without consequence in CertainPartsofAsiaWorld. Why on earth would you pay the same amount to cosplay the discount version?

Ummm, lots of people feel some kind of emotional turmoil when killing NPCs? If you've ever obeyed traffic laws in a GTA game or savescummed because a party member died in an RPG: you also fall into this category...

Also, in case anyone missed it by avoiding wading through the midweek thread, episode 1 is free-to-stream on HBO's website: no subscription required.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2016 22:50

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Megaspel posted:

Oh dang this is great, as well as the video afterwards. Thinking about what I am and the fuzziness of it really feels a bit like the androids asking the question that must not be asked. I need to start reading more about this stuff, I feel super smart when I come up with all the questions and thought experiments on my own but obviously there have been a lot of smarter people than me thinking about these concepts for a lot longer than I have.

Undertale plays with the idea of empathy towards video game characters amazingly well, that's what the whole thing is sorta centred around.

Kurzgesagt is awesome, it's actually how I found the split-brain video! I feel you on the super smartness: I'm always left wondering whether I came up with the idea independently, or if I had just read/seen it somewhere else and don't remember. It's almost certainly the latter each time.

I've never played Undertale, but Heavy Rain toyed almost exclusively with this concept (if you can get past David Cage's obsession with 90's filmmaking). One of the Nolan's talked specifically about playing GTA and feeling guilty about running over an NPC: wondering whether they had a family and health insurance. I'm certain these concepts will be addressed more directly later in the season.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2016 00:01

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DoctorGonzo posted:

Episode 2 is on hbogo.

HBONow, as well. :awesome:

Why did I have to notice seven hours before work... :smith:

# ¿ Oct 7, 2016 06:38

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Krazyface posted:

How do people still use that smiley, they changed it like 10 years ago.

It's almost like I did it on purpose. :crossarms:

# ¿ Oct 7, 2016 06:53

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theflyingexecutive posted:

Anybody else get really scared that Ford was gonna do some deplorable poo poo with that kid?

I actually thought that the kid was real and was going to push Hopkins off of a cliff or something, thinking Hopkins was a host.

With Black Hat (Ed Harris), I'm loving his character as the ultimate, bittervet min-maxxer. I loved the scene where he says that he and rope-dope had all of these cool adventures together and BH never knew he had a family. I'm thinking BH has been coming to Westworld for so long he is trying to meta the game. And of course the designers would include "end game" content like this with subtle nods to the fourth wall. My prediction is that the maze is just another level of the game, and not something for the hosts or about he park. It's a high-level dungeon that you have to find all of the Easter eggs to unlock.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2016 22:09

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Invicta{HOG}, M.D. posted:

And Paint it Black and No Surprises in ep 2. Someone likes the same music I like.

The Nolan's seem like cool peeps.

Trivia posted:

Anyone think that Bernard was uneasy because Dolores asked a direct question to him?

Seems outside of character for hosts to question employees.

Yeah, that seemed to unnerve him, since he made the additional effort of deleting the conversation and erasing her event log.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2016 01:12

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Max posted:

I think the other thing, and the movie did this too, is that it's knowingly borrowing those elements since that's what people know and expect. It's playing up the renegade / paragon themes because, well, that's how those sorts of things are written, and it's what someone would expect in that world.

I can enjoy Teddy's character because he's just such an obvious stand-in for the try-hard hero player, and the writers know that.

Spoilers from the preview: It looks like BH and Teddy are going to team up, with Ed Harris at one point saying something like "I didn't know you could do that" and Teddy quipping "you don't know me." I'm hoping that, as BH delves deeper into the metamaze, he'll have to deconstruct Teddy's White Hat Hero personae to get to the meat of his character. Especially since Teddy is the newbie guy who guides you around, taking him out to the badlands must have some epic purple drops.
:pcgaming:

# ¿ Oct 9, 2016 03:59

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# ¿ Oct 9, 2016 06:57

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MikeJF posted:

Eh, I got such a strong 'evil slutty bisexual' vibe from that.

