HBO's Westworld

True

Mind you, the same problem with Brain Uploading is the same problem with cryogenics. Well, the other problem than it doesn't work. Basically, there's no real reason for William to bring his father in law back from the dead since he's head of the company.

We also saw that in Deus Ex.

"I'm from Hong Kong asshole"

edited 21st May '18 8:50:34 AM by Zarius

Sizemore it's okay you can just say Shogun World was for weeaboos

It's very amusing to find out that Sizemore got lazy at some point and started importing several archetypes and narratives across parks, I wonder if we'll see something like that in the Raj

Interesting to see how they approached robots meeting what are essentially duplicates of themselves, the best one has gotta be Armistice and her expy immediately falling in love with each other.

So Maeve has now unlocked the power to communicate across networks or something, her rapport with Ayane was great as she saw a mirror of herself before awakening and I can't wait to see how they interact in the aftermath of the Shogun's death

The drowned Hosts are sleeper agents aren't they

I love how every episode keeps hammering in what a total hack Sizemore is at writing.

And you just know that’s who went into Shogun World.

edited 22nd May '18 6:45:49 AM by Beatman1

Musashi is at risk of becoming my new favorite character.

Finally caught up on the latest episode

I'd say William's too obsessed with Ford being everywhere but that'd be a bit hypocritical because this episode has heavily reinforced my theory that Ford's AI copy is running the scenes like Bernard's control unit being the same as the one he picked up from the lab

Godspeed Akane, it's understandable why she chose to stay behind as an acceptance of everything that has happened but it's a shame to see Kikuchi depart so soon from the show.

Emily is the most relatable character, trying to stop her father's final LARP campaign from blowing up in his face.

I knew Maeve's daughter wouldn't remember but Newton's acting really sells just how much it's impacted Maeve.

I like how his daughter recognizes more than him this is Suicide by Cop and Death Equals Redemption in a weird way.

I had guessed that Maeve's daughter would probably have a new mother, especially if she were programmed to be out in the middle of nowhere. But I didn't feel it confirmed until Maeve, the 'missing' mom, climbs out of a literal grave to go meet her daughter. And it was heart breaking. And Maeve has a new character conflict of either letting go of her daughter and letting her live in the emotions she genuinely feels, or make her daughter remember (possibly doing god knows what in the process) and thus possibly erasing memories of the woman who had replaced her as a mother. Which is cruel and doing to her daughter just what Maeve would never want done to her and would be antithetical to what Maeve has stated as a character.

I'm worried about Ford existing in the Cradle. They're treding on VERY thin ice here because I think one of the strongest moves of Season 1 was killing off Ford and I do not want him to come back. I feel like it'd undo part of the narrative to keep him around.

I'm also still feeling a bit... out of sorts with Season 2. I want to like it, but what I also loved about Season 1 were the philosophical musings on the loops and the memory wipes and if pain was a part of sentiance and... I'm not quite getting that again with Season 2. Season 2 feels more like your typical sifi action movie in many respects and it feels like a step back to me.

First of all, fucking Ford and his goddamn digital ghost fucking shit up, why couldn't he have just stayed dead instead of babbling about free will and stories as he controls Bernard to do whatever he wants.

The reversed dynamic as Hale and co. react to Bernard being a Host are probably my favorite moments from this episode.

It is hilarious that after seven episodes, Sizemore ends up in pretty much exactly the same place that he started this season in.

Also hilarious, Ford going off to do his thing with Bernard and leaving William all alone after William whipped himself into a frenzy over trying to figure out what Ford was doing and getting shot several times for his trouble. William's probably not going to die of his wounds there, but it would be a pretty fitting ignominious end for him.

edited 4th Jun '18 6:38:30 AM by Nouct

His daughter will probably find him.

Just, of all the characters left, we have no track of where Hector, Amestrice, Shogun!Amestrice, Felix, and Sylvester are during the Mesa attack. We know that Teddy will get killed off by the time that the past timeline catches up to Episode 1 since he's floating in the water.

Also, damn, this show just gave us Anthony Hopkins with an Assault Rifle. And, I'll be honest, with Ford back... We started to get back a lot of the philosophizing that I enjoyed in S1 and I felt a lot more invested this episode than in previous ones.

edited 4th Jun '18 9:58:10 PM by InkDagger

probably the best episode.

I'm glad that, even with 10 episode seasons, we're still able to have character focused episodes that tell a total and completely selfcontained narrative.

I also apprecieate that almost the entire episode was in (I think) the Lakota language and they had actual Native American actors involved rather than, say, giving it to someone who's better known but doesn't have the proper background. It was something I genuinely apprecieated and added to the episode.

