HBO’s Westworld VI- This Game Is Meant For You...[SPOILERS]

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 hours ago, karaddin said:

ATK - that's much more in the ball park of what I was expecting. I was really thrown by people thinking it was the size of a US state, it had me wondering if the states are much smaller than I thought. That said, there is some truth to that - I'd have thought Arizona and New South Wales were similar sizes, but NSW is 2.5-3x larger. Part of that is just not seeing them side by side, but the Mercator projection really skews perception of this stuff as well. That's still an order of magnitude larger than what you're talking though at 300000 square kilometers.

Well keep in mind that states here drastically vary in size.  The largest state is about the same size as Greenland while the smallest is smaller than Cyprus. That said, I don’t think the park is anywhere near as big as an average sized state, let alone the country of Australia. Personally I think they’re the size of very large national parks (I assume you have those in Australia too).

A lot of people have mentioned a dome theory, and I think that makes sense. However, I believe that leads people to believe they have to be giant half spheres like from The Simpsons movie. I think they could be all kinds of different shapes which would make them appear bigger than they really are. Furthermore, I think domes would allow the creators to make the park appear larger than it really is. Really at this point it’s impossible to know just how big they are until we get more data unless there’s a detail we’ve all missed.

[williamjm]

6 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Ugh. Trying to figure out the size of only Westworld, I highballed the numbers. I came up with a land area about the size of Ireland for the max. That still seems too big for a theme park, much less 1/6 of a theme park.

Edit: For a minimum. William is traveling from the coast to what is apparently the other end of the park. He is making this trip in what? 2 days? With a lot of drinking and sitting around. I'll give him at most 30 miles a day. That's a 60 mile trip from the coast to the end. I'm estimating the hell out of this shit but that still gives us 1850 sq miles. That's a little bigger than Rhode Island. Does that still seem too big for just one theme park? Even at $40,000 a day. (30 years ago. Who knows what the price is now)

They could do clever tricks to make the park feel bigger than it is, William's journey could be a lot longer in distance than the journey as the crow flies given the mountains and canyons in the park. Locations we think are far apart could be relatively close to each other, but the path between them isn't very direct.

[red snow]

1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

My guess has been that dad saw the ruthless 'killer' instinct in William, that he honed in the park,  that was lacking in Logan, who is really just a petulant gamer playboy who likes to think he's some business magnate, but never has shown any leadership qualities or insight that seems to equip him to actually run some billion $ enterprise.  So, I don't find that far fetched at all, plus, people are all the time cutting out their own children or other blood relatives in favor of somebody else.

That's a convincing argument. Still, Logan did seem to be good at seeing the value in the park - I guess William just saw the bigger picture. Be interesting to see if there's an older Logan kicking around or whether he killed himseld (or was killed).

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Yeah this is where I’m at too. It’s hard to see Arnold having any kind of sexual desires towards Delores. The hosts are his children, and Delores is his favorite.

But who the hell knows with this show. After all, we know how Trump feels about his favorite daughter….

That could even wind up being a reason why he had Delores kill him.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, williamjm said:

They could do clever tricks to make the park feel bigger than it is, William's journey could be a lot longer in distance than the journey as the crow flies given the mountains and canyons in the park. Locations we think are far apart could be relatively close to each other, but the path between them isn't very direct.

Yeah, I've always pictured the place as an intertwining maze, making say, 10 square miles, feel like a small country.

2 hours ago, red snow said:

 

That could even wind up being a reason why he had Delores kill him.

 

Eh, I can't see it. That would be way out of left field, given the narrative they seem to be building to.

[red snow]

12 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Yeah, I've always pictured the place as an intertwining maze, making say, 10 square miles, feel like a small country.

Eh, I can't see it. That would be way out of left field, given the narrative they seem to be building to.

Totally agree - I'm on board with the surrgoate father/child idea. But you could tie things together with a dark bow if they went that way. But I much prefer the idea he died precisely because he didn't want her to be abused by people on holiday. The show's dark enough as it is.