They are setting up the "how does newbie white hat turn into bittervet black hat" dichotomy for them. All of that just serves to reinforce how much the gamespace changes the players and how poor white hat is going to be banging robohookers and choking out robocoybows before the season is out (misses back home be damned). He'll probably end up ~actually~ murdering his douchey friend.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2016 00:30

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Jack Gladney posted:

Just realized that if he's going to be a main character that means the season can only cover about a week or so, unless he gets killed or something.

A month seems like the timeframe for one "playthrough," the website ARG mentioned it resetting every four weeks, iirc. I'm guessing time is going to be pretty fluid on the show and we will see multiple visits from all of the human guests.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2016 01:09

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Paperhouse posted:

Maeve's giant bloody flesh wound looked pretty human and fleshy to me

From edible underwear to edible...uhhhh...under parts? I wonder if they come in flavors. :zombie:

# ¿ Oct 10, 2016 01:19

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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:

Obviously it's all the data they have recorded from the guests stays

The website mentions by going to the park you give Delos rights to anything you leave in the park: waste, skin, hair, blood, presidential stains, boogers, et cetera. Gotta store it all somewhere...

# ¿ Oct 11, 2016 03:03

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I think Bernard wants to make true AI, or is at least fascinated by the possibility of it. He is probably the one pushing Dolores and the others. Ford strikes me as more of an auteur than an engineer: I think his goal is to craft the AR equivalent of the perfect novel which will lend him his own, more traditional immortality in an era where humans "are finished."

Doubling down that Ed Harris is bittervet gamer looking for the leet purps. :pcgaming1:

# ¿ Oct 11, 2016 08:12

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I love the little NPC-quirks the hosts have, like taking shots in unison.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2016 08:44

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physeter posted:

Off world colonists? They don't age, can go into hibernation, can repair catastrophic injury and are maybe even resistant to hard radiation. But they can still complete complex tasks and exercise sufficient autonomy to adapt to new circumstances. When the real people arrive, they've got a ready made group of slaves waiting.

Maybe that's why they are keeping them in cold storage after being decommissioned: determining how long they can be kept offline and unmaintained while staying useful.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2016 22:11

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It's you. You are the host in BasementWorld.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2016 00:14

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Shooting Blanks posted:

Did they ever explain the nature of her discomfort?

Nope, I'm pretty sure it was all just to emphasize that the workers completely devalue the physical comfort of the hosts. It's kind of strange, because on the one hand they talk about them like pets, but at the same time no one gave a gently caress that she was, not only in a huge amount of pain, but was blowing and banging dudes with a MRSA infection.

I'm sure having an abdomen full of toxic waste and bacteria didn't help her mood or ability to sympathize with guests. She probably didn't need any program fixes on the backend, just some anti-biotics.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2016 02:25

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Yeah, she is obviously holding her stomach in pain the entire episode. Maybe no one wanted to get with her because she smelled rancid to boot...

The Saddest Rhino posted:

considering the number of people who would not stop posting about how the walking dead is unrealistic and this is how they would survive a zombie apocalypse, powergamer version, yeah i can totally see zombie apocalypse being a great setting for westworld

the only problem is the families with kids won't be able to go

Book your WestWorld trip for this October to unlock special surprise content: DeadWorld! :eng101:

# ¿ Oct 12, 2016 03:06

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mikeraskol posted:

He said "It's not like my sister didn't ride a bunch of cowboys while she was here."

Yeah, I took that to mean White Hat's wife/girlfriend had slayed robodong during her trip, in stark contrast to our :shobon:

newbie.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2016 04:01

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Megaspel posted:

Maybe they see them like tamagotchis, they like to pretend on some level they're actually live creatures, but on the main level they know these are just a bunch of batteries and beeps and boops and poo poo.

We do love to anthropomorphize everything, so that makes a lot of sense. I also like the idea from a couple pages ago, where the engineers have been at it so long that they've lost sight of the small improvements and still see the hosts as pure automatons. At what point would we assign feelings to the Presidents exhibit at Epcot? How many upgrades would it take?