I suspect the causation went the other way, they wanted to cast Zahn Mc Clarnon, and that meant the tribe spoke Lakota - Tough, gotta say, I just looked up everyones background, and the rest of the ghost nation actors and actresses are an extremely wide selection of various tribes, so somebody is stuck with the dialect coaches.

edited 11th Jun '18 3:31:48 AM by Izeinsummer

Hence why I specified that they were Native American actors and not specifically Lakota. Unfortunately, I don't know if getting an entire tribe of Lakota actors would be fesable in these days due to Tribal decline. And, even then, you might be passing over genuinely good actors who are looking for their big break simply because you chose to depict a different tribe. This was probably the smarter route.

To be clear, this is something that I have some knowledge in but in no way I'd consider myself informed so please take what I say with a grain of salt.

Caught up on episode 8, and yeah this is definitely one of the definitive episodes, it's got everything from amazing character work in Akecheta's narrative to an interesting lens to focus Westworld's themes through someone who has been lurking offscreen and trying to understand the world he is in with the very few pieces he has.

Also goddamn that ending with Maeve entrusting her daughter to the Ghost Nation and showing off just how far her reach has become, that was great.

Okay, Sunday marks the second season finale. For Ep. 9, I was not expecting William to "accidentally" kill his own daughter. Wow. And RIP Teddy.

I REALLY hope that Emily isn't dead. I liked the actress and I feel like there's SO much more you could do with her than... just have her trying to save her dad while simultaniously pointing out how not worth it it is to do so. Plus, I really want to get back to what the hell was going on with the fiance lover guy in The Raj? They built up this whole thing of 'Do you really think the park would make a host just to put us together?' and other stuff only to just... horifically kill him off and never mention him again? The fuck?

It just feels so... un-Westworld like to just never mention that again.

Speaking of things left hanging, I'm a little bamboozled on how we've lost track of Felix, Hector, Sylvester, Amestrice, and Shogun!Amestrice for nearly five episodes now. Speaking from a structure standpoint, unless their absence is some major plot twist, a short scene reminding us that they're still alive somewhere might be needed.

BTW, The Westworld App game is out and Bethesda has already sent a lawsuit about it accusing them of having stolen the game code of Fallout: Shelter. Reading through the documents, appartently some of the evidence is that glitches, very specific glitches, in the Westworld App were present in earlier builds of Fallout Shelter.

The other arguments about gameplay and art design probably aren't valid enough though. It'd be like trying to copyright an RPG dialogue system.

EDIT:

Finale is out.

Honestly, I'm just kind of confused by Season 2. I don't hate it. But I don't love it. I'm just confused. It didn't feel... quite as coheasive as Season 1.

edited 25th Jun '18 2:14:23 AM by InkDagger

The STINGER from last night was intense.

Is it bad that I'm leaning more towards not liking Season 2 as much?

I liked Season 1's slow build into big crescendos and musings on philosophy. I enjoyed that every single concept, idea, character motivation, and etc were all built up across the entire season. It felt like a complete narrative. I could mostly follow everyone's motives clearly and, even when things were vague, I still had a general grasp on what they wanted to do.

I think Season 2 got messy. Really messy. I think my biggest drop is I just lost track of what everyone's motivations were after awhile. For example, Felix and Sylvester. They're just... there. And I don't remember them particuarly doing anything during Season 2. I don't know what their motive in sticking around is. And I don't know what value Maeve has in bringing them along. I also kind of feel like Felix should surely have some questions, regret, and maybe even guilt that MAYBE what happened at his place of employment and to his co-workers is... uh, his fault? What does he expect to happen after this? What does he even want to do???

I don't understand almost anything related to Dolores by the end of Season 2. She wants to get to the Valley Beyond and do... something? I think she earlier suggested it was a 'weapon' and that episode suggests that William SHOWED HER what the Valley Beyond always was, but 2.10 suggests she didn't know what it was until she got there? So she wants to kill the hosts who chose The Door (which is the Season 2 subtitle but doesn't even get mentioned until the last episode?) over reality, but then she's beeming them to 'somewhere'. Nevermind that none of the hosts ever get TOLD what The Door is anyway or that the whole cavalry and Virus-Bomb!Clementine kind of changes the nature of their 'choice'. But, even then, barely any hosts got to the 'New Eden' anyway since 90% of them got gunned down or killed by Clementine anyway?

Or Maeve's ending. What's her endgame? She wants to be reunited with her daughter and then ...? Even skipping over the whole she got shot subplot, but what's her endgame while riding to The Door? Why doesn't she just run through The Door with her daughter? Is this a symbolically 'Go live off with your other mother and be happy' kind of letting go moment? I think my problem is that we NEVER get a decompression scene of her kind of having to sort through 'My daughter doesn't remember me and has a new mother' emotions. I don't even think the new mother gets a line or even a name. She gives the 'Take my heart with you' line, but the internet is suggesting to me that's how Akecheta got his wife back in The Door so...?