[RumHam]

Re: Nobody recognizing that Bernard is Arnold, I'm pretty sure there's a line in episode two of season one when Logan and William first arrive about how Ford's dead partner was a mystery and nobody even knows what he looked like. That said Ford does have a picture of him on his desk and anyone who looked at it should wonder how Bernard manged not to age while Ford did.

We did see two or three other human workers in flashbacks to before the park opened last season, but it's easy to imagine Ford just fired them when he decided to replicate Arnold. Or they quit and found new jobs after the Massacre. I wouldn't wanna work there after that.  

[karaddin]

I'd assumed that Logan's experiences in the park left him severely scarred, leaving him unable to work and leading to his decision to start using drugs. I don't think it was that that William displayed more of a killer instinct.

Getting dragged around naked as an observer while your future brother in law commits heinous acts, then sends you off into the wilderness still naked and tied up under the hot sun is rather traumatic.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

25 minutes ago, red snow said:

Totally agree - I'm on board with the surrgoate father/child idea. But you could tie things together with a dark bow if they went that way. But I much prefer the idea he died precisely because he didn't want her to be abused by people on holiday. The show's dark enough as it is.

I think there will be other reasons tied in too. If you don't care about money, philosophically, Westworld is an evil place on so many levels. Arnold probably realized this while Ford's god complex allowed him to ignore it. 

14 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Re: Nobody recognizing that Bernard is Arnold, I'm pretty sure there's a line in episode two of season one when Logan and William first arrive about how Ford's dead partner was a mystery and nobody even knows what he looked like. That said Ford does have a picture of him on his desk and anyone who looked at it should wonder how Bernard manged not to age while Ford did.

We did see two or three other human workers in flashbacks to before the park opened last season, but it's easy to imagine Ford just fired them when he decided to replicate Arnold. Or they quit and found new jobs after the Massacre. I wouldn't wanna work there after that.  

Hell, how does he not notice that he's not aging, given that he can remember things from day to day. The park is, what, 30 years old? Kind of a red flag there buddy. 

As far as S1 E2 goes, I will be watching it and taking notes tonight. I will report back and let you know. 

[Cas Stark]

I think Bernard/Arnold is going to continue to be the hero and the moral grounding of the show.  Dolores, IMO, has already broken bad, and while she may come around to a better place, right now, she has taken it upon herself to decide who lives or dies, host and human.  Maeve will go the other way....live and let live.

I do vaguely remember that there was something about the secret partner who died, even though that isn't too realistic, I guess it papers over that plot hole somewhat.

We haven't seen Felix yet have we?  I hope he's alive.  And I wanna see snake lady too.

 

ETA...correct me if I am wrong, but in terms of trauma, Dolores is winning that race, the best case scenario of her loop is that someone saves her after she watches her parents murdered

[williamjm]

15 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Hell, how does he not notice that he's not aging, given that he can remember things from day to day. The park is, what, 30 years old? Kind of a red flag there buddy.

Like the other hosts he is designed to avoid thinking about these things.

As far as S1 E2 goes, I will be watching it and taking notes tonight. I will report back and let you know.

I rewatched season 1 just before season 2 started, and watching it a second time there's very little in the way of unnecessary scenes. Everything has a purpose, even if we didn't it understand it first time through.

9 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

We haven't seen Felix yet have we?  I hope he's alive.  And I wanna see snake lady too.

I was wondering what had happened to Felix, it would be nice to see him again at some point. His sleazy buddy was alive last time we see him as well, although I wouldn't be disappointed to learn he'd met an unfortunate end.

[Jaxom 1974]

8 hours ago, williamjm said:

They could do clever tricks to make the park feel bigger than it is, William's journey could be a lot longer in distance than the journey as the crow flies given the mountains and canyons in the park. Locations we think are far apart could be relatively close to each other, but the path between them isn't very direct.

Soooooo...it's a holodeck?

There are trains running around the place...taking trips of up to a couple hours at least...

I realize this shouldn't bother me, but it does...

[dbunting]

Going to weigh in on a few things now that I just read 6 pages of this!