I'm also kind of surprised that people are so abusive of Teddy. Being, essentially, a starter NPC in the kiddie zone, I'm kind of shocked more people are not attached to him: it's not like he's an overtly annoying NPC like the Gold Panner. Half the bar should have been like "what the gently caress, dude! Teddy is my bro!" I wonder if we will see outside protesters, upset over the treatment of their favorite characters at some point in the season.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2016 14:31

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Hi Jinx posted:

Is anyone else disappointed by this show? I mean, Deadwood meets Dollhouse sounds awesome, but the first two episodes left me really disappointed.

So far everything feels more surreal than hard scifi. From little things that make good visuals but don't make any logical sense, to the fundamental reason people go to the park, I just don't get it. I won't go into details on the former as it'd seem very nitpicky (even though they bother me a lot), but I just don't get the the entire concept of the park.

- There seem to be a fair number of guests who return regularly, and stay extended periods of time. Yet, the park seems to run on a 1-day cycle - how exactly do you spend two weeks there and not get bored out of your mind? Or have the illusion shatter on the second morning, seeing the same situations play out again? I get that you can leave the town and go on adventures, and the further out you go the more intense it gets (whatever that actually means), but how long before you get tired of Groundhog Day?

- More importantly, the guests are never in any danger from the hosts. I get that there are interwoven storylines that are supposed to provide entertainment, kind of like in an open-world RPG, but would you enjoy a game where you could kill/maim/rape as many of the NPCs as you wanted, and they would only pretend to fight back with weapons that can never damage you? No matter how realistic the game is, and no matter how hosed up you are, wouldn't every murder you commit be a lot less thrilling than the previous? Wouldn't it be super boring after the first few hours? Ed Harris' character clearly believes that he's some kind of a badass, he definitely dresses the part, except he's never at any risk. Which results in a very, very low actual badass factor. I found him more funny than sinister. I get that he will definitely be in danger later on as the fancy animatrons gain consciousness, and he will inevitably become a genuinely dangerous antagonist, but what the hell is he doing in Westworld right now? And what the hell is anyone else doing there, for that matter? Are they some sort of really niche segment of society, successful and rich enough to be able to afford a very expensive vacation, yet easily amused by committing atrocities on completely defenseless props that provide no challenge whatsoever?

- Finally, many of the park's visitors seem to be genuine assholes, yet there doesn't seem to be any conflict (or actually, any interaction) between guests. Like, at all. There doesn't seem to be a way to identify guests, other than shooting at them and realizing your gun doesn't hurt them; but it's not a problem because guests don't seem to cross paths with others. I mean, after realizing the repetitive nature and ultimate hollowness of the entire experience, wouldn't a bored guest inevitably camp the brothel and kill all hookers first thing every morning, just to blueball all the horny lawyers fresh off the train? Or find some other, more creative way to interfere with the experience of others, just for the sake of some actual challenge?

But the super expensive yet super lame amusement park aside, the show seems to be building up to a bleeding-heart NPC-emancipation main theme. "Look at how pretty this girl is, look how pretty this guy is, they meet every morning and clearly seem to be destined for each other, but the horrible humans gently caress it up for them every evening." She's not a girl, and he's not a guy... They're artificial constructs I can't seem to find sympathy for, no matter the shocking imagery. Obviously, they will gain intelligence and consciousness, and obviously, they will desire a normal human life, as is inevitably the goal of every two-legged AI in every lovely scifi ever conceived. (Except Blade Runner, somehow the concept wasn't so retarded in that movie.) I'd be pleasantly surprised if they all woke up, wanted to kill all humans, while building a mysterious Cylon city somewhere, with inhabitants working towards mysterious Cylon goals. However, given how much emphasis was put on how realistically human their appearance is, and how badly they're treated by human standards, Westworld will inevitably see Teddy and Maeve gently caress and try to make little baby-NPCs, and who knows, maybe even succeed. All of that might even make for passable television, no matter how much better the story could have been - but I was asked to suspend disbelief so many times in the first to episodes, for the sake of poignant but shallow visuals and story elements, that I really don't think the creators are even trying to turn this into a halfway intelligent series.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2016 19:22

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The producers have already said, several times, that the guns are real and the ammunition is a future-version of the simunitions the military uses. The hosts probably have a layer of squibs under their skin, making maintenance easier than treating actual bullet holes.