Another thing about The Door. What about the five other parks??? What happened to The Raj or Shogun World? Do they all have Doors too? Did they do similar 'recreate the human guests' experiments or only West World? We only ever see Westworld Hosts going into The Door and... Do the other park hosts just not matter? Is this a thing or... just lazy storytelling?

Or, Shogun world. I loved the episode. I loved the characters. I loved everything about it but... Is it wrong of me to hate it in the overall picture? I can't think of anything it really provided to the plot. It maybe tied into the 'Take my heart with you' line in a literal sense, but...? Or what was the point in bringing Shogun!Amestrice with them? I don't think she even gets a line after that episode. Or, what about Amestrice and Hector themselves? What's their stakes in the plot towards the end? They go into the Mesa to save Maeve and... what? I feel like Amestrice, Hector, Felix, Shogun!Amestrice, and Sylvester stopped being characters and became satelites around Maeve?

In Season 1, I felt like all the plotlines fed into each other. They were separated, but they eventually clashed together into a nice build. Bernard, Maeve, and Dolores were all along on Ford's plan and the William plot had its own plot twist reveal to tie it in. Everything fit together. I... don't feel the same about Season 2. The plots didn't feel like they connected or fed together. Compared to Season 1 that never wastes a scene or even a minute of screen time not telling us something new, I feel like Season 2 rushed along from plot idea and plot idea without much time to either decompress and build to the next peak or just bring coheasion between everything.

I'm sorry if I'm going off. I'm still collecting thoughts. I just... Liked Season 1 better. And that makes me a bit sad that, I guess in interviews the writers and showrunners have said that Season 1 is a prologue and they didn't like how slow it was and wanted Season 2 to be more of an image of what they wanted the show to be like.

I've seen comments elsewhere that it felt like they sacrificed character for dumping big plot things in the finale and I have to agree with that.

Like Armistice and Hanaryo had a budding romance or at least a thing going on and then we never really got to see any of that after Hanaryo's first episode.

Double post but on a rewatch of the finale I think a big problem with the finale and by extent season 2, is that Dolores' character kinda went downhill and became a fountain for the writers to spout a bunch of platitudes on humanity.

And related to that, why did she revive Bernard at the end, she even knows he'll be actively impeding her efforts so why. It is such a dumb Missing Steps Plan.

1. Revive Bernard
2. Engage in long idealogical fight with him in the real world
3. ????
4. Die but it's okay because the hosts are free question mark

William's arc of losing his grip and control over the park as he spirals out of control with the fear that Ford is manipulating him and loss of control over himself is good with that stinger as its denouement but it so did not need that much screentime and Emily's death is kind of a deal breaker.

Edited by Nouct on Jun 28th 2018 at 8:36:27 AM

I think what I'm kind of missing from William's storyline is I actually don't know if Ford is fucking with him or not. Ford "talks" to him through the hosts a couple of times, but then it never gets mentioned again. Ford even comes back (something I REALLY have mixed feelings about because I don't know if it undermined his death or not) and we don't even get a scene after showing if Ford is genuinely fucking with William at all or if William REALLY IS going insane.

Also, WHY was Emily using a false name when we first met her??? She called herself Grace! Like, I get that its supposed to be a surprise that its William's daughter (which I gussed way ahead of time) but we only got a name to go off of from William's flashback in the first place. So... why not just call her Emily the first time and then just avoid using her name in the flashback? It'd keep the questions we have a lot lower.

Emily's death was his Face Heel Door Slam moment and arguably his Moral Event Horizon for himself. Which is why he needs to die and be reborn as a host to have any form of redemption.

I feel like we already hit the Door Slam for him. He refused her offer twice over already. He showed time and time again he wasn't going to leave the damn park. I don't think he deserves redemption at this point. Even the park deems him irrdeemable.

I think another problem that I'm starting to have is that Westworld seems wholy uninterested in being about... well, Westworld. Is a theme park. And Shogun World was so cool. The Raj seemed interesting and I'd LOVE to explore the colonialist undercurrents in the parks. I want to explore each park and its own problems.

But... The series just doesn't seem interested. Shogun is an Asian reskin of Westworld and we see almost nothing of The Raj with three other parks unaccounted for. None of the other parks are involved with The Door (which raises a TON of questions further on if this was intentional or just an oversight).

As much as I want shows to evolve narratively passed their original status quo to create new stories... I'm still invested in the Theme Park angle. And I like the narratives and the daily operations in the park. But I'm worried we're evoling too far passed the original concept and not much to replace it because I don't know where Season 3 is going.

Is it some Dolores-Bernard = Magneto-Xavier Robot Revolution in the real world? Are we going to Outer Space? Is Westworld itself even relevant anymore?

Edited by InkDagger on Jun 30th 2018 at 6:50:28 AM

It is rather interesting, it's kinda like Jurassic Park but with robots.