I do believe it's an island, but domed and or in some way aligned with a goverment. Otherwise you would have helicopters and airplanes over head all the time. Had to have help making it a no fly zone some how.

The size and amount of parks are up for interpretation. Persinally I see that "command center" as the hub to the whole place. I see each park being divided by a spoke coming out from it. The "spoke" could be a impassible mountain range, water feature etc. The trains they ride to westworld are old and slow and they could make the distance seem much longer than it truly is.

I think Arnold loved the idea of Delores more than the reality of her. He seems truly disappointed when she repeats herself, like he failed or he is disaapointed in his child/creation. I do like the thought that he had them all killed trying to save them in his mind.

As to why Bernard doesn't realize he isn't aging; I believe it was explained in S1. The hosts are programmed not to see certain things. I think it was Ford's childhood home that he took him to and Bernard never saw it until it was "shown" to him. I swear someone in that scene specifically states that programming is why.

[RumHam]

41 minutes ago, dbunting said:

As to why Bernard doesn't realize he isn't aging; I believe it was explained in S1. The hosts are programmed not to see certain things. I think it was Ford's childhood home that he took him to and Bernard never saw it until it was "shown" to him. I swear someone in that scene specifically states that programming is why.

That was one of the best scenes in season one. Wright really killed it and Hopkins was creepy as hell. But yeah you're rightt, it establishes that Bernard can't see himself in a photo because it would hurt him. 

I think the "can't see what would hurt them" thing will eventually cripple the hosts when they escape to the real world. But that's probably a season 4 problem. 

 

 

[DMC]

6 hours ago, dbunting said:

As to why Bernard doesn't realize he isn't aging; I believe it was explained in S1. The hosts are programmed not to see certain things. I think it was Ford's childhood home that he took him to and Bernard never saw it until it was "shown" to him. I swear someone in that scene specifically states that programming is why.

Yeah.  Literally, the reveal of Bernard being a host is when he asks Theresa "what door?"  Then, in the subsequent 8th and especially 9th episodes of season 1, it's made clear how Ford has blocked Bernard from remembering harmful things time and time again.  The notion Bernard would have any trouble not realizing he doesn't age is, frankly, somewhat silly considering all Ford has presumably wiped.

As for where/what the park is, am I the only one that doesn't really care?  I mean, I'm excited to see the other parks and everything, but how - and especially where - these parks are being extant?  Nah, not something that I'm particularly interested in.  Why?  Because it has little to do with the story, and I doubt it ever will.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

14 hours ago, williamjm said:

Like the other hosts he is designed to avoid thinking about these things.

Looks like you’re right. There were a few examples of this in episode one (watched last night with notes, but nothing major happened), most notably was Delores seeing the picture from the outside world and not recognizing anything was strange.

Why could Delores kill the fly when the fly messed with another host?

[williamjm]

13 hours ago, dbunting said:

I do believe it's an island, but domed and or in some way aligned with a goverment. Otherwise you would have helicopters and airplanes over head all the time. Had to have help making it a no fly zone some how.

I did come up with a crazy theory that there's been runaway global warming and Westworld is actually in Antarctica after all the ice has melted. It would explain the apparent remoteness and lack of natural fauna and it would provide huge amount of open space. I don't think it's likely to be true, since it seems a bit implausible that nobody would have mentioned the global catastrophe that would have been required to make this happen.

[red snow]

24 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I did come up with a crazy theory that there's been runaway global warming and Westworld is actually in Antarctica after all the ice has melted. It would explain the apparent remoteness and lack of natural fauna and it would provide huge amount of open space. I don't think it's likely to be true, since it seems a bit implausible that nobody would have mentioned the global catastrophe that would have been required to make this happen.

That's a fun idea. Could be Greenland too which is handier for Americans. Those huge machines often look like terraforming equipment so they could definitely be carving out/landscaping land into whatever they wanted.