Where are people getting the idea that Ed Harris killed a human guest and why does it keep coming up, even though he's very clearly not even interacted with another human in the show?

# ¿ Oct 13, 2016 14:53

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mikeraskol posted:

Also those two dudes don't look remotely similar, including the fact that they are wearing different shirts, jackets and hats.

goons displaying mild racism itt

# ¿ Oct 13, 2016 21:25

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indigi posted:

I thought the whole point behind HBO Go was that episodes came out early

The point of HBOGo was to avoid licensing their catalog to Netflix/Hulu.

They dropped last week's episode early because they wanted to keep the hype building and not compete with the debate.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2016 19:41

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There is obviously some danger involved with the weapons: MiB's endmove is to put the host's gun to his head, at which point their Good Samaritan^TM reflex prevents them from shooting. They always lose their will and collapse or drop their weapons when MiB puts their gun right on his forehead. So the muzzle flash or a point-blank shot can be harmful, if not fatal.

Also, there is always the danger of something else getting lodged (or being placed :ninja:

) in the barrel. What's that called? A squib fire that gets pushed out by the next shot? Dolores could always just put a pebble in her gun and even if it has WizardAISmartBullet Technology^TM, it would still get fired by the shell and do some damage.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2016 04:15

Toxic Fart Syndrome: Jul 2, 2006; *hits A-THREAD-5*

Only 3.6 Roentgoons per hour ... not great, not terrible.

_{...the meter only goes to 3.6...}; Pork Pro

Clocks posted:

Yeah, I find the obsession with the guns/bullets interesting. Simunitions works for me, and so does something as benign as "guests get personal forcefields" or something - boom, done. (I suppose the bullets explanation will be more pertinent if Dolores ends up using the dug-up gun on a guest or something and it's just a regular gun with regular bullets that ends up hurting people.)

What keeps bringing me out of suspended disbelief is how much money the entire facility must be bleeding. They have something like at least a hundred sub-levels (given the "breach" that occurred on 83) and of course the hosts themselves which must be cleaned and patched up each night/week, stored, programmed and so on. Mostly it's the scope of the building that makes it seem unrealistic to me.

Did you know that most of the Disney complex in Florida actually built on the roof of a 9 acre superstructure which houses all of their utility, maintenance, and whatnot because the water table is too high.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2016 04:35

Toxic Fart Syndrome: Jul 2, 2006; *hits A-THREAD-5*

Only 3.6 Roentgoons per hour ... not great, not terrible.

_{...the meter only goes to 3.6...}; Pork Pro

Paulocaust posted:

Also I don't know if anyone caught this, but if you watch the light on the door of the train when William walks in; the traincar is actually an elevator. It goes up to pick up his buddy Ben, and then again goes up to I assume what is the surface, and hooks onto the track/rest of the train.

This is neat and I did not notice it on my first viewing.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2016 00:13

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 08:52

Toxic Fart Syndrome: Jul 2, 2006; *hits A-THREAD-5*

Only 3.6 Roentgoons per hour ... not great, not terrible.

_{...the meter only goes to 3.6...}; Pork Pro

Loved the talk about the "voice of God," followed by Dolores hearing an otherworldly "Kill Him," before finally being able to consciously break her programming and ~kill something~.

Show is good.

Oiled and Ready posted:

So is there a reason why a guest has never stabbed another guest to death while roleplaying? Are deaths not caused by the hosts not counted as "deaths in the park"?

I know it isn't really relevant but it seems like that would have been a problem at some point.

Guest on guest :airquote:

manslaughter :airquote:

is part of the danger, according to the park's NDA.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2016 07:20

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > HBO's Westworld: These violent delights have violent ends

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