Also I think a global catastrophe isn't out of the question. Maybe all the allusions about the hosts having "no idea what's out there" and it being bad could be a reflection that the outside world is a bit shit. Although it would mean it's definitely a 1% world if resources are slim and the park is used for entertainment. We've only seen the city so far and it seemed to be a very affluent part of the city - where are the poor people? Would the rich even need them with hosts as slaves?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 hours ago, williamjm said:

I did come up with a crazy theory that there's been runaway global warming and Westworld is actually in Antarctica after all the ice has melted. It would explain the apparent remoteness and lack of natural fauna and it would provide huge amount of open space. I don't think it's likely to be true, since it seems a bit implausible that nobody would have mentioned the global catastrophe that would have been required to make this happen.

Unlikely. If the poles have melted, we'd have much bigger problems than worrying about a theme park. In the article I linked yesterday, Nolan was asked why he went with Shogun World over the other worlds from the movie. He said it was about appealing to an active costumer base or something to that effect, which to me implies that they're somewhere around Asia, which makes sense. Tourists could fly out from the West coast of the US to go to Westworld (which is a recreation of the Western cowboy lifestyle) and out of East Asia for Shogun World. 

Given that William can do whatever he wants in the park, I wonder how much time he's spent in Shogun World?

 

[DMC]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Given that William can do whatever he wants in the park, I wonder how much time he's spent in Shogun World?

 

Ed Harris in Shogun World would be more off-putting than Tom Cruise in Last Samurai.

[karaddin]

13 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Looks like you’re right. There were a few examples of this in episode one (watched last night with notes, but nothing major happened), most notably was Delores seeing the picture from the outside world and not recognizing anything was strange.

Why could Delores kill the fly when the fly messed with another host?

Because the reveries update included "these violent delights have violent ends" as a trigger phrase that started hosts that were close to waking up on the path to transcending their limitations. As mentioned earlier, most hosts that hit this point and were unshackled broke rather than waking, like what happened to Peter Abernathy after he triggers Dolores (and he was in turn triggered by the photo - I credit this sequence of events to Ford). The scene with the fly is shortly after he says this to her, and was to indicate that she has changed.

9 hours ago, red snow said:

Although it would mean it's definitely a 1% world if resources are slim and the park is used for entertainment. We've only seen the city so far and it seemed to be a very affluent part of the city - where are the poor people? Would the rich even need them with hosts as slaves?

@Theda Baratheon and I were arguing during season 1 that this is the kind of world we are seeing. In the middle of season 1, when grumpy tech catches Felix working on the stolen bird he says something like "they should have caught these defects and aborted you before you were born" which suggests a world with a very rigid caste system and genetic filtering of fetuses to comply with the caste they are being born into. Its also the psychological piece of the puzzle for why they went to such extreme lengths obeying Maeve to keep their crimes covered up - they would lose their jobs if they confessed to what had happened, and in such a society, losing your job means getting demoted a caste if not all the way to the bottom which would be a fate worse than death. That was only a theory granted, but it fits the behaviour we have seen from the staff, what we have seen of the world, and explains that behaviour.

It even still fits with William and Logan's contempt for him - he was in the mid level businessman/bureaucrat caste and was extremely rare individual that managed to rise to the executive caste through working his ass off and playing the game ruthlessly - see Logan utterly dripping with contempt when he describes giving the job to William and how much it meant to William. Under normal circumstances this is as high as he should ever have been able to rise, and it was the pinnacle of his life - still fitting with what Logan says at the time - but the combination of marrying into the elite capitalist caste and psychologically destroying his boss and brother-in-law, leaving his father-in-law in need of an heir. From S02E02 he clearly continues his ruthless behaviour, freezing his FIL out of the company slowly and being the one in a million that manages to rise to the very top and ascend the throne. As was mentioned up thread there is even the mirroring of what FIL says to him in S02E02 "You're a cheeky cunt, not a man alive speaks to me that way" to what William says in (earlyish? to Lawrence?) season one "Out in the real world no one dares to talk to me that way" or something to that effect.

In combination with the argument with the (Chinese?) solider/sailor where the Delos exec essentially says "we own this island, get the fuck off and don't say a word about what you've seen here" its seems to me that the capitalist elite have equivalent power to nation